realistically, the problem with social is us. Ask friends and family to go back to sharing their unhinged political views in the form of badly punctuated emails, as God intended. If they continue to share, unfollow.
This is certainly a problem, but I think more important than this is the illusion of having control over what you see on social media.
You may think you can curate your social media feeds by unfollowing people who share things you don't want to see, but as long as a social media service's feed/timeline (and primary revenue stream) is still based on an easily gamed algorithm and paid ads, you're mistaken.
Social media sites will cater access to their API's to groups who are willing to pay for it. So, even if you can unfollow your uncle who shares "unhinged political views", you can't hide cleverly disguised, hyper targeted, ads, advertising both products and ideas.
All good points. I would take issue with "cleverly disguised, hyper targeted, ads" as it relates to a lot of the discussion around FB's influence on the election. I'm guessing the person "swayed" by an ad depicting Jesus arm wrestling Satan to settle the 2016 election was not really on the fence to begin with.
This is certainly a problem, but I think more important than this is the illusion of having control over what you see on social media.
You may think you can curate your social media feeds by unfollowing people who share things you don't want to see, but as long as a social media service's feed/timeline (and primary revenue stream) is still based on an easily gamed algorithm and paid ads, you're mistaken.
Social media sites will cater access to their API's to groups who are willing to pay for it. So, even if you can unfollow your uncle who shares "unhinged political views", you can't hide cleverly disguised, hyper targeted, ads, advertising both products and ideas.