Have you ever been thinking about the reason why social media was created? Why did people become so engaged in it extremely quickly? Sometimes I am wondering whether the emergence of social media was exactly a step toward social development or in reality it initiated an inevitable threat to the whole population.
Let’s consider Facebook – the most massive social network in the world that gave birth to an unbelievable number of internet communities. Once Facebook introduced its mission statement – the goal to provide thousands of people with the opportunity to stay connected with the world, users got accustomed to it immediately. But the mission of Facebook evaporated as quickly as people became obsessed with this social network. Facebook produced obsession. By using and using it again, people developed a habit of scrolling their feeds every day, that was a certain form of a drug for them. And while having been totally absorbed in the news feed, people did not notice one crucial thing – their behavior, consciousness and emotions were deliberately manipulated. It is not hard to guess that the primary purpose of Facebook’s creation was to control people. Social networks are existing with the strict mission of keeping people’s desires, preferences, intentions, goals, habits and even fears under control. They know us better than anyone else, playing the role of our personal diary. Have you ever noticed that people are much braver to express their opinion particularly via social media, since they feel the freedom for their thoughts to be heard and not punished? Data analysts of Facebook know it for sure. They are able to detect and sort individuals accordingly to their temperament and character features as a result of surveilling and analysing their requests, comments, messages and contributions to society. With the help of Artificial Intelligence systems, developed by Facebook’s data analysts, every user’s individual profile is created to adjust their behavior by producing posts and advertisements, that perfectly fit their desires and interests. People get imprisoned in social networks without comprehending it and are gradually turning into robots who are guided to buy certain products and services or to read certain pieces of news intended especially for them. However, consumer and social behavior is not the only thing, being under the control and manipulation of AI. Artificial intelligence systems significantly affect our morals, preconceptions and values.
I would like to elaborate on the scandal of Facebook with the Cambridge Analytica campaign. In 2015 data of numerous Facebook users were collected without their consent by the data analytics firm in order to create a system that affects people’s choices regarding the presidential election. By spreading perfectly-designed targeted polls, advertisements and posts, Cambridge Analytica managed to influence the consciousness of voters and change their opinion about the election. An extremely similar situation is evolving nowadays in Russia, where citizens are experiencing severe brainwashing caused by the flow of posts and news, developed by the Russian government, which eventually leads to the inability of Russians to consciously perceive information about the war in Ukraine. Because of extreme manipulation tools they are blind to the hazardous nightmare that is happening to millions of innocent Ukrainian people. Unfortunately, these examples of manipulation caused by social media are limitless. Social media users are doomed to be the victims of various types of propaganda, promoted by social networks.
So what is the real purpose of social media existence? Social media is an efficiently-designed and developed digital weapon. By applying Artificial Intelligence , workers of Facebook, Instagram or Twitter are capable of influencing the consciousness and actions of millions of individuals. With the help of Artificial Intelligence systems, social media transforms people into robots, who unintentionally do things they do not want to. It exterminates the autonomy of people’s opinions and mindsets. So is AI really a step toward our world’s development or is it the beginning of humanity’s “death”, the vanishing of people’s independence and freedom? Maybe AI was intended not for creating robots, but for turning people into them? Maybe its most crucial goal was not to alleviate human life but to simplify the control over people, the control of their thoughts and actions? We will probably see it. Or not, because we won’t be able to figure it out, being already under control.
References:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-facebook-using-artificial-intelligence-bernard-marr