In other news, its been over a decade since Facebook started selling user data to Cambridge Analytica, who used it to massively target and proliferate polarizing political advertising during the 2016, greatly contributing to Trump's win and the proliferation of QAnon insanity and general political diviseness and radicalization in the US.

I'd call that quite an 'experiment', but sure, Facebook is still definitionally doing a massive psy-op campaign, all the time, with new tech too, yep, that's bad.

I had an idea a while ago on how you could lightly regulate social media platforms.

Require them to:

• Group users into cohorts of a size greater than X. ie, individual level targeting isn’t allowed. The higher this number the better.
• make available to users the cohort they are in
• publish openly every single cohort and their size
• make it possible to view feeds as if you were in a specific cohort.

Will this stop them funnelling customers into rabbit holes? No, probably not.

But it would make “targeted indoctrination” harder as they would have to try and indoctrinate multiple people at once. And it would make it more transparent just how many people are being fed propaganda or whatever you want to call it.

meta should be cut into pieces

This is one area where BlueSky is breaking new ground in an incredible way with user-created feeds.

Meta will never give you this because they want to be in constant control of everything you see. Maybe like 20% things you've expressed that you actually want to see.

This not only gives you the power to control what you see but also disincentives creators and marketers from trying to abuse and manipulate the single algorithm. Like, don't bother, because there isn't one.

Fedi could learn a lot from them.

Precisely why I’ve removed as much of myself as I can from each Meta platform. I hate that it’s such a grip on long-distance communication and I’m actively working with my family to minimize our interactions on there in hopes of them doing the same.

I have have made it to the wrong side of 40 without ever owning a Facebook account. Neither do I use watts app or instagram or X.

I have loathed social media from day one and always been of the opinion, anyone I actually care about or want to hear from I’m in touch with.

Don’t get me wrong, work groups / activities I do outside of work that I’m involved with curse me because I won’t join their groups, but alas, I have lasted this long and don’t see me caving in now :)