It's unfortunate because too much of a good thing (and it is a good thing – shrewd and well-intentioned people sharing the things that have helped them), when consumed in a frantic haze, becomes a bad thing (a cacophony of voices shoving advice down your throat, bolstering your belief that there's something you're doing wrong and if you just fixed... See more
"Unlike the open source movement or Wikipedia, participants of social networks do not seem to follow a common noble goal, or celebrate a community spirit. The focus here lies on the individual." (Dennis Knopf)
The TikTok War: Why High School & College Kids Are Getting The Wrong Information about Hamas & Israel
I spent the weekend trying to reverse engineer the TikTok algorithm, as I am convinced this is the reason we're losing the information war with high school & college students.
Yet, the hidden machinations behind everyone’s favorite social media and search platforms are engineered to exploit our primal instincts for validation, status, and mimetic desires (adopting or pursuing preferences and aspirations based on the influence of others rather than our intrinsic motivations), morphing into a manipulative force that feeds... See more