what is Social Media doing to us?

First, be clear about your intentions. For myself, I want to maximize learning and improving myself, and minimize “zombie entertainment”. This is when we’re caught in a pattern of consuming from a firehose feed for entertainment, without intentionality. It’s a fake flow state: time passes quickly and the world fades away, but there’s no cognitive... See more

The illusion persists because there’s so much money in it. Back in 2016, Ben Thompson wrote that Google’s AI efforts were at odds with its business model: “If a user doesn’t have to choose from search results, said user also doesn’t have the opportunity to click an ad, thus choosing the winner of the competition Google created between its... See more

I have often heard it said of social media: ‘when you cannot see the product being advertised, it’s because you are the product.’

Our preferences and opinions become part of the programme, encouraging certain types of thoughts and behaviours in others. The ‘like’ button is integral to the function of social platforms and yet what purpose does it

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