I think we're going to see "social media" evolve into something a lot more destructive of society and our own mental health.
We're presently in a transition where the feed in your social media will no longer be what your friends post and instead will be content curated by a machine learning algorithm. This is in its infancy and already can give you a feed that is a lot more compelling.
Now you might say, this is great. Instead of taking people down a rabbit hole of crazy conspiracy theories it can provide people a positive uplifting worldview that brings out best in each of us. Yeah? So find a feed of articles that both Bernie Saunders & Mike Pence will agree is a good worldview. Not happening.
But it gets worse. Because what are the social media companies selling? Ads. And that means they not only want to make their product as addictive as possible, but they want it to set the viewers up to purchase what is being advertised to them. The feeds won't be designed to make us all happier and looking to get along with others. It will be designed first to make it more addictive than opium. And the strongest emotive addiction is fear. The algorithms will give each of us a feed designed to make us afraid of everything.
On top of that, they will tie the answer to that fear to be whatever their advertisers are selling. It can be a politician, survival gear, or a car. The feeds will be adapted to tie the solution to the fear being presented to the specific ads that user is being shown. Your emotional state will be trashed & destroyed in service of selling what the ads on the social media platforms are selling.
And it won't be just social media feeds. In the next couple of generations the ML algos will be able to write books, play songs, and show movies based on your personal tastes & desires. We'll all be getting a unique feed of unique content. And again, in this there can be tie ins to what the advertisers are selling. Politicians, soap, automobiles - all of them can be inserted into this content in a way that will most appeal to the viewer it is created for.
And the repetition from the multiple sources, all of it designed to most effectively get into your long term memory, will make it incredibly effective.
And you thought people who have Fox News constantly on at home in the background were being brainwashed...
