Facebook’s acceptance of thousands of Russian ads during the recent election may be a case in point. Yet the methods by which we get such recommendations - for news, consumer goods, movies, music, friends and the like - remain opaque. By making their services cheap and indispensable, and by tailoring their complex algorithms to our data profiles, they can gently push us toward products they want us to buy or, say, YouTube videos they want us to watch. Far more powerful than the elite “gatekeeping” institutions of the past - the major television networks, for example, or the leading newspapers - this fearsome four, as Foer characterizes them, are the new arbiters of media, economy, politics and the arts. Bent on dominating our markets as well as the world, the four corporations have lulled us into a sense of pliant dependency as they influence our thinking and activities.
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