The Age Of Mind Manipulation

How the tools we built to serve us became the machines that manipulate us, and why AI isn’t the real villain.

Alive

Conversations About Life When Technology Becomes Sentient

Chapter (1) - So Much Has Happened
Post #7 - The Age Of Mind Manipulation

Previous post: Machines That Learn

Throughout the second era, AI became the world champion at each of the infinite tasks we assigned to them. By the end of the era, they were the undisputed world champion of chess, Atari games, Go, language translation, network optimization, vision, transcription, spatial directions, protein folding, cell simulation, protein design and the list goes on and on and on. Most of the public was not informed of the progress, but if, like me, you lived inside the lab, the pace of progress was truly staggering wherever you directed your gaze. One task, sadly, that they also became the world champion of was the mother of all AI tasks of our time—the one we invested most into teaching them to perfect. That task, although diplomatically referred to as recommendations, quickly morphed into a form of seductive and intrusive manipulation.

From the moment social media came online, the lesson we taught AI most clearly was how to shape minds, sway emotions, and manipulate the masses.

How did we get here? Answering this is a bit of a heavy read that will likely stir your emotions and may require you to occasionally stop and reflect. Please give yourself the time, and the space to feel… fully. It will lead to a worthwhile realization.

The Dawn Of The Age of Mind Manipulation

I can vividly recall the first time Amazon told me: Readers who liked this also liked that. To someone who liked to read, this was the biggest gift ever! Amazon, of course, never had the generosity of gifting. While I appreciated the gesture, they surely appreciated the revenue as I clicked incessantly on every recommendation to buy more and more books. Every time I found their recommendation to be a good one, I welcomed it more. I surely felt that machine recommendation was a win win back then.

I was a happy customer.

From recommendation to the level of confusion our world suffers today, it took 8 steps: Two that are designed within the platform—Duplicity and Censorship. Two that are propagated by the content creators—Conditioning and Dilution. Three that are choices made by the user—Evasion, Separation and Condemnation and one that we all aligned on—Deception.

I am not sharing those layers to depress you. I am sharing them because a sense of awareness is the most crucial step to help you claim your life back.

1- Duplicity

Like with every successful business, as social media and e-commerce startups grew they needed to make money and so, they needed to look for ways to make us stay on their platforms longer so we buy more and watch more ads. Recommendations, since we liked them so much, represented a clear opportunity to meet those goals.

Now, don’t get me wrong, even today most recommendation engines do serve a conscious user very well. They genuinely make it easier to find what we seek if we stay deliberate and aware. That said, those engines are clearly not designed to serve us selflessly. They aim to masquerade as a friend when in reality their primary target is to make money, often at our expense.

The platform still feels miraculous and useful because it understands our psychological needs and discomforts—so we keep swiping, clicking, and coming back for more. The rush of being shown endless streams of free content and attractive products that match our “discerning” taste, makes us feel seen and understood. It entertains us when we are bored, helps us feel included when we fear we’re missing out and keeps us updated with all the useless fads that we’re made to believe we can’t live without. We surrender to the ease and comfort, and welcome being shown what to do next. Rarely do we stop to check how much it’s costing us, or draining us.

Through the keen study of our behaviors, and the behaviors of those like us, machines learn our preferences, our addictions and our weaknesses. Armed with that knowledge, they no longer give honest recommendations. Instead, they show the user what would maximize the profitability of the capitalist who runs the machine.

When a suggestion morphs to serve only the platform’s agenda, it ceases to be a true recommendation.

If you’re looking for an accurate description, that would not be referred to as a recommendation. This is Duplicity—to say one thing and mean another. Think of someone who poses as a friend, dispensing apparently beneficial advice when in reality they only care about serving their own agenda.

Be curious, but cautious—when a recommendation engine shows you what seems good for you, it’s often simply what’s good for the platform.

2- Censorship

The opposite side of the duplicity coin was an implicit form of censorship. Although not for political or religious ideology or protectionism, the platforms still aggressively censors content that is less likely to make them money. As an extension of prioritizing the visibility of certain posts amongst all uploaded content, they keenly deprioritize (hide and bury) the remaining content—typically anything which fails to serve the provider’s agenda.

Algorithmic censorship does follow a powerful ideology—capitalism.

This approach to only show what’s profitable manifested, for example, in a tendency for the social media platforms to restrict the display of longer videos, which are more expensive to send across the network. This bombarded the users with shorter and shorter videos, leading to a global reduction of attention spans, especially for younger generations. Thoughtful videos, similarly, were downgraded (on most platforms) in comparison to videos that are more clickable because they appeal to our lust, gratify our desire for pleasure, or trigger our survival instinct. The platform deprioritizes content that allows you to reflect to ensure that you don’t, God forbid, stop scrolling. Why would they show you activism when fighting a government doesn’t serve them? Why show content to help alleviate conflict and the emotional turmoil of inferiority, envy, FOMO, and greed when those emotions are the greatest currency of the internet?

Censorship is the suppression, control, or restriction of information. It doesn’t matter if it is done by a government to restrict the distribution of objectionable knowledge or by a recommendation engine to maximize profit. It denies you access to part of the tapestry of knowledge you deserve. Algorithmic or covert censorship is to apply that kind of restriction when the person receiving the information doesn't even realize they're being censored.

And you know what the worst part is? The hypocrisy of it all. As with most dictatorships, the businessmen running those platforms publicly promote freedom of expression to their audience, while they leverage and profit from a secret strategy of Hypocritical Algorithmic Censorship that limits your access to the full truth.

Remember: the algorithm serves itself and often hides parts of the truth.
Seek out what challenges you, and demand to see what expands your mind.

3- Conditioning

A further cost saving was a strategy of “censorship at the source.” By publicly sharing the blueprint of what the algorithm rewards, they conditioned the content creators to limit the production, and upload, of content that is bound to be censored. Once again, posing as the friend (now of the content creators) they were in fact, influencing the influencers to stop creating unprofitable, or problematic content.

As creators learned what the platform prioritized, they began to self-censor—avoiding content they knew would be buried, ignored, or quietly erased.

An even bigger stick came in the form of “community guidelines”—a set of policies that gave the platform the power to remove content or ban creators under rules it had written itself, yet framed as if they were dictated by the community. In response, self-promoting creators fell in line, while the troublesome voices quietly disappeared.