Climbing the Bias-Breaker Hill: Beyond Algorithm Bias

(Philosocom's Directory on Bias)

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Sold & Scrolled: The Price We Pay for Personalized Ads

With social media being the dominant form of global communication, one should ask themselves the following questions: what do I agree to by dedicating much of my time to one or more social media sites of my choice, when I know my private surfing information is being used? What do I sacrifice by letting mega-corporations use my intimate data, simply by being their user?

After watching Netflix's "The Social Dilemma", a documentary on social platforms and their implications on the world, I believe I know the answer to the questions previously mentioned -- being the financial corporations they are, many social platforms basically create a virtual "version" of yourself in their data banks. Not necessarily for the sake of wanting to know you better, but simply to personalize their available inventory of advertisements, in accordance to your every action on their sites. From liking a picture to commenting on posts -- social media is created for the primary reason of selling products. We are their products.

Clickbait Capitalism: When Profits Trump Reality

This is why many websites and apps are free today for many to download and browse, because the people behind them are already making profit and living luxurious lives.

By being a "product," a.k.a. a user, your surfing data is not necessarily sold to third party groups but rather used by the platform to personalize your user experience, so you will have the best likelihood of watching and clicking on ads that best suit you. Obviously, without said ads, many dominant social sites wouldn't exist. The advertisements you receive are there because of you and the way you interact with the social apps of your choice.

That alone, at first, does not seem harmful at all to some people, as online commerce is basically the lifeblood of many organizations and job holders, whether their jobs are necessary or not, and indeed, without the internet, the world today might have been much poorer financially than it is today.

The problem with said feed-personalization, however, arrives when it puts the value of capitalization as higher than the value of truth. And thus, when your social feed is bombarded with lies and fake news just because you are interested in some subjects, such as politics, spirituality, and so forth.

This is where the problem begins when it comes to the personalization of user-made content; content that can easily be accepted the more convincing it sounds.

How A Certain Bias Trap You in Your Own Reality

Because that is what is being received on your feed, every time you log in. Due to the wide spread of fake news, created by virtual algorithms as a way to optimize your likelihood of clicking on ads in the name of profit, probably one of the most common biases today begins to be more and more dominant. Confirmation Bias, which basically says the following: You are more likely to receive and search for information that supports your own position, even if that position is false, and the more information there is across the web, the more likely you are to be embedded within your own falsehood.

The truths to whatever issue at hand are out there, waiting to be received. However, as long as you are to submit to your targeted user-feed, and not take the time and effort to actually read and expand your topic on the matter from as many polarizing positions as possible, be prepared to have your own position shattered by opposing likelihoods.

You will likely remain within the comforting ignorance that is the confirming Climbing the Bias-Breaker Hill. And alas, contemporary times have created generations of lazy people, who don't have the willingness to consume information in the search for truth nor are open-minded enough to be skeptics about their own beliefs, whether it is a political view or a religious faith.

This is how we are manipulated against one another in the name of excellent products to be picked by the many advertisers out there, anticipating our time, clicks, and purchases, all in accordance with our privacy-breaching surfing data.

Philosocom's Refusual to Enable the Internet's Status Quo Within Its Territory

This is why, at least at the time this article was published, you will not see on Philosocom a personalized content feed.

Instead, you are free to choose your own content from what I've provided here, and your user data is being used solely to get to know my audience better, as a form of assistance in determining what I should write next.

Beyond the country of where you are and what time you've entered Philosocom, I have no idea who you are as an individual user. Here, you are not simply a "product", but a reader with the ability to comment and provide feedback per the site's few rules. You are a human being who deserves not to be financially exploited as long as you're in my site and as long as I am alive to enforce this code of morality.

Fake news and other false information are probably one of the most problematic issues today, an issue that can easily manipulate, polarize, and intensify extremism between people and within themselves.

In the name of morality and truth, the very least we can do is to not follow suit within our own digital organizations.