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[-] Gray@lemmy.ca 109 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think we're all a bit disillusioned with it now. I feel like on the 2000's era internet we all were showing up bright eyed and optimistic about the possibilities. We lived in a world without the internet and having it felt like a superpower. But in the 2010's and especially around 2016, the misinformation pump got turned on hard and we saw the internet bring some truly sinister real world events to fruition. SEO started getting used more and more through the 2010's. Social media companies started finding nasty ways to profit off of us by being more selective in what we see. And now this has been the year of enshittification with big companies finally making moves that actively worsen our experiences in order to cash in on a lot of investment money that never turned into anything real. Basically I think what happened is a mixture of people becoming more cynical and the internet becoming over-automated and now this year businesses finally realizing that potential profit is worthless without acting on it.

With all that said though, the Fediverse feels like our chance to finally fight back. Lemmy still only has around 60k monthly active users. We need to try to bring that number up.

[-] counselwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 year ago

Why 2016 specifically? was there a significant event that happened in that year?

[-] Dewded@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Cambridge Analytica scandal maybe?

[-] counselwolf@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago

is that the one related to trump as well?

[-] Dewded@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah. They ran a social media influencing campaign based data aggregated from approx 270 million people. It's debated on the degree of influence this data had.

One thing is certain though. Around 800 000 people had surrendered their data (admittedly through a seemingly benign Facebook app) to an app posing as just one of your usual fun personality quizzes. This data opened the floodgates through association to about 269 million other people due to the way FB APIs were set up.

This data was then used to create psych profiles that got utilized for targeted advertising.

Two of the biggest campaigns that used this data were Trump 2016 and the Brexit referendum.

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this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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