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Thoughts on the Web, and Manipulation

entry written by the Player

I've previously posted about my use of the Internet, and how I am now trying to avoid the web (http), and the noise and distractions that come with it. The images, videos, sound, advertisements and everything else that comes with the modern web, not to even get into the modern surveillance, really bothers me.

I've come to think, with all the media being thrown at us when what we are looking for is text, that we are being programmed, manipulated. I'll talk about news sites for now, because I think it makes the point well, but this applies to a whole lot of the modern web (I will give a pesonal example later).

News sites are always biased, whether they are liberal or conservative, for big government or small, anarchist, libertarian, neo-libral, neo-conservative, whatever.

But whatever the bias, when someone is limited to "text" for an article or opinion piece, then the site needs to at least try to present information or articles in a persuasive way. But when the site introduces images, audio, video, then the site starts to work against emotions. An example might be to attack a politician, let's say Mr. X.

If the site wants to attack Mr. X, he will be shown in images/video as snarling, with a frown, or looking weak somehow, while his opponent(s) will be shown as looking serious, or smiling, or the like. I think these images (or video, or audio) work more to program our emotions than to engage our intellect.

Then of course there is the Surveillance Capitalism angle. Say a site (entertainment, news, whatever) determines, for example, that you are a young guy, and very possibly exactly who you are by tracking your across websites via cookies or "browser fingerprinting" and the like. The site may throw up advertisements for the young guy, like a scantily-clad woman with the caption "You won't believe what the camera saw!"

I'll give a personal example.

I was looking for a book on a major book-selling site. I was logged in. The site knew exactly who I was. Now, I totally expect the site to try to get me to buy their books. That's fine. I browsed sci-fi, and that section also showed cross-genre books. like sci-fi horror, and sci-fi romance.

I clicked on a sci-fi/romance book, which suggested another similar book that looked amusing, and had a, um, raunchy cover. I clicked on it, read the description, had a laugh, and went on browsing.

That raunchy sci-fi/romance book followed me across the Internet for days. I'd go to a supposedly unrelated entertainment site, and there it was. I went to a news site, and it was there too! It was *creepy*. I cleared my cookies, and it still showed up!

I tested with another browser, went to the same sites, and the advertisement for the book was gone. Since it still showed up after I cleared the cookies on the first browser, but not when I changed browsers, I think the advertiser had captured the first browser's fingerprint, and because I had been logged into the bookseller's website, the advertiser knew exactly who I was! Very creepy. It is like an advertiser watching me on camera as I walk from one store to another in a mall, all the while knowing exactly who I am.

So, those are two examples of sites trying to manipulate behaviors on the emotional level using media - one by trying to modify political beliefs, the other a personal example of being "watched" or "stalked" across the web by an advertiser.

I am doing my best to stay off the web, except when needed, like for banking. Gemini does not seem to have the same problems :-) For one thing, there are no advertisements. For another, there are few images and they don't load by default (you need to click on them to download them, or show them in some browsers).

Gemini is mostly text, and most posts or artilces on here seem well thought-out. I like the tech posts I find (and there are a lot of them!). I've found a few political ones that I might not agree with, but for the most part they are thoughtful.

Note for anyone reading this - if you know of Gemini capsules that publish fiction on them, let me know! I love reading people's stories. You really get to know people, how they imagine things, how they view life. I like Cosmic Voyage, but there has to be more out there :-)

My email is at the bottom of this log.

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