Post #1338644

@mmasnick Real talk. If you think that governments can't manipulate social media to place content they want users to see above content they don't want users to see, you probably do not understand how social media works. It's literally baked into the system: more engagement = more recommendations. If you give a brand new post a slight nudge to put it ahead of other posts, it is far more likely to be widely recommended. Yes, this means that even open and decentralized platforms can be manipulated. And because people mistakenly believe that popular = quality/good, you, the bad actor, can make harmful opinions popular by giving them a slight boost. And again, you don't need to have any direct control over the network via a backdoor or similar.