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What If You're Already Exactly Where They Want You?

What shapes your opinion? You might answer with "I read the newspaper" or "I read books"; whatever it is, it doesn't really matter. Most sources are filtered through editors who proofread, ensuring accuracy, and gatekeep, meaning they decide which content is published. Some books never get published by major companies because they're too controversial. And we live in a world where we don't have equal access to resources; not everyone is able to endure reading a book, a news article, or similar things.

The fact that we live in a democracy makes it so that uneducated people, even though it is their obligation to educate themselves, don't have the real ability to do so because they never learned to. That results in many people being addicted to social media, because they like to escape a reality where it's not as simple as being served one video after another.

But this isn't just about them anymore. Now, even people who crave knowledge have been brought under control. The invention of ChatGPT and other large language models tricks you into thinking they are great for knowledge creation, even though they have not yet proven this, because they excel at recalling ideas and are designed to appeal to you.

The War Already Being Waged Against You.

My message to you is this: start joining the war that is already being waged against you.

All the required information has already been collected to put you into a position that perfectly targets your ideas and identity. If you're not very technical, the information stored about you could be altered very slightly so that you'd develop new ideas about things – your worldview could get nudged, just barely, in a specific direction.

If you use Instagram, they know about your relationships, your interests, your ideas, your habits, and your lifestyle. They could inject certain ideas into your brain through their platform features and manipulate you to comply with their tactics. What these tactics are is a trade secret. This phenomenon isn't hypothetical; it already happened in the 2016 US election when Cambridge Analytica used Facebook data to build psychological profiles and target voters with tailored political messaging.

You may ask, 'Why would Meta do this?'

Because they want to expand power and gain profit.

The Question You Should Always Ask

You always have to ask yourself, 'Why am I being offered this product?' What is my gain? What is their gain?

The idea that these huge platforms are just small startups that got big is long lost, but still very present in the minds of most people. You can't grasp the size of what is happening because it's hidden inside server farms, and almost all users just submit without any reflection, pure peer pressure. We know the consequences, but we're so dependent that we still use it.

But most things, unlike these platforms, are not in the hands of a few corporations.

The Table Analogy

If you buy a table, you may not know how it was manufactured, what it consists of, or how many screws it holds; this could be useful knowledge if you want to maintain it. But that table doesn't contain a microphone. It doesn't read the letters you put on it. The table is just a non-electronic object that doesn't communicate with the internet.

Instagram, on the other hand, is owned by a few wealthy Americans. It can access your photos. It can access your social connections. It can change your ideas about certain things. It has the appearance of a small god, at least; we give it that power. And even if we personally don't, enough people in our direct environment are being influenced in such a way that they will influence us.

Here's another difference between the table and the platform: you will probably spend more time researching what table to buy for your room than what platform you sign up for.

Why would you choose Instagram above real social connection? It only breeds envy.

The Scale of Control

The American tech giants have plans they are not willing to share. They've already invaded the whole Western world and also Africa, South America, India, and Russia. Instagram has 3 billion monthly active users. With the rise of LLMs (large language models), they've gathered almost another billion users they can influence. And unlike a website you visit, OpenAI offers a service where anyone can implement their model into their own website – still running on OpenAI's servers. Their reach is far larger than it appears.

Silicon Valley already controls the world. Evidently.