we’re building a dystopia …

I watched the TED talk by Zeynep Tufekci called “We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads” and I did not know what to think about it at first. But, there were a couple points that stuck out to me the most or resenated with me the most. At the beginning, she started talking about how the ads that pop up on your social media accounts are exactly what you either have been thinking about or have recently talked about it. I feel like my friends and I are always talking about this and how the ads are normally the same across all of our different accounts. That is pretty crazy to me. Another thing that I found interesting that she said was about how algorithms like it better when there is more information out there about an individual. It can then better put out ads that best fit you, this made sense to me. She went on to say that depending on what the algorithm picks to show can affect your emotions. I would assume this could go both positively or negatively. As well as, that the algorithm places things continuously on the top of our pages and buries other things. We seem to have a lot of control over this. I have seen this on my instagram account, where the same post will be on the top of my page for sometimes days at a time and I have no idea why. She continued on about something that I just can not believe. People have figured out the onset of mania in people and can tailor the ads and options on their page to the impulses of the onset of mania. Her example was plane tickets to Vegas. I just can’t believe that is real, but in a way ‘wow’ that is powerful. This really made me think about how much information I am putting out there about myself and how it could negatively affect me.