Living with AI | ACTION 3 | STOP clicking adverts on your social media feeds.

Can you remember what it was that first drew you into using social media?

What do you use social media for today?

Are the answers to these two questions the same?

I would like to place a BIG bet that they aren’t.

The reason that we supposedly use social media is contained within its name. Social media is a form of media where we can be social. i.e., we can interact with our friends and the people that we know.

IF being ‘social’ with all the different people we know or have known in the ‘real world’ – even if they live on the other side of the world today – was all social media was still about, social media wouldn’t:

1. Be as addictive as it is.
2. Be anywhere near as popular as it is.

Yes, we all love to watch puppy videos and films of cats and other animals doing ridiculous things. But we don’t need to watch videos of these things or anything like them to meet our real or genuine needs.

In fact, the ease with which this attention junk now arrives in or on our social media feeds is a dangerous distraction that only takes our attention and time away from the activities that are healthy for us, that would be meeting a genuine need.

The social giveaway sprat to catch the media and big-tech payday mackerel.

Each and every time you click on something that you see on a timeline or social media feed, you are providing data about what you ‘like’ and what ‘interests’ you, to someone somewhere who can use that information either to sell directly, or to use as a way to sell your attention as an advertising space.

You are quite literally being fed the treats that you like, so that somebody somewhere can make a profit from the trojan horse offers that are almost always attached or hidden within everything that we see.

It doesn’t stop there either. The reality is that every action you take online, even if it is just the search of the spelling for a single word, will be telling someone somewhere something about you that they can make money from.

Not because it’s something you are doing wrong. But because we have all been funneled into the same trap where we are already behaving exactly the same way.

Until such time as we have Politicians, Government and legislation that deals with the ethical vacuum that surrounds the harvesting and use of our data, along with the manipulative ways that so many of us are being duped into giving it up, the risk will remain that anything we do online or by using any equipment or technology that is connected to the internet, will result in the surrender of information and data that is personal to us in some way.

You don’t need any of the things that appear on your feed. But you believe you want them.

This is where the very bad taste should begin to appear in your mouth, when you begin to realise and then understand that there isn’t any magic involved in the way that the things that interest you, or the things that you might like to buy, so miraculously appear.

Yes, we’ve all had that ‘wow’ moment when we see something appear that relates to something we’ve discussed or been thinking about. But that’s because what you’ve been doing online or somewhere where an algorithm can identify you, is triggering someone somewhere and telling them that they or someone somewhere else that they can sell advertising or make a sale – if they get a link or many links to confirm the magic that makes it all feel so easy when things find you, that you literally don’t need to think.

It’s time to remember that when we have a genuine need for something, we already know where to get it, or we already know a way to look for it that will provide us with options that genuinely make a lot more sense.

Even if you really do believe that you genuinely need something that has appeared in a feed, you should at the very least undertake your own, fully conscious search of the options that are available and preferably buy from someone you can physically meet or visit – even if you actually buy online.

By becoming dependent upon systems that are creating wants, rather than servicing our basic needs, we are actually funding the development of the technology and the AI systems that are set to make the pathway from human freedom even worse.

Every rejection of the opportunity to click is a step away from the digital dependency that somebody somewhere wishes to create. Not because it will help you. But because it helps them.

Your future and your freedom will come from reasserting your independence from these systems; by quite literally moving away from them and physically moving and looking around.

You will become a part of that system, each and every time that you get plugged in.