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Manipulate This!



You all know the popular definition of crazy, and I must be crazy. No matter how much I try to resist, I find myself coming back to the same fruitless theme in many of my blog posts. Don’t trust social media. I hardly need to give examples of how misleading social media has become (I will), yet people continue to rely on it as their sole source of news or to answer important questions, like where to go on vacation. When you turn to social media to answer your questions, you get caught up in a tangled web of manipulation and deception.


A colleague was recently published in a travel magazine for an article they wrote on how social media influencers are using AI imagery to corrupt the travel business. The article came with a set of AI generated pictures of Santorini that influencers have posted on social media. The pictures highlight Santorini as an idyllic family vacation destination, complete with a lazy river flowing past the Greek Island’s iconic whitewashed structures and blue domed churches, and water slides coursing through properties in lieu of the stairs that actually exist. Anyone whose been to Santorini knows the images are laughable. Yet AI makes them look real, real enough that some people commented about how much fun it would be to book a vacation there. They were being manipulated.


That is an extreme, but not uncommon, example of what passes for most people’s primary news and information source today…social media. Another example uses real pictures but on a manipulated timeline.  Earlier this month pictures of a US aircraft carrier along with escort ships showed up in social media posts claiming that a naval fleet was heading to the South China Sea to protect the local interests. Imagine the surprise in the Pentagon’s A Ring. I picture the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff screaming at the Chief of Naval Operations, “Who the hell authorized that?” Well…nobody did. The pictures, which were liked and shared by many, particularly in the Philippines where they have a real interest in such things, were from a naval exercise held in 2017. I sure hope China’s Navy did some fact checking before deploying their fleet in response.


There are even more sinister uses for social media manipulation…ask Russia. They mastered the art of propaganda during the Cold War, and it didn’t end with the dissolution of the Soviet Union. China is right there with them. Together, Chinese and Russian bots are all over social media as they use memes and toxic posts to fuel the divisions that are all too real in this country. Many times, a post that goes viral on social media and inflames passions on both sides of an issue isn’t real…it was generated by a Russian or Chinese bot farm. We are all being manipulated. And we make it so easy.


I worry about social media’s role in the upcoming election. There is too much at stake to get your political news from social media, yet so many people do. Fact checkers eventually uncover most of the deceptions, but by then we’ve moved on to the next outrageous post or clever meme.


There are so many ways the “news” on social media is manipulative. It doesn’t matter that they don’t get it right, just that it gets us riled up. Whatever “it” is. Trading the truth for more likes, more shares, more reposts...that's what social media "news" is about. It's easy to fact check social media these days, yet few bother. That takes work and we would much rather allow ourselves to be manipulated.


I almost can’t fault anyone from turning to social media for their news. Almost. When the news blasts their “Breaking News” alerts on a story I read about two days ago, that too is manipulation. The media no longer reports the news. The cable news channels…pick your favorite…might feature two minutes of actual “news” in any 24-hour period (that’s hyperbole, but only a little). The rest of their programming is analysis and commentary. How much analysis is two minutes of news worth? A full day, apparently.


My generation was brought up being taught to think for ourselves and to reach our own conclusions. We give up that independence of thought when we turn to social media for our news and information. We allow ourselves to be manipulated every time we read a post and find ourselves reacting. Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t care. As long as he can sell our emotional responses, our social media likes and reposts, to the highest bidder through Meta’s monetization schemes, he’s happy. That’s manipulation.


I tell myself I’m better than that. I’m a critical thinker. I promise myself I won’t let social media  manipulate me. I don’t have an X account, I’m not on TikTok, and the only thing I use Meta for is to see pictures of my grandkids and share pictures of our travels. Still, I find myself getting angry over some outrageously false item making the rounds of Facebook, Instagram, X, and whatever else is out there, like the ridiculous pictures of waterslide and lazy rivers running through Santorini. I find out about the social media items from mainstream media reports on them. And then I find myself writing a blog post about it and linking to it...on Facebook. Sigh. I’m being manipulated by social media.


The picture I’ve used in this post is Santorini, and though it looks real, it isn’t. I made it with a generative AI image tool, and it took me just a few seconds. The next time any of you visit Santorini, don’t let yourself be manipulated by social media into looking for waterslides. What you’ll find in real life are steps…lots and lots of steps. I know this not because I read it on Facebook, but because I've been there..


And that’s all I have to say about that.

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