Indeed, scientists have recently discovered that platforms such as Facebook and Twitter can actually pose more serious threats to your wellbeing than previously thought—even if you’ve never used them.
In particular, the bits and pieces of information your friends, family and acquaintances share about you on social media, could equip AI-based algorithms or bots to effectively ‘clone’ your online persona.
In other words, there’s the real you—the one whose never used any social media platform, for example—and the cloned you: which is an online representation of your thoughts, behaviors and responses.
If that’s not scary enough, this cloned, behavioral profile (which the scientists call an ‘alter’) can be used by the social media platforms (or anyone else buying the data from them) to, for example, influence the online experience of the real you (the ‘ego’), elsewhere on the internet.
There’s something to be said in favor of reprogramming Facebook, Google, and Twitter’s algorithms with an ax.
h/t SG