In a recent article @ socio.business.blog , I proposed “Let’s Kill Social Media” [ https://socio.business.blog/2026/08/16/lets-kill-social-media ]. Today, I noticed that perhaps something might be misunderstood about my proposal — namely, that what I am proposing is a niche issue. It isn’t.
I feel Google searches are just as much social media as Facebook. Pretty much the entire World-Wide Web is tangled up in bots, algorithms, you-name-it.
Manipulation is everywhere. Take this wikipedia.org page:
For people unfamiliar with wikipedia.org (do such people still exist?), this is a so-called “redirect page”. Searching for “Engagement farming” normally lands the user on the “Clickbait” page. The Wikipedia Organization is basically telling its users these terms are completely synonymous. I beg to differ.
See, for example, this quote (from a recent “news” article):
“People now have a shorter window for the lapse between an event occurring and authentic visuals coming out of the media,” explained Rubinson. To put it more bluntly: Users are losing their patience, used to an online environment where information is usually right at your fingertips.
These brief periods, or voids, between breaking news reports and confirmed video or photos become fertile ground for disinformation bots and engagement farmers, Rubinson says. They also threaten to reinforce conspiratorial thinking — that mainstream news outlets are keeping information from the public, for example — and lend themselves to a user’s own confirmation bias.
https://mashable.com/article/us-israel-iran-attacks-viral-misinformation-ai
It was actually a quite different “news” item that motivated me to dive down into this rabbit hole this morning:
In West’s book, the main character goes through a period where he’s lost his way. Overwhelmed by the pressures of work, family, and community, he forgets to follow his own advice and, for a bit, is more of a negative influence than a positive one. His family and coworkers are negatively impacted. In fact, at one point, his wife and kids are avoiding him and his negativity.
https://nicolederr.com/2026/08/18/on-being-a-good-bean
The thing is, the author of this quote, Nicole Derr, linked the string “book” to a page at amazon.com — I feel this is quite manipulative. Perhaps it is engagement farming, perhaps it is clickbait, … but in any case I feel it is duping the user (see also other posts I have written about such issues, for example “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute” [ https://socio.business.blog/2023/05/15/theres-a-sucker-born-every-minute ] ).
It seems like that there is now a growing awareness of the distrustworthy nature of many information resources, whether news, encyclopedias, … or whatever. I strongly recommend considering more trustworthy sources, such as “Rational Media” [ https://phlat.design.blog/2024/01/14/rational-media ] .
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