@LostInParadise What happens with Facebook is when your friends share things, let’s say they share something about Blue Lives Matter. So you click on it, “like” and then FB starts suggesting groups that are similar. So you start seeing more Blue Lives Matter stuff, and more things that maybe someone who likes Blue Lives Matter might like: maybe some pro-life stuff, maybe some stuff about people getting off welfare, maybe some stuff about the protesters ruining the country, and then soon, your “feed” is filled up with stuff like that, and you may get suggestions to follow people who post stuff like that. The people who post stuff like that may not be real people, they may be hacks, Russians or something, who have fake profiles full of hate speech and false information but you don’t know that.
Also interspersed with those political things are groups about cats or cars or funny videos or cooking or home decorating or crafts or hunting or vintage memorabilia or music or Elvis fans or Martha Stewart or parents groups in your town or whatever, so you “like” that too, and you get fed more of that which interests you, and before you know it, you’re down a rabbit hole of FB knowing what you like and feeding you more and more.
Then when Facebook knows what you’re into, they can feed you advertising that suits you.
Fluther is not like that because everyone who looks at Fluther looks at the same feed. You answer what you answer, of course, and so you follow what you follow, but when you look at the General questions or the Social questions, everyone sees the same questions.
There’s a very interesting Netflix documentary that just came out in the past few weeks, called “The Social Dilemma” which is about this very topic. How social media is targeted toward your specific needs and wants and people don’t know where the info is coming from. Also it talked about how social media affects kids and teens. It was very interesting and I recommend it.