Flutterby™! : On social media and trust

A little thread reposted from Twitter:

The lessons of 2016 through the present are that the psy ops on social media are far more sophisticated than we previously thought. Maybe even more than we have the ability to comprehend. Even interactions w/people we personally know are being A/B tested to see what reaction they bring in us. That sort of large scale gaslighting reduces the value of online interaction. We start to create smaller more insular communities to figure out what we can trust, because even if it's someone we know, we can't be sure that we're seeing enough of their expression to get a correct impression. When we are steeped in deliberate lies, nihilism is a rational response. When every interaction must be viewed through a skeptical lens, even relatively close people become suspect. Paranoia must become the norm and when paranoia is the rational response to human interaction, then it's totally rational that we depersonalize and other "everyone", and terrorism to defend niche belief structures follows logically.