[grupthink]

Agreed. It's like dining out versus having a healthy home cooked meal. Restaurants will sell you delicious food loaded with sodium, sugar, and fat because they want you to crave their food. Likewise, when you outsource your family values, entertainment, news to social media, you meet a similar problem.

Relatedly, beware of the hidden ads in social media. It takes much less money to astroturf a community like reddit than to advertise through conventional means (e.g. commercials, product placements, banner ads). You may be aware of ads on youtube, but you may not be aware of the ads in the comment section. I've seen youtube comments as follows:

    Ed: Christ! My stock portfolio has gone down so much since the pandemic... it hurts.
    Bob: Mine did too, however in the past year I've been able to recover financially.
    Ed: Really? Please help me, how did you recover your losses?
    Bob: I'd hate to share my secret, but Jonathon Harris provided me with amazing investment tips.
    Sal: Mr. Jonathon Harris helped 10X our portfolio! You can reach him at [e-mail]

</ad scam>

That was my re-enactment of their discussion. Sure, that was an example of an obvious ad. But think of all the times you read a conversation about a product or service and became convinced to try something just based on a conversation between two supposed strangers online? I've never bought anything from a conventional ad, but I've purchased plenty of things after reading what the socials say about a product, and that makes me ashamed of myself. Word of mouth is effective for a reason, but it's insidious online. And that's where they get you. Steel your mind, when online.

[trealira]

What's worse is that people do genuinely advertise products they like, so it's hard to tell if a conversation is astroturfing. I've done the same thing. I see it particularly for video games and software. There's a meme about how Hollow Knight fans advertise it so much that they suggest you play Hollow Knight even if you were asking about a completely different genre.

[jprete]

All this can go to 100x with generative AI, unfortunately.

I don't even know anymore where to get reliable information about...anything.

[avgcorrection]

For-profit actors make their products as “palatable” as possible. Amazing.