My first experience with understanding how internet algorithms work to supply content that aligns with our tastes and preferences started in 2009 when I began marketing our medical software distribution company on Google. I was able to get us to #1 in our category with the help of a SEO (search engine optimization) company.
The ability to target audiences for products and services today are hundreds of times more sophisticated than what was available fourteen years ago. It seems that if I even think about something it shows up on my Facebook feed. No matter where I access something it makes its way into my online life. It’s not your imagination if you are noticing something similar. Your preferences, even our likely future purchases, are being anticipated within the cyber-universe that operates in parallel with the terrestrial one.
I am posting this on Facebook, and though I have 1000+ people following my pages, the people most likely to see this post are those who have shown an interest in my posts over time or there are key words in the text that might align with the interests of those who have friended or followed me. We are teaching the system with our actions, and just as importantly, our inaction around the posts of others. Internet algorithms have access to all the information about us since we first logged and started searching long ago. It knows more about you than your best friend, your family and probably even yourself.
Pressure from consumer groups have called out internet and social media companies for their propensity to break through the porous membrane of privacy. You may have noticed that there are now pop-ups asking you if you agree to allow certain “cookies” access. This supposedly restricts permission to track your online activity, sell your information or send you ads. These are practically useless because we have already given up the keys to our kingdom. Your spam folder fills up daily because you forgot to opt out in 2005. You also know this because when you search something on Google, adsshow up on your social media feeds. It could take a couple of days to unsubscribe from all of them with fresh ones taking their place every day.
My Facebook feed is now a microcosm of my daily outer, and more importantly, inner life. It has me pegged. Even if I wanted to change this, and I don’t really think I do, I couldn’t. My brain likes being presented with a world that conforms to my views and preferences. Facebook wants me to come back often to sip from the spring of neurotransmitters that are produced by a brain that feels the comfort of having my biases confirmed. It wants me to be comforted.
It knows what I like and gives it to me.
I have told it and the entire internet who I am along with my value as consumer.
It is not giving me credit card, cell phone and automobile ads. I get lots of vacation, concerts for aging rock stars and cruise ship ones. Pictures of dogs, animals and wildlife charities dominate my feed. The opportunities for cognitive dissonance only present themselves if someone friends me and they are secretly at odds with my political or social views. I ignore their posts and eventually they disappear into the anonymity of the group of people who I never see again because I have clicked “like” on other posts that are in agreement with my sentiments. Social media’s business model is to sit and wait until I click on an ad and buy something. It is the agent between me and those who want me to purchase their product. I occasionally do buy something. Most of us do because the opportunity for success is amplified by a brain that has been stimulated by hits of dopamine and serotonin from all those pictures of dogs, goats, pigs and babies.