The Responsibilities of Social Networks and Search Engines

I’ve spent the last two weeks redo­ing some of my web­sites, and a lot of that time was spent think­ing about how we as a soci­ety receive our infor­ma­tion. While some of these tools such as Google and Face­book are inno­v­a­tive and help solve a lot of issues, these com­pa­nies have the power to shape our world­views rapidly, for bet­ter or worse. In many ways, they are tak­ing the place of our tra­di­tional news cycles. There’s an inher­ent dan­ger of manip­u­la­tion if left-unchecked — and they have been manip­u­lat­ing the infor­ma­tion we receive. Also, money talks to a lot of peo­ple and these com­pa­nies have no short­age of cash.

This video was brought to my atten­tion. While it’s noth­ing new to some of us (I’m involved with the field), I think it’s a topic most peo­ple don’t give much thought. I couldn’t have phrased it bet­ter and thought I’d throw it out there: