Here’s an alternative perspective, which is evidence-based, & you can test it daily:

Ideology is a kind of addiction.

See how it is addicted-to-reinforcement,

see how it disallows-falsification,

see how it prevents-objectivity,

see how it works/fights to OWN the life it is inhabiting,

see how it works/fights to disallow any release from being-owned-by-it.

Psychological-addictions are addictions, exactly as chemical-addictions are, because psychological-addictions are still addictions to brain-chemistry-habits, within one’s brain, and those are chemical-addictions, just self-generated, not externally-applied.

The gaslighting in that article…

Facebook used ideology-addiction to increase the genociding in … perhaps Indonesia, or Myanmar, or … somewhere in that region … getting genocide going, because it’d be more dominant in the resulting regime…

is that “addiction”??

Is that “harm”??

addiction is the most-profitable leverage to have in the customer.

Tobacco companies were found to have increased the freebase-nicotene in their crops, as a means of increasing addiction.

You think that AI-based addiction-increasing-algorithms which such platforms NEED to be running, in order to coerce as much compliance/exploitation as they can, from their prey, “isn’t” addiction??

Here’s a blunt tip: the same TV-execs who told the public “our ads don’t modify your behavior”, told the companies who were paying-for those ads “our ads definitely modify public behavior, & this amount of investment will produce this amoung of behavior-modification”.

Get the evidence not from what they’re saying to the public, get the evidence from what they’re telling the ones who profit from using the engineered-addictions.

People who take Putin’s & Netanyahu’s & Millei’s & Orban’s & Trump’s statements at face-value, while calling-into-question any contradiction, are not trustWORTHY.

Same for those who ignore the evidence of the machiavellianism of addiction-engineering softwares/platforms.

IF they’re demonstrably machiavellian, THEN they’ve already obliterated their default “right” to trust.

Consider the whole thing from that frame-of-reference, instead.

Gaslighters … there is HUGE pressure, nowadays, to softpedal facts, in order to retain employability in the future, for academics.

Criticize the big money? You’re no-longer employable.

THAT IS AFFECTING WHAT GETS PUBLISHED!

Too bad nobody’s got spine to be loyal to actual-journalism, anymore.

Addiction is a spectrum.

You know how supermarkets put impulse-purchase items right near the cash, so that when you’re all decision-fatigued-out, you’ll not be able to resist the worthless-junk purchases?

You know how that actually-works, well-enough that there’s solid money in not doing it otherwise??

THAT is evidence, not mere-belief.

The same is true in platform-“use” ( “use”, because it’s really the-platform-using-you, not the other-way-around ).

Go look at the permissions in your phone that the Facebook app has, & ask if there’s ANY moral justification for ALL that molestation-of-your-life to be going-on … & why it would be going-on … except to enforce to whatever degree it can addiction, among Facebook’s inmates…?

See it for what it is.

Addiction’s a spectrum, & it is enforced all it can be, by them.

That’s why they have to keep destroying internal-documents/evidence to prevent their conviction for such behavior: accountability won’t be tolerated, right?

Someday somebody’ll speak truth on the matter… just not in my lifetime.

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