We've long known that social networks can impact our choice of a car, a movie to watch, or a trip to plan. There are ads that tell us what to buy, there are recommendations and suggestions, there is posts priority in the newsfeeds that imperceptibly dictate our behavior.
But can algorithms make us vote for one presidential candidate over another? Yes, they actually can, as we will illustrate below.
And the worst part is — nobody knows how exactly. And why, and what for, and what'll happen next. Bad news for conspiracy theories' lovers: there's most probably no World Government, there are just a bunch of algorithms that are not yet good enough for their own developers to be sure about how they work.
What do we users should do with all that? How exactly do social media impact our choices, both in private and in social life?
Of course it's not only Facebook that has an impact, but we are emphasising Facebook here because of the obvious reasons: the largest social network of the world with the most diverse coverage of users worldwide; the most critisized social network of the world (although some will claim that the Chinese social networks ones can compete); the most scrutinized social network of the world. But before we start tackling Facebook, let's browse some Twitter.
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