I want to lazily but quickly refer anyone who’s reading this to a recent video from Hank Green and a Vox video from last year concerning Facebook. During her 60 Minutes interview this week, Frances Haugen revealed that political parties in Europe have written to Facebook, claiming that the platform is making their constituents’ views more polarized and extreme, leaving them with little choice but to alter their campaigns and policy proposals to fit in with these emerging viewpoints. This is a reminder that peoples’ identities are constructed and maintained through our engagement with all forms of media. You think you’re in control of your beliefs; you’re not. And that’s not just about intentional propaganda and division. These algorithms, left on their own, reinforce any oppressive identity categories that already exist, like what women “should” be doing or what poorer people “should” be doing. There’s little room for diversity of thought. Historian Yuval Harari has written about this… others have too… about how “individuals” are constructs of capitalism, and we “individuals” distinguish ourselves chiefly through the goods and services we buy, liberal and conservative alike. Subgroups are easier to market to, so the free market is incentivized to keep our interests concise as well as consistent. As the Vox report shows, cleaning jobs are marketed mostly to women, and lumber jobs mostly to men. If you come into these platforms with more questions about the world than answers, you will leave with more answers than questions. If you feel two ways about a social issue, or another way entirely, social media will force you to coalesce into one of the pre-approved stances, like a Schrodinger Box. We need to be humble and vigilant while we’re compelled to rigorously defend our identities in the Misinformation Age, because our identities exist at the convenience of corporations. Otherwise, societal oppression will go unquestioned and unchallenged, whether the humans in charge of social media want it to or not.