I think about this for all the work and resources that go into surveillance and psych manipulation on social media platforms.

Unfathomable amounts of hours and resources have been cumulatively spent by society to research the technologies and train the knowledge workers who make all of this possible and for what? Instead of having those smart, educated people do LITERALLY ANYTHING that would contribute to society, they’re spending their time and expertise to make people sadder and angrier to sell ads for things people don’t need. It doesn’t even need to be something “important” like curing diseases or fixing climate change for them to be more valuable than what they’re doing now. As long as it’s not actively making things worse. That’s the bar we’re setting at the moment. And then yeah I guess on top of that it’s probably wasting a lot of material and energy resources too.