The Invisible Hand
Social Media platforms have become an inseparable part of our lives. They are essential tools that allow us to share our thoughts and experiences with our family, friends, co-workers and people all over the world. However, as social media has become way too sophisticated, so have the algorithms that run these platforms. Algorithms are sets of instructions that dictate how social media platform works. A huge part of their function involves keeping track of user data, make predictions of our future behavior and recommend content that is most likely to grab our attention. Thus, these incredibly powerful algorithms are invasive of our privacy. The most common way these algorithms invade our privacy is by collecting our data and analyzing them. This includes tracking our online activity, including the posts we like, the comments we make, the posts we share and even our private messages with individuals. This data is then used to build a detailed model of our preferences whi...