"And then of course the harvesting of our personal data - quite apart from the privacy issues - has been used to orchestrate campaigns specifically to undermine democratic process. Both in the Brexit campaign, and in the US presidential election. I haven't got time to talk about Cambridge Analytica today, but Google them.
...I don't think they're all-powerful, but a 1% nudge in a tight election could make quite a big difference."
#DrPeterThompson, 2019
It's striking that no consideration is given in these recommendations to changing the network or ownership structures. Like moving to an inter-connected network of independent social media communities.
True, these comments were made in 2019 - 4 years ago - when even fewer people had heard of the fediverse, or Mastodon. But that year, while living in China, I was at the #Netizen21 conference:
https://www.caa-ins.org/archives/5895/2
... using a Mastodon account to live blog the event:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220226202641/https://mastodon.nzoss.nz/@strypey/103178928967391449
Strypey