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February 18, 2016
The New Mind Control
How the internet flips elections and alters our thoughts... SEME’s near-invisibility is curious indeed. It means that when people – including you and me – are looking at biased search rankings, they look just fine. So if right now you Google ‘US presidential candidates’, the search results you see will probably look fairly random, even if they happen to favour one candidate. Even I have trouble detecting bias in search rankings that I know to be biased (because they were prepared by my staff). Yet our randomised, controlled experiments tell us over and over again that when higher-ranked items connect with web pages that favour one candidate, this has a dramatic impact on the opinions of undecided voters, in large part for the simple reason that people tend to click only on higher-ranked items. This is truly scary: like subliminal stimuli, SEME is a force you can’t see; but unlike subliminal stimuli, it has an enormous impact – like Casper the ghost pushing you down a flight of stairs.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at February 18, 2016 8:42 AM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
Mind control is the mysterious force that compels all those idiots to disagree with you.
Posted by: Schill MacGuffin ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://americandigest.org/sidelines/nav-commenters.gif)
at February 20, 2016 10:49 PM