What is the dark underbelly of social media really like? What are the subtle ways in which web developers and social media sites feed on our data and use it as fuel to keep us plugged into their platform? My idea for this first episode is to taking a deep dive into the intricacies of web design to suss out how developers tailor platforms such as Facebook and Youtube to gather aspects of data usage that users barely even consider when clicking away online. I’d like to talk to a particular developer who codes for several smaller platforms and get the inside account of how they gather data from the platform, how ads are geared toward users and what effect data collection has had on platform integration. We know that online media has us hooked but: how? why? and, mostly importantly, how sinister is the practice?
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