If your algorithm can convince large numbers kids to snort cinnamon and eat tide pods for dinner, bending their perceptions enough for them to vote or not vote for something would be a piece of cake.
That’s just the worst reasoning I’ve ever heard. Your if.. then statement just doesn’t logically follow.
Honestly this whole thing reeks of the satanic panic type moral scares of the 80’s or the anti communist rhetoric of the 60’s repackaged in new form. Moral panic over something or other is an American tradition; right now it’s tiktok but god knows why.
Set yourself a reminder to come back to this comment in 10 years once the fervor has died down and you will read your own comments with bafflement.
"Using what it called "behavioral microtargeting" the company indicated that it could predict "needs" of subjects and how these needs may change over time. Services then could be individually targeted for the benefit of its clients from the political arena, governments and companies, providing "a better and more actionable view of their key audiences."
It is probably possible to manipulate people to further your political goals in an automated fashion using these technologies. In fact you can manipulate insane numbers of people in all kinds of ways with them.
This runs into a simple logical problem. The powers that be would love nothing more than to be able to do exactly what you're describing. And they have effectively endless resources at their disposal alongside dysfunctional intelligence agencies, a completely dysfunctional and obsequious media, and social media sites that have no doubt all signed up for PRISM and its likely even more insidious successors. Yet society is absolutely, in no way whatsoever, becoming more compliant.