A recurring type of story I am seeing on Hacker News goes something like:

Social Media Company X has blocked/failed-to block, banned/un-banned, flagged/un-flagged changed/needs to change Content,Person, Story or Algorithm Y

The discussion usually devolves into opinionated, often political debates as to whether or not the Social Media's decision to shape the public discourse in this manner was appropriate.

The bigger picture here is that by putting together Social Media with filtering algorithms and machine learning what we have wound up with are brain washing machines that can affect personal behavior, which in turn affects public discourse, which in turn changes the policies of our governments.

In a quest to give everyone a voice, improve the user experience (and make a few bucks here and there), I believe we have enabled individuals and small groups of people to wage subtle dis-information campaigns that can change the course of the world, and it seems, not usually for the best intentions. It's not usually the good guys that are using brain washing machines. If you are trying to brain wash people, your intentions are probably not benevolent.

To be fair, this has been going on, way before the Internet. News media combined with psychology to manipulate public opinion has likely been around since the written word. I could even believe that many civilizations developed writing as a means to manipulate public opinion in ways that were not always of benefit to said public.

Here is the problem for us geeks to solve now.

We have put powerful brainwashing machines into the hands of the general population. We have taken manipulation of media to shape societal policy to a new level with Social Media, powerful algorithms and machine learning.

How do we get the genie back in the bottle?

Or at least get him to stop granting wishes to people that do not have the best interests of all of us at heart.