Aldous Huxley on crowds. Do you think this applies to social media? #asknostr #grownostr

“Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice. Their suggestibility is increased to the point where they cease to have any judgement or will of their own. They become very excitable, they lose all sense of individual or collective responsibility, they are subject to sudden accesses of rage, enthusiasm and panic. In a word, a man in a crowd behaves as though he has swallowed a large dose of some powerful intoxicant… The crowd-intoxicated individual escapes from responsibility, intelligence and morality into a kind of frantic, animal mindlessness.”

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Discussion

Suggestibility increases, driven by algorithms designed to keep users engaged, often reinforcing their existing beliefs and views, leading to echo chambers. This can often obfuscate reasoned judgment as users are continuously exposed to highly biased or one-sided information.