[Yuki Maru Hoshi]

Originally Posted by Vanessa

X is free, you don't pay for it.

We're the product if the social media platform is free. They take the data and every little interaction, build an algorithm on top of it and then sell off or utilize the data for both business and political purposes... Elon is making money from currying influence and having that much access to our private data and controls over both algorithms and the way things are measured (metrics).. it gives him a lot of clout when making deals outside of the network and that is putting his thumb on the scale...

Edit: All forms of display on a website/computer are manipulated by nature so the data collected is easier to interpret. Sometimes they're manipulated in very subtle ways and that can play a big influence over how we both interpret and internalize what we read/see... it's called "dark patterns" in UI/UX.