So you guys think that these voters are so mentaly weak. That they could not make up their mind without what they see on the internet.
The linked SciAm article is entitled: "Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence?", and asks questions about our changing 4th Industrial Revolution institutions that are worth thinking about before Machiavellian-types (think Russiagate) impose sub-optimal realities upon us all:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-democracy-survive-big-data-and-artificial-intelligence/Extract: "We are in the middle of a technological upheaval that will transform the way society is organized. We must make the right decisions now
…
Everything will become intelligent; soon we will not only have smart phones, but also smart homes, smart factories and smart cities. Should we also expect these developments to result in smart nations and a smarter planet?
…
This all has radical economic consequences: in the coming 10 to 20 years around half of today's jobs will be threatened by algorithms. 40% of today's top 500 companies will have vanished in a decade.
…
One thing is clear: the way in which we organize the economy and society will change fundamentally. We are experiencing the largest transformation since the end of the Second World War; after the automation of production and the creation of self-driving cars the automation of society is next. With this, society is at a crossroads, which promises great opportunities, but also considerable risks. If we take the wrong decisions it could threaten our greatest historical achievements.
…
Under the label of “nudging,” and on massive scale, governments are trying to steer citizens towards healthier or more environmentally friendly behaviour by means of a "nudge"—a modern form of paternalism. The new, caring government is not only interested in what we do, but also wants to make sure that we do the things that it considers to be right. The magic phrase is "big nudging", which is the combination of big data with nudging. To many, this appears to be a sort of digital scepter that allows one to govern the masses efficiently, without having to involve citizens in democratic processes. Could this overcome vested interests and optimize the course of the world? If so, then citizens could be governed by a data-empowered “wise king”, who would be able to produce desired economic and social outcomes almost as if with a digital magic wand.
But one look at the relevant scientific literature shows that attempts to control opinions, in the sense of their "optimization", are doomed to fail because of the complexity of the problem. The dynamics of the formation of opinions are full of surprises. Nobody knows how the digital magic wand, that is to say the manipulative nudging technique, should best be used. What would have been the right or wrong measure often is apparent only afterwards.
…
During elections, they might nudge undecided voters towards supporting them—a manipulation that would be hard to detect. Therefore, whoever controls this technology can win elections—by nudging themselves to power.
…
What undesirable side effects can we expect? In order for manipulation to stay unnoticed, it takes a so-called resonance effect—suggestions that are sufficiently customized to each individual. In this way, local trends are gradually reinforced by repetition, leading all the way to the "filter bubble" or "echo chamber effect": in the end, all you might get is your own opinions reflected back at you. This causes social polarization, resulting in the formation of separate groups that no longer understand each other and find themselves increasingly at conflict with one another. In this way, personalized information can unintentionally destroy social cohesion. This can be currently observed in American politics, where Democrats and Republicans are increasingly drifting apart, so that political compromises become almost impossible. The result is a fragmentation, possibly even a disintegration, of society.
…
Perhaps even more significant is the fact that manipulative methods change the way we make our decisions. They override the otherwise relevant cultural and social cues, at least temporarily. In summary, the large-scale use of manipulative methods could cause serious social damage, including the brutalization of behavior in the digital world. Who should be held responsible for this?
…
In a rapidly changing world a super-intelligence can never make perfect decisions (see Fig. 1): systemic complexity is increasing faster than data volumes, which are growing faster than the ability to process them, and data transfer rates are limited. This results in disregarding local knowledge and facts, which are important to reach good solutions. Distributed, local control methods are often superior to centralized approaches, especially in complex systems whose behaviors are highly variable, hardly predictable and not capable of real-time optimization.
…
In other words: personalized information builds a "filter bubble" around us, a kind of digital prison for our thinking. How could creativity and thinking "out of the box" be possible under such conditions? Ultimately, a centralized system of technocratic behavioral and social control using a super-intelligent information system would result in a new form of dictatorship. Therefore, the top-down controlled society, which comes under the banner of "liberal paternalism," is in principle nothing else than a totalitarian regime with a rosy cover.
…
Collective intelligence requires a high degree of diversity. This is, however, being reduced by today's personalized information systems, which reinforce trends.
…
Our society is at a crossroads: If ever more powerful algorithms would be controlled by a few decision-makers and reduce our self-determination, we would fall back in a Feudalism 2.0, as important historical achievements would be lost. Now, however, we have the chance to choose the path to digital democracy or democracy 2.0, which would benefit us all
…
However, Big Nudging is not suitable to solve many of our problems. This is particularly true for the complexity-related challenges of our world. Although already 90 countries use Nudging, it has not reduced our societal problems - on the contrary. Global warming is progressing. World peace is fragile, and terrorism is on the rise. Cybercrime explodes, and also the economic and debt crisis is not solved in many countries."
See also:
Title: "Government-By-Nudge Is a Global Phenomenon"
http://bigthink.com/Mind-Matters/government-by-nudge-is-a-global-phenomenonExtract: "Nudges, "choice architecture," social marketing and other non-rational approaches to government are a pretty significant development. After all, these policies replace explicit arguments ("you should get more exercise for these reasons") with hidden persuasion ("in our next building, let's hide the elevator and make the stairs really prominent?"). That's a major change for any democracy. Yet many people are unimpressed, because they think of these policies as a pack of First World Problems. We in the rich world hear of these policies when they're put in place to prompt us to eat less, exercise more, save money for retirement and otherwise act sensibly. How privileged we are to worry about such things, when people in less prosperous countries face beheadings, plane crashes, Ebola or the arrival of jackbooted thugs at 2 a.m. You might think most governments have more pressing things to do than use behavioral research to get citizens to become an organ donor. But if you think that, you are wrong, as this study reveals (pdf). Its authors found non-rational approaches to persuasion are now in use in a large majority of nations—rich, middling and poor."