Nation Profile
Dr. Robert Epstein, senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology.
THOUGHT LEADERS
Big Tech’s Hidden Manipulation
Robert Epstein on the battle for privacy and freedom online
I
f we monitor, capture, archive, and expose these companies,” Dr. Robert Epstein said, “then they’ll stay out of our lives.”
52 I N S I G H T May 6–12, 2022
almost a decade now, you’ve been studying how Big Tech manipulates people in ways they aren’t aware of. Where are things right now? DR . ROBERT EPSTEIN: We’ve made more
progress in the past year and a half than in the previous eight years combined. For the 2020 presidential election, we recruited field agents, mainly in swing counties in four swing states, and with their permission, we installed special software on their computers that allowed us to look over their shoulders as they were doing anything that was election-related on their computers. We preserved more than 1.5
million ephemeral experiences on Google, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, Facebook, and more. What started as a tiny project in the 2016 presidential election has grown into something much more sophisticated. We’ve made a lot more discoveries; we’ve got lots more numbers, and they’re all terrible. They’re telling us over and over again that we’re pawns. We’re being manipulated in ways we can’t see and in ways we can’t counteract, that don’t leave a paper trail for authorities to trace. MR . JEKIELEK: You
mentioned ephemeral experiences. Please explain what that means.
DR . EPSTEIN: They’re brief
experiences we have online, such as a newsfeed flashed before our eyes, search suggestions, or all kinds of things. A sequence of YouTube videos, for example, with a suggestion of what video to watch next, affects us, and then they disappear. They’re gone. It’s the ideal form of manipulation. People have no idea they’re being manipulated, No. 1— and No. 2, authorities can’t go back in time to see what people were shown. We’re trying to figure out the power that ephemeral experiences have to change thinking, behavior, and votes. MR . JEKIELEK: You’ve
been working in the field
THE EPOCH TIMES
In a recent episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek sits down with Dr. Robert Epstein to discuss how tech giants influence human behavior and politics. Epstein is a senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, best known today for his research on the ways in which companies such as Google secretly manipulate everything from what we read and watch online to the outcomes of our elections.
JAN JEKIELEK: For
