MacDougall: The attention economy is now a serious threat to Western nations

Fully agree but no easy solutions but Royal Commission or equivalent would be good starting point. Social media is the equivalent of soma in Brave New World in its ability to distract but with the dangers of polarization and fake information:

…The mass harvesting of human attention for the profit of a few wealthy platforms is socially corrosive. It must end. Canada must launch a Royal Commission to explore the full scale and scope of the threat posed by the attention economy.

The complexity of the issues raised by the mass harvesting of human attention deserve a systematic examination in a forum free from outside influence. How do the attention economy’s opaque algorithms work? How do these platforms impact our mental health? How do they target girls, and is this different for how they target boys? How do our foreign adversaries exploit the attention economy to undermine democratic processes, which the recent Hogue Inquiry into foreign interference partially addressed?

What is the impact of the resulting loss of accountable local journalism on the lower levels of government? More fundamentally, what do Canadians understand about data and advertising-based business models — whether for social media or search — and their consent to such use of their personal information?

Canadians deserve as neutral a reading on these subjects as is possible, and a Royal Commission is the best route to achieving it.

Source: MacDougall: The attention economy is now a serious threat to Western nations