I f we want to improve our digital discourse and clean up our social media platforms, then we must begin by understanding how these platforms influence us, and in particular what their “social” nature is. Their influence on us is largely invisible yet also pervasive, which is why we often fail to see how they shape us.

As an example of this failure, consider research in 2013 led by computer scientist Karrie Karahalios. Her team investigated people’s awareness of the algorithm that determines which updates by our Facebook friends we get to see on our feeds. The researchers found that 25 of the 40 Facebook users in the study were unaware or unsure that their feeds were being filtered at all. As Time magazine reported :

When the algorithm was explained to one subject, she compared the revelation to the moment when Neo discovers the artificiality of The Matrix. “We got a lot of visceral responses to the discovery when they didn’t know,” Karahalios says. “A lot of people just spent literally five minutes being in shock.”.