Search, Connect, Obey

This paper explores the power of online virtual monopolies (like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and similar companies) to influence and nudge (or even control) our behavior for financial or political gain which goes beyond anything we could have imagined even less than ten years ago. The massive amount of personal data and real time tracking have moved the traditional advertising practices to another level. The power of these private, unregulated, unaccountable, opaque entities has been noticed by governments and, in some cases, they are trying to pair up with them, or to put some kind of regulation. I argue that the manipulations go way deeper than the so called "fake news" phenomenon which gained popularity after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The reality appears to be more sinister. These companies are using the latest research in human perception, and secretly doing experiments on their own, thus becoming capable of building highly effective psychological predictive models to find out what, how, and when to display (or not) some specific information to the user of their products. The actions seem to move us toward a worldwide surveillance society with unprecedented and unknown long-term consequences in terms of ethical, legal, and political issues. Finally, the paper speculates on what actions may be taken to tackle these dangerous trends.