Modern communication technology in particular has changed. Communication en masse has become commonplace. Many parties, ranging from states to influencers to corporations, have ready access to communicate their message directly with millions of people. And they do so by sending a message directly to your pocket or purse: they notify you on your so-called smartphone.

Not everyone owns a smartphone. However, most people own a television (cf. 94% households own TV) and many use streaming services with advertisements. It's difficult to find a place in society where a TV is not playing for you to pay attention to. Airports have TV's blasting, gas pumps have them built in, and doctor's waiting rooms have them as well.

Smartphones and computers are the most common ways to access the internet. Many people believe these devices bring them joy and utility, but their usage can be highly skewed toward heteronomy rather than utiliy. Advertising is the root of this manipulation. Google serves several ads masquerading as top results on every search. Social Media feeds are littered with advertisements (reddit, Instagram, Twitter, FaceBook, SnapChat, just to name a few).

Some of the advertisements on smartphones are often not recognized as advertisements by the user. One common example is push notifications. These are advertisements that are made to entice you to start using the app again. They want your attention where they know you'll be enticed to click an advertisement.

Not only that, but they are unsought interruptions to your consciousness. You don't choose their frequency, you don't choose their timing. This level of stimulation makes repetition trivial for advertisers.

A not-well-understood fact about human nature is that hearing a message over and over will cause you to begin to believe it. Repetition engenders belief. Those beliefs can cause you to act differently than you would.

The pervasive nature of messaging from technology is difficult to realize, considering its novelty in our societies. In this way, overstimulation can convince you to act on someone else's interests without your knowing.

If the goal is to repetitively advertise to a user, then the more time spent on the advertising platform (TV, apps, websites, etc.) the better. To keep screen time high, many of these platforms try to keep their users addicted to viewing their platform. This is especially the case with social media companies.

Clickbait, hyperstimulation, and psychologically rewarding application design are three tools used to keep users addicted. The clickbait is properly named: it's bait out there to keep you hooked on what you're looking at, as Jocko would say. Often these are outrageous titles and thumbnails. The goal is to get you to click, and from there other techniques will keep you on the hook. They are preying on human nature to want to seek out understanding of new things.

Once you're hooked, they can use hyperstimulation to keep your brain thinking it's succeeding overwhelmingly. Embellish the correct parts of a video, title, or article and the brain reacts with a proportionately large interest, to the point of addiction.

The algorithmic feed design of nearly all new services is an example of the addictive design of applications. These feeds are said to be centers of information and learning. The users scrolling and swiping action rewards your brain for each new find of information. There is some legitimacy to finding useful information on these sites. There are a wealth of recipes on Instagram, TikTok, and reddit. However, the typical user of these is not gleaning much useful information. It's tough to learn a new recipe when bombarded with several hundred other messages of disparate topics. Your brain is experiencing reward overload for finding such a goldmine of information.

Websites want you to continue scrolling through their archives, and so they make the clickbait and hyperstimulation front and center. They are nominally websites that could contain useful information, but end up centering propaganda and "the message".

The way to avoid modern manipulation from technology is to use it only in your best interests. This requires an understanding of signal versus noise: what is something useful rather than something interested in affecting your thoughts by capturing your attention.

Some signs an app or website are bad follow. The first is that it has an ad-based profit model. Unethical ads inherently require your attention and attempt to convince you the product is worthwhile. These ads, in modern times, are never based on the benefits of the product. You can know you are being manipulated if there are ads.

Another sign is an augmented reality. These hyperstimulative messages take over your brain and have an outsized influence on your behavior because they cannot occur in nature. If they could, your response would be beneficial to your life or reproduction. Because they cannot, you know to avoid it.

Another thing to consider is the frequency of any stimulation or messaging you are consuming. When you find yourself surrounded by any message more than would be possible without a technological revolution, you know you're being manipulated.