First, there was a Pulitzer-Prize-For-Fake-News. Now there's a Pulitzer-Prize--For-Sentiment-Manipulation

Getting Sentimental Over Social Media. Why is it MSM, including the New York Times keep posting old-stories, instead of leaving the original ones in a thread? Because of Sentiment Manipulation!

According to AWS, Sentiment analysis is the process of analyzing digital text to determine if the emotional tone of the message is positive, negative, or neutral. Today, companies have large volumes of text data like emails, customer support chat transcripts, social media comments, and reviews. Sentiment analysis tools can scan this text to automatically determine the author’s attitude towards a topic.

 Companies use the insights from sentiment analysis to improve customer service and increase brand reputation. Sentiment analysis, also known as opinion mining, is an important business intelligence tool that helps companies improve their products and services.  But improvement is only possible when the data is reliable - Garbage In, Garbage Out. If those managing the sentiment analysis tools are vested in a particular outcome, the end customer will not be well served.

Another Pulitzer-Prize-For-Fake-News / Sentiment Manipulation piece  by the NYT
This type of 'reporting' should be classified as political campaign donation.

Not unlike Journalists who are vested on supporting their bosses' narrative, not on uncovering the truth. Pulitzer Prizes are now given to the best fake news, for example.

While businesses can avoid personal bias associated with human reviewers by using artificial intelligence (AI)–based sentiment analysis tools, the old GIGO adage rules the day.  You may have heard about Google's Gemini, for example.

Social Media companies, including make money through advertising rather than charging each user individually. If you are not paying for the product, the product is YOU. The media company renting your eyeballs to its advertisers. The more users on the site, the greater the number of advertisers willing to engage them, and the more those advertisers are willing to spend. The more the inflammatory the posts, the more clicks.The more clicks, the more revenue for the social media company. If the social media company knows you like to author or or read longer posts, the company can sell this information to advertisers. It’s all about data mining. The crown jewels of a social media company is the data mining algorithm that identifies affinity groups and the traffic cop algorithm that control traffic between silos. All this information in the hands of a social media company is gold. Their clients get the perfect sentiment analysis.

Affinity groups are segments of users who have expressed or demonstrated an interest in a specific topic, category, or activity on social media platforms.  Social media made $11 billion in U.S. ad sales from minors in 2022, for example. But Pedophilia is just one of thousands of affinity groups: if you are into the occult, there’s a silo for you. If you are into antiSemitism, Communism, Socialism, star-gazing, and so on, there are silos for you. These silos can then serve you ads designed specifically for you.

Finding affinity groups is a function of social media platform. For example, on Facebook, you can use the Audience Network tool to explore different affinity groups based on demographics, interests, behaviors, and connections. On Instagram, the Explore tab shows what topics and hashtags are trending among users. The Insights tool shows the top interests and categories of followers and those who interact with your posts. Twitter’s Trends tool show popular topics and hashtags among users, while the Analytics tool can reveal the top interests and categories of your followers and those who engage with your tweets. LinkedIn’s Campaign Manager tool allows you to select different affinity groups based on demographics, job functions, skills, industries, and interests.

With over 353.9 million monthly active users and a staggering $5 billion in ad revenue, Twitter stands as a social media juggernaut. Not surprising, countless Twitter advertising agencies are vying for the right silos.


SociallyIn for example, boasts that Ad targeting and demographic precision stand at the forefront of its service offerings and claims it has “mastered the art of eliminating ad wastage by precisely targeting specific audience segments based on varied criteria, including age, gender, and location.

An advertiser wants to control traffic between silos.  Every Twitter ad campaign is a symphony of analytical precision and creative ingenuity, ensuring resources are allocated efficiently and messages reach those most likely to convert.

Given the technology, who would even consider sentiment manipulation? The usual suspects.  If they can get a Pulitzer-Prize-For-Fake-News, and they do not have the 

data, much less the data mining

 algorithm that identifies affinity groups,  legacy media organization resort to using social media where they can manipulate the data.