Corporate colonization, geopolitical power struggles, and hypernudge - how social media engineers minds

This chapter focuses on technology as a potential means for processes which could approximate “mind engineering”. More specifically, this chapter zooms in on social media platforms and tries to identify the mechanisms resulting in behavior change. Theoretically, the concept of nudging – decision environments influencing choices by consciously providing cues – has informed this chapter. Also, more recent developments have been attempted to be considered theoretically, namely by incorporation of Yeung’s concept of hypernudging – the conscious change of decision environments in the digital realm. By looking at two distinctive case studies (Facebook and TikTok), this chapter analyzes the platform’s workings through a (hyper)nudging lens and also takes a closer look at the underlying motivations as manifested in the chosen decision architectures. These underlying motivations will be, in the case of Facebook, tied back to an economic motif as well as – for TikTok – a (geo)political factor.