Dr Lucy McDonald at St John’s College, Cambridge

Philosopher’s thumbs-down to social media ‘likes’ gets award thumbs-up from Royal Institute

12 May 2021

The Royal Institute of Philosophy has awarded (jointly) its 2021 essay prize to a University of Cambridge researcher for the first philosophical analysis of ‘liking’ on social media. The essay, which focuses on Facebook, warns that ‘likes’ encourage communicative laziness while ‘like tallies’ fuel fake news, ‘gamify sociality’ and play to our psychological weaknesses.

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Members of the audience take pictures as President Barack Obama participates in a town hall meeting moderated by CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. April 20, 2011

Opinion: What can we learn about you from just one click?

14 November 2017

How effective is psychological targeting in advertising? Dr Sandra Matz, a former PhD student at Cambridge now based at Columbia University, and her co-authors, including Dr David Stillwell from the Cambridge Psychometrics Centre, have published a new study which demonstrates that companies only need one Facebook ‘like’ to effectively target potential customers. 

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