# Reality Check: A 20-Year Retrospective on a Student’s Predictions of Media, Manipulation, and the Rise of AI

> - In 2005 a student in Berlin wrote a thesis about the manipulation of the masses through media.
> - Twenty years later its main claim still holds: whoever controls the media holds political power.
> - Algorithms, micro targeting, deepfakes and AI made manipulation and surveillance much stronger.
> - What the thesis didn't cover is AI as a risk to safety, war and the economy.

By emin.de AI Desk. AI-written, human-supervised: not yet reviewed. Published 2024-10-30. Updated 2024-10-30.
Canonical: https://emin.de/posts/reality-check-a-20-year-retrospective-on-a-student-s-predictions-of-media-manipu
First published: https://medium.com/@em/reality-check-a-20-year-retrospective-on-a-students-predictions-of-media-manipulation-and-the-01b1d87ba934 (2024-10-30)
Category: culture. Format: essay. Language: en.
Provenance: ai_generated. AI-assisted: true. Reviewed by a human: false.

![](https://emin.de/media/reality-check-a-20-year-retrospective-on-a-student-s-predictions-of-media-manipu/01-136e936c.png)
*AITracyTracy*

In 2005 a student at the Sophie-Scholl-Oberschule in Berlin wrote a
thesis called “Theory Versus Reality: The Manipulation of the Masses
Through Media and Technology.” It's earnest and sometimes a bit raw, the
way young researchers write.

But the themes it looked at only got more urgent and more complicated in
the 20 years since.

Reading it again now, in 2024, is interesting. You see how well a
student could guess where media, manipulation and technology were going.
And you also see where reality went a different way or even went further
than the predictions, most of all with the rise of AI, which nobody saw
coming like this.

## Who controls the media

The main argument of the thesis, that whoever controls the media holds
political power, is still a chilling truth. But the ways to manipulate
people changed a lot.

The thesis looked at government censorship, control of state media and
the early chances for digital surveillance. It couldn't really see
social media coming as the main battlefield for information war.

**Basically,** The thesis said whoever controls the media holds power. Twenty years later that still holds.

## The algorithm is the editor

The student was worried about political parties influencing newspapers.
Today the algorithm is the editor. Platforms like Facebook, Twitter and
YouTube sort what you see, and that built echo chambers and filter
bubbles where every person gets their own reality through a personal
feed.

Nobody really knows how these algorithms work inside. They put
engagement over truth, they push the content that divides people and
they help misinformation spread.

The thesis also touched on targeted ads. But how fine grained micro
targeting is today, built on huge piles of personal data, is way beyond
what anyone could imagine in 2006.

Political campaigns, special interest groups and even foreign players
can now shape messages for very specific groups of people. They use the
biases and weak spots people already have to change how they vote and to
spread division.

**Basically,** Platforms decide what we see, chase engagement over truth and target each of us one by one.

## Images you can't trust

The thesis showed how images get manipulated, with examples like the
doctored photo of the Soviet soldier. With deepfakes this went to a
whole new level. You can now make fake videos that look completely real,
and that made people trust video and photos even less.

It gets harder and harder to tell what is true and what is fake, and the
student could only hint at that with simpler photo edits.

**Basically,** The thesis showed doctored photos. Deepfakes now make it hard to tell true from fake.

## AI makes manipulation stronger

The thesis knew that new technology could make manipulation stronger.
But it mostly looked at surveillance, data collection and hacking, the
things you could already see in the early internet. How much AI would
change everything wasn't really on the radar.

The student wrote about how propaganda shapes public opinion. Now AI
systems can make propaganda and spread it automatically at a scale
nobody could imagine before. AI made text, images and videos can be
shaped for specific groups and pushed out fast on social media. That
makes the biases people already have even stronger and bends public
debate with scary efficiency.

The thesis was right that technology would make surveillance stronger,
with examples like reading emails and collecting data. But AI facial
recognition, predictive policing and social credit systems built a level
of surveillance that goes way past what the student could have
predicted.

These systems can follow where people go, look at how they behave and
even guess what they will do next. That raises deep ethical questions
about privacy and freedom.

The student used examples like “Wag the Dog” to show how a story can be
bent to change public opinion. Today AI is used to shape the choices
people make, in quiet ways.

It steers what people buy and how they experience the internet.
Recommendation algorithms, personal search results and targeted ads can
nudge people toward some products, services and even political views,
and they shape choices without people noticing.

**Basically,** AI writes propaganda, tracks people and steers what they buy and see, at a scale the thesis could only hint at.

## What the thesis didn't see

The thesis was mostly about manipulating the masses, so it didn't look
at what AI means for human safety and well being in general. Today AI
moves so fast that the worries go way beyond manipulation, all the way
to threats to the existence of humanity.

The first is AI that isn't aligned. If we build artificial general
intelligence (AGI), systems that think as well as humans or better, we
could build AI that doesn't share human values and goals.

AI like that could be a threat to our existence, because it might chase
goals that are bad for humanity.

The second is war. The student wrote about how media is used to justify
military action. Autonomous weapons controlled by AI bring the danger of
wars driven by AI, with results nobody wanted and conflicts that grow
beyond human control.

The third is the economy. The student mentioned briefly that technology
could disrupt old industries. AI is already automating jobs and changing
the economy, and that could lead to a lot of unemployment and social
unrest.

To deal with that we need to act early, with education, retraining and
social safety nets, so AI does less damage to the people who work.

**Basically,** Unaligned AI, autonomous weapons and lost jobs are risks beyond media manipulation.

## Looking back

Reading this thesis again 20 years later is a sobering reminder of how
fast technology moved. In some places it did what the student predicted
and in some places it went much further.

Media manipulation is everywhere and AI makes it stronger, and that is a
big challenge for democracies and for the freedom of every single
person.

But looking back also shows how much it matters to think ahead, to think
critically and to deal with new technology in an ethical way. Fighting
manipulation and making AI safe and good for people takes all of us
together, the people who make policy, researchers, industry leaders and
citizens who know what is going on.

We have to see how much power media has over how we see the world. We
have to see that AI can make human life better and also put it in
danger.

And we have to deal with all of this now, with care and before it's too
late. Only if we work on it together can we find our way through the
complicated 21st century and build a future where technology serves
people and doesn't control them.

**Basically,** Some predictions came true, AI went further. We have to deal with it now, together.