WASHINGTON—In what experts say is a slight cooling in attitudes towards the blatantly amoral enterprise of emotional exploitation, a new Gallup poll released Tuesday found that the public is becoming more skeptical of the profit-oriented corporate data mine powered by human misery that currently dominates the online space. “Our survey revealed that nearly 70 percent of respondents admitted having ‘some reservations’ or ‘very strong reservations’ concerning the malevolent emotional feedback machine relying on their deepest fears and insecurities to generate advertising revenue, and 85 percent of those respondents in turn resented the psychological manipulation tactics employed to create a deep sense of insecurity in users to ensure they compulsively keep coming back to their website, therefore allowing the dispassionately sadistic entity to harvest their personal data, oftentimes without permission, in order to compound their vampiric earnings,” said head researcher Jasmine Salhi, noting that the vast majority of respondents reported a growing disinclination to trust a greed-fueled information farm that flouts international law and practices ethically questionable business tactics. “Of the users polled, four out of 10 claim to be somewhat wary of the collective vitriolic cesspit dumbing down the way humans interact and rewiring the brains of entire societies so that a tiny group of people makes a huge profit. Moreover, six out of 10 participants have some regret about using a platform that exposes them to an unending torrent of negativity, hosting vileness ranging from videos of flagrant murders to world leaders threatening thermonuclear war as part of their fanatical quest to make as much money as possible.” Nearly all poll respondents said they planned to spend one to four hours per day on the site.

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