"The information presented by AI-powered information architectures is not neutral; it is personalized on the basis of the data collected from users. This means that two people who enter the same term into a search engine will probably be shown different results. That can be helpful if, for example, we want to look up a restaurant and the search engine displays hits in our neighborhood at the top of the list, rather than a restaurant with the same name on the other side of the world. But if we are shown news or political content solely on the basis of our preferences, we risk finding ourselves in a filter bubble where we are no longer exposed to any other opinions.

The research team sees false and misleading information as another challenge for people online. Videos and posts propagating conspiracy theories and unverified rumors can spread rapidly through social media, causing real harm. For example, people may decide not to get vaccinated due to misinformation about vaccines, putting themselves and others at risk" (UK Parliament).

Like the Facebook example above, much of what we see on social media platforms is intended to make us feel a certain way. The best advice for avoiding manipulated content is not to avoid social media outright, but rather be less reliant on it as a source of information (Birkett, 2020). Don't blindly trust every post online and before you formulate an opinion on a topic be sure to do some research of your own and gather your own information instead.

For the other examples above with edited imagery, this connects to the lesson that a fair amount of skepticism is advisable when using the internet. While it may be hard to identify an edited photo, one of the best ways to check if a photo is legitimate is to do a reverse Google search. If for whatever reason a photo seems a bit off or seems like it looks like a "clickbait" post, it probably is (National Library Singapore).

To summarize, the best way to avoid and identify manipulated content is to always be somewhat skeptical of what you are seeing. Ask yourself questions, do your own research, and never blindly trust any single source online to have the answers you are looking for. Like all types of misinformation, cover a diverse spread of sources to ensure that the information you are using is legitimate (UK Parliament).