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She further noted how even simple interactions on platforms like Facebook and Instagram alter our emotional state: “Even when somebody likes a post of yours, the response is the same as, like, in-person interaction.”
What’s worse, Lemov argued, is that this isn’t always driven by governments—sometimes, the manipulation is baked right into the platforms themselves. “I think at the root, there is a kind of way that, on an emotional level, it’s not just manipulation of ideas,” she said, “but there’s a kind of emotional engineering that’s built into the platforms and doesn’t even demand, you know, at first, government involvement.”
She then turned the spotlight onto DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Long rumored to be behind some of the internet’s most controversial surveillance and control mechanisms, DARPA’s influence appears even deeper than previously known. “DARPA was involved in the development of the internet and of things like pattern recognition,” Lemov revealed. “The government has funded many, many studies.”
But Lemov said the most concerning part isn’t just the tech—it’s how that tech is weaponized. She compared social media platforms to cults, warning that the goal isn’t always to shift beliefs but to emotionally reframe how we feel about them.
“What I got interested in, in social media and how I connect it with the episodes of brainwashing—it creates states of emotional contagion that aren’t really about convincing people of a different way to think,” she explained. “But more about how you feel about what you think.”
She followed that with an ominous statement: “It’s not that it changed my thoughts,” she said. “It’s how I felt about those thoughts.”
And then came the kicker.
Lemov confirmed that Facebook secretly ran an internal psychological experiment that directly manipulated the emotions of nearly 700,000 users—without their knowledge or consent. The experiment filtered users’ news feeds to trigger emotional responses, altering their moods based on the type of content shown.
This wasn’t a one-off glitch or rogue employee—it was a coordinated test to observe if emotional states could be influenced digitally at scale.
No opt-in. No disclosure. Just raw, unauthorized manipulation of the public.
What does that say about the integrity of the digital platforms people use every day? More importantly, what else is happening behind the curtain?
This eye-opening conversation between Joe Rogan and Rebecca Lemov wasn’t just a warning. It was a siren blaring through the noise of manufactured narratives, reminding Americans that the battle for free thought isn’t just in the media—it’s embedded in every scroll, like, and comment online.
Big Tech and government may be more entangled than we’re willing to admit. And as this interview makes clear, the real war may not be over information—but emotion.
