**7. Computer algorithms and determinism: a case study**

In a July 7, 2019 article in the *New York Times,* Patrick Berlinquette writes of his experiences using "The Redirect Method," a program targeting Google searchers with ads to influence searchers' behavior [16]. He acknowledges that marketers like himself profit by "exploiting impatience and impulsiveness," but he wants to show online ads can do positive things, too. "Redirect" gives counter-messages to a person's apparent interests. Berlinquette experimented on influencing two groups of troubled people, those who were suicidal and those who might become mass shooters. He was helped in setting up the programs by the experience of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and the Redirect Method's experiences reaching out to ISIS sympathizers. The ISIS campaign provided Google with a blueprint that shows, step by step, how to create redirect ads to influence people. Google has a suicide algorithm, but it has gaps he attempted to fill. He says he would measure the success of his algorithm by how many people clicked on his ad and called the number on his web site, linked to the national helpline. There was a similar link for people who seemed interested in perpetrating shootings.

He was quite successful with suicidal people but not with shooters. With the first, the "conversion rate," the rate of people responding, was 28% compared with the usual Google rate of 4%. With shooters, the success rate was low, though he does not give an exact percentage. Why would the success rate be different for the two groups? My guess is that it is not due to some flaw in his mass shooter algorithm, but because the desires of the two groups are different. Suicidal people usually want help. If someone reaches out, they will respond. People considering mass murders are not interested in talking to anyone, or at least the chance of their wanting to is much less. The explanation lies in their inner desires rather than some external manipulation. In Peirce's terms, it is Firstness, not Secondness or Thirdness.
