The morning began like any other. In the same city, entrepreneurs were checking their emails, small business owners were unlocking their storefronts, salespeople were reviewing their targets, and university students were rushing to early classes. Each of them moved through routines that felt familiar and solid, as if reality were a stable stage on which daily life simply unfolded.
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In many contemporary societies, a troubling political pattern emerges: the rise of a leader who is not satisfied with governing institutions, but needs to stamp a personal mark on all of them. It is not enough for this figure to direct the state; every ministry, program, building and public initiative must somehow reflect their name, face or slogan. What looks like simple branding at first glance often reveals something deeper: an obsession with personal visibility that frequently accompanies authoritarian impulses.
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In a world where reality is increasingly built through screens, believing without thinking has become almost automatic. A notification lights up, a new post appears, a recommendation pops into view, and the mind, overwhelmed by volume and speed, often responds with trust by default. The gesture seems innocent: a click, a like, a purchase, a share. But under that apparent simplicity lies an architecture carefully designed to guide what people want, feel, and decide.
Laura G. de Rivera’s book Esclavos del algoritmo: Manual de resistencia en la era de la inteligencia artificial (“Slaves of the Algorithm”) starts from a provocative idea: the great illusion of our time is assuming that technology simply observes reality without intervening in it. For entrepreneurs, small business owners, merchants, habitual sellers, and university students, this illusion is not an abstract philosophical problem; it is a daily risk that touches their businesses, their studies, and their inner life.
When most people imagine manipulation, they think of censorship, explicit propaganda, or direct orders. The digital environment works differently. It does not usually force; it nudges. It does not shout; it rearranges. It decides what appears first on a feed, which product seems most relevant, which opinion looks “popular,” and which voices remain practically invisible.
For a small business, this means that visibility is not a neutral reward for quality; it is the result of algorithms optimized for engagement, data extraction, and profit. For a student, it means that what they read, watch, and discuss is filtered through systems that have learned what keeps their attention the longest, not necessarily what informs them best.
De Rivera reminds us that behind these systems there are not “cold machines acting alone” but human organizations with very concrete interests: technology companies, data brokers, advertisers, financial actors, and political campaigns. The algorithm is not an impartial referee; it is the visible tip of an economic and political project.
Manipulation in the age of the algorithm is rarely a frontal attack. It is a slow, calculated softness. Step by step, it shapes what feels normal: the opinions that seem reasonable, the products that appear indispensable, the lifestyles that look desirable.
For entrepreneurs and merchants, this can be seductive. Platforms offer detailed segmentation, personalized ads, dashboards full of metrics. They promise efficiency: “We’ll find your customers for you.” But there is a trade-off. While businesses learn to adapt to the rules of the platform, the platform learns much more: purchasing patterns, emotional triggers, behavior under pressure, and willingness to pay a little more.
University students live a parallel experience: their tastes, political ideas, insecurities, and aspirations are profiled from the content they consume and the interactions they leave behind. Over time, the system returns to a carefully tuned version of the world that confirms what it expects them to want. Identities, opinions, and routines are not imposed from above; they are co-produced by each user’s behavior and the system’s optimization logic.
In Esclavos del algoritmo, De Rivera shows how this process relies on a global infrastructure that is anything but immaterial: huge data centers, high energy consumption, and, behind many AI systems, underpaid human workers who label data and moderate harmful content. The apparent magic of personalization rests on very concrete economic and social costs.
The deepest warning in the book concerns what happens when people start to outsource their judgment. Every time someone accepts a recommendation without questioning it, whether it is a trending product, a “suggested for you” video, or a piece of “news” that appears at the top of their feed, they take a small step toward letting an opaque system decide what deserves their attention.
For SMEs and independent sellers, this can mean designing a business strategy not from their own vision or values, but from what “works well with the algorithm.” It is easy to slide from “I use the platforms” to “I shape everything I do, so the platforms reward me.” For students, the risk is intellectual: if something does not appear quickly on a search engine or does not go viral, it can start to feel irrelevant, no matter its real value.
De Rivera argues that genuine freedom is not something guaranteed by default in a digital society; it is something each person must learn to exercise consciously. Delegating judgment to platforms, she suggests, is equivalent to giving up a part of the inner freedom that defines us as human beings.
What, then, does resistance look like in a world saturated with digital stimuli? It is not about romantic isolation or rejecting technology altogether. For most people, professionals, students, entrepreneurs, disconnecting is neither realistic nor desirable. The challenge is to remain connected without being absorbed.
That resistance translates into habits and attitudes such as:
Resistance, in this sense, is less about technology and more about posture: choosing to stay mentally awake in environments that reward distraction.
In the era of the algorithm, autonomy is no longer just a philosophical ideal. It becomes a concrete form of dignity. To retain the ability to say “no,” to choose which information matters, to design a business or a career based on one’s own criteria rather than purely on platform metrics; these are acts of self-respect.
For entrepreneurs, small business owners, merchants, habitual sellers, and university students, this perspective changes the way they relate to digital tools. Technology can be a powerful ally: it can amplify a message, connect with customers, or open access to knowledge. But it must remain a tool, not an invisible master.
Laura G. de Rivera’s Esclavos del algoritmo. Manual de resistencia en la era de la inteligencia artificial offers a well-documented, accessible exploration of these issues and invites readers to reclaim their critical thinking in the face of increasingly intrusive systems.
Those who want to go deeper into her analysis can find more information about the book here: Esclavos del algoritmo: Manual de resistencia en la era de la inteligencia artificial.
In the end, the question that remains for every professional and student is simple but demanding: How much of my judgment am I willing to hand over to the platforms, and what am I prepared to do to keep my freedom of thought truly mine?
In twentieth-century political history, few narrative constructions have been studied as closely as the one woven by the Third Reich around Adolf Hitler. Historians would later name it the Hitler Myth: the elevation of a ruler who not only governed Germany but purported to embody it. This myth worked as a salvation tale; an exceptional hero confronting internal and external threats, promising restored order, pride, and future.
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This essay advances the following thesis: applying branding frameworks to totalitarian phenomena reveals both the power and the peril of identity coherence when severed from truth and ethics. Through a critical, third-person lens, it examines the public persona built around Adolf Hitler and the communication machinery of the Nazi regime, using John Toland’s historical biography alongside contemporary branding theory. The aim is practical and cautionary. For entrepreneurs, small-business owners, sales professionals, and university students, the case demonstrates how an impeccably consistent identity can mobilize and why that same consistency, unmoored from facts and moral limits, becomes socially destructive.
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One could say the ideal entrepreneur’s character emerges at the intersection of technical curiosity, respect for work, and an unshakable belief that quality opens markets. The story of José María Acevedo Alzate bears this out: with a correspondence course and a small workshop in Medellín in 1940, he turned scarcity into a springboard, discipline into a system, and vision into a company. His legacy —appliances in millions of homes and a brand exporting to more than twenty countries— shows that brand identity isn’t proclaimed; it is forged through daily decisions that align purpose, product, and people.
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