Joe Rogan sat down with Harvard professor and mind control expert Rebecca Lemov, and it didn’t take long for the conversation to dive into one of his favorite topics: government interference in our digital lives.

Rogan opened the conversation by saying, “There are so many different kinds of mind control.”

“One of the things we’ve talked about a lot on this podcast is, that an enormous percentage of what you’re seeing on social media in terms of interactions and debate is not real. It’s not organic,” he explained.

Lemov picked up on that point and took it further. Even when people know something is fake, she explained, our brains still react as if it were real.

“Yeah. I mean, I think even on a basic level, people, it’s known and studies have shown that we respond as if it were organic and real,” she said.

It’s not just governments pulling the strings, she warned. The platforms themselves are designed to influence how we feel.

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.”

Joe Rogan’s conversation with Harvard professor and mind control expert Rebecca Lemov quickly zeroed in on one of his favorite topics: government interference in digital life. Rogan opened the door with a warning that’s become all too familiar. “Well, there’s so many different… pic.twitter.com/XLqekbJL74

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) May 15, 2025

Lemov peeled back the curtain on DARPA, the government’s controversial defense research agency, and its hidden role in shaping the digital world we now live in.

DARPA, she revealed, wasn’t just involved in building the internet–it may have helped lay the foundation for emotional manipulation on a global scale.

But what concerned her most wasn’t just the technology–it was how that technology is being used.

She continued, “But more about how you feel about what you think.”

That emotional shift, she said, mirrors the exact tactics used in cults.

Lemov peeled back the curtain on DARPA–the government’s controversial defense research agency–and its role in shaping the digital world we now live in. DARPA, she revealed, wasn’t just involved in building the internet. It may have laid the groundwork for emotional manipulation… pic.twitter.com/C3HvnZ6a67

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) May 15, 2025

That’s when Lemov dropped one of the darkest revelations in Big Tech history–a secret Facebook experiment that quietly manipulated the emotions of nearly 700,000 users.

And the users had no idea it was happening.

Lemov told Rogan.

She explained how Facebook altered people’s newsfeeds without their knowledge or consent.

“Whenever you go on the platform, you agree to be tested or AB testing. So this experiment exposed a group to a more–their newsfeed was altered in a negative direction emotionally, as measured by word counting software,” she said.

The results, she added, were deeply unsettling.

In other words, Facebook wasn’t just studying emotions–they were actively shaping them.

And no one was ever warned.

That’s when Lemov exposed one of the darkest secrets in Big Tech history–a sinister Facebook experiment that quietly tampered with the emotions of 700,000 users. And they never even knew it. “There’s a famous Facebook experiment I read about that took place in 2012 and was… pic.twitter.com/LLQVXh2IV5

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) May 15, 2025

The full scope of the experiment didn’t come to light until two years later, when researchers finally admitted what they had done.

Facebook’s data scientists had quietly manipulated the feeds of 689,003 users–removing either all the positive posts or all the negative ones to observe the emotional fallout.

If your newsfeed felt unusually bleak or suspiciously upbeat in January 2012, there’s a chance you were part of it–and never knew.

The team behind the study, led by data scientist Adam Kramer, eventually published their findings in a scientific journal and spelled out the results in cold, clinical detail:

It was undeniable proof: emotions are contagious–and social media could be weaponized to manipulate mood at scale.

The experiment lasted just one week, but for those caught in the algorithm’s net, the emotional ripple effects may have lingered far longer.

Things took a disturbing turn after Lemov explained that when the experiment was finally made public, the backlash was immediate–and in some cases, heartbreaking.

She recalled one particularly chilling response from a user who reached out directly to the research team.

“And on the Facebook page of the research group that did the experiment, at least one user wrote in saying, ‘Could I ever find out if I was in that experiment? Because I was in the emergency room at that time with, you know, threatening to commit suicide, and I want to know if my feed was altered and maybe that pushed me over into that state.”

But there was no way to trace it.

“Of course, they could never know, and it can’t be traced backwards. And other people had a similar response,” Lemov said.

The revelations were serious enough to spark an investigation by the British government, which considered sanctions due to the international reach of the experiment.

But in the end, no one was held accountable.

No punishment. No warnings. No transparency.

And the question still hangs in the air: how many more experiments are happening right now, hidden in plain sight?

But here’s where it gets truly disturbing. Lemov revealed that when the experiment finally came to light, the backlash was swift–and in some cases, tragic. “But, so this is why there was an ethical debate when the experiment was published in 2014,” she said. One user, Lemov… pic.twitter.com/l96zLAlOTc

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) May 15, 2025

Watch the full conversation below:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/qDkHCaNAo_w?feature=oembed

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