UKH

Anyone seen this yet ?

The same social media which connects us ...

also divides us, cons us, manipulates us 

with a focus on facebook

https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/

I think it was more towards Instagram. Facebook doesn’t send me random messages about people who like something that I might want to connect to. 
 

I’ve been running a Facebook page for 4 years now and the ability to abuse targeted ads is very scary. 
 

It’s not the platforms themselves it’s the people who use them. There needs to be some harsh penalties for people serving politics to people using targeted ads. 

Isn’t that the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” argument that the NRA uses?

Guns were designed to kill people. 
 

Social media was designed to connect people not create division. 

I think it's pretty fair to say that pretty much everything Farcebook has done since Sandberg joined has been aimed at building a platform that enables the type of manipulation that we saw in the US in 2016.

I'm not disagreeing that there should be strict penalties for people who interfere with the democratic process, but it's not OK for Facebook to hide behind this connecting people mantra when they have purposely built and profited immensly from a platform that is designed to enable that type of manipulation.

It’s not just the democratic process. I don’t know if you’ve watched the film. 
 

They all make their money through advertising. Companies that advertise on TV have to stick to a code. The internet should be no different. 

... and the architects of intention; the results are in-disociable. Connection to our mates across a digital platform also connects us to the algorithm, the database, and so on back to the newsfeed with it's sponsored posts and accompanying ads, plus the gaming-machine sideshow of 'whistles and bells'.

I like to believe I'm aware of everything fb throws at me. I'm too smart to be tricked. But not smart enough to disactivate my account :/

In theory yes but now it is primarily about making money.

Division being a good way to make cash.

Saw it last week; everything it says it says in the first 5 minutes, and that's nothing we all haven't heard 5 years ago. Yes, yes the consumer is the product, it's been that way since radio.

I thought is was a a mildly hysterical update for the snowflake mentality that takes an emotive view on social change, but if that's what 25 year olds listen to then so be it. A lot of indie sound track, cool geeks that mirror the ideal audience and a nice middle class acted scenario that was ridiculous; average teen to accidental radical in five easy steps. Reminded me of anti-LSD propaganda from the 60s like Go Ask Alice with some allusions to The Matrix. One should consider this is shown on Netflix so it's effectively the perpetrators image of the matter and as impartial as one could expect from that. 

It's incredibly contained to suburban American culture and had no mention of the bulk of SM users who are the developing world masses and the companies that harvest their behavior for things more dubious than Apple ever will. Personalityless urban teenagers getting influenced is hardly the vanguard of the strange ways SM plays out.

Something I did like - and felt they could have devoted the entire documentary to rather than squeeze over the last 5 minutes - was ways to reduce the grip SM can have on someone. Again, nothing special, but then maybe that's the point.

I'm afraid not. In full knowledge of what fb has recently been censoring. In full knowledge of my fringe interests and what I re-post. Blatant attempts to steer me back to mainstream or approved media sources. 

edit: contingency tactic - distraction with meaningless clickbait entertainment

This. They want your participation - frequently. Even if it's only for data collection.

All true, all potentially very worrying at the macro level. One telling trend amongst social media execs, is how many of them won't let their kids anywhere near social media and closely monitor their offsprings computer use. My own kids do have access and if we didn't ration their screen time they'd be glued to their devices every waking hour. Anecdotally, a recent conversation with our optician revealed an apparent spike in kids needing glasses, something she put down to the amount of time staring at smart phones over lockdown. Powerfully addictive with the potential to influence all kinds of attitudes and behaviour.

I still like Facebook but simply use it as a digital scrapbook for friends and family. A way to stay involved in the lives of those close to me, even if we're a long way apart geographically. As a rule, I don't post political stuff, I don't repost other's content and I don't engage with friends feeds that are made up of endless political content that's been written by someone else, or worse, constant mawkish 'motivational' bollocks. I don't read the ads, don't follow anyone and have a total of 3 FB friends that I don't know in real life. 

I've no idea if this is enough to keep me free of FB overly influencing my life, but as far as I can tell, the overall effect has been more benign than malign.

I haven't seen the program yet, but listened to a lot of interesting people over the years like Tristan Harris and Rennee DiResta who have a lot to say, plus I've worked in digital marketing for 20 years so have seen the evolution of those platforms and how they're exploited.

In reply to DancingOnRock:

True, but that was a long time ago and now they're all listed companies with shareholders, their primary aim is to deliver on that shareholder investment by generating cash.

The primary objective is to keep the user engaged (maximise time on screen) so that they will see more revenue-generating ads. The best way to keep someone engaged is to either outrage them or trigger their serotonin response.

Their algorithms will continuously nudge you towards 'engaging' content - this is usually the more inflammatory or contentious. Like a bad child that just wants attention and doesn't care if its good or bad, if social media is getting your attention, it will keep channeling you down that path. That's why you can easily start out on Pepa pig on YouTube and quickly end up on far right extremist content just by following the recommendations.

There's also no end. The 'infinite scroll' was invented in the late noughties so that the user experience is no longer disrupted by something as mundane as switching pages. This makes it easy to kill time and harder to disengage as there's always something else down the page.

Do you ever notice how the little red dot that indicates likes or notifications takes a second to arrive, and isn't their instantly with the rest of the page? That's not slow loading, that's done deliberately to build a sense of anticipation, triggering the reward-response in the brain and building an essentially addictive connection.

The same with reloading/refresh. On your phone, the fact that pulling down the screen and seeing everything reload is similar to pulling down a slot machine lever is not coincidental - its just another mechanic to drive behaviour to continually seek out new experiences without leaving the walls of the platform.

So I don't think platforms are to blame for the misinformation around Brexit/Trump/Gilet Jaunes and all the sinister stuff - it's just that content promoting the nasty side of life tends to illicit the kinds of responses that are valuable to social media companies in their question for advertising revenue. If we could find a way of rewarding more constructive content, and making it valuable to advertisers, the future of social media might look more positive.

Have you seen The Great Hack? It does a great job of detailing the way nefarious forces were able to use social media to target potential swing voters in marginal constituencies/states with surgical precision, bombarding them with propaganda and making a real world impact at the ballet box. Cambridge Analytica were painted as the bad guys but the social media companies were just as complicit.

The problem with The Social Dilemma, for me, was that it was too broad in scope. Attempts to use social media for political persuasion need to be examined in isolation. We hear lots of complaints these days about the 'biased main stream media', but we can at least all buy these news papers etc. and scrutinise them. We are largely blind to what is happening on other people's SM feeds which is the really scary thing.

I agree that social media's pursuit of user attention can have a very negative impact on the individual, but like I say, this should be considered separately. 

It's worth remembering that Facebook originated as a way to let guys rate the hotness of their female classmates. It's built on a rotten core, but it's the monetization model they bolted on that really does the damage at both a micro and macro level.

MySpace was social media's high point.

Saying SM was ever designed to connect people is like saying McDonalds is there to sell hamburgers. Neither is, they are there for profit and connecting people or hamburgers is just the way they do that.

I saw it last night. It was good in parts but the dramatisations were fairly awful. It could have been a lot more interesting. There was a section about Myanmar and the role facebook played in whipping up anti rohingya feelings that was pretty sobering. I wonder if at some point a paid for social media platform will arise without ads.

These will be belated efforts to limit the spread of fake news and conspiracy theories..... they are now trying to to avoid the sort of regulation The Social Dilemma project/Movement for Humane Tech advocate.

Its fantastic. 

In fact we must not talk of the sites (fb, instagram) in isolation - the portable platform makes a huge difference. A session at the casino is compelling; sitting down with your desktop too - but in both cases you quit out and leave it behind to get things done.

For us of the older generation most of this is manageable - we've already learned some discipline; but a league harder for kids who have grown up with the 'digital dummy'

I'm lucky on that one. I use an older apple desktop which crashes (the browser) after a lot of scrolling. A more definitive result when I accidentally hit alt-(R/L arrow) which locks the whole computer! 

I suppose it's like arguing the advantages of a car that breaks down

I've often wondered why infinite scrolling was invented. It is such a nasty UI/UX. Now I know it is to keep people on their screens.

It's obviously trying to keep you away from alt-right websites...