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Ask HN: What do you think about “The Social Dilemma”?

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Re: Ask HN: What do you think about “The Social Dilemma”?

#181

Post by chipotle_coyote »

Nasrudith wrote: post #121
otachack wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the main issues is regulation. With TV, government was able to regulate the content via FCC. The movie's example to this was Saturday morning cartoons compared to YouTube for Kids. The latter is very much self regulated by Google/YT and parents, rather than government which, given history, has the actual power to curb it. Giving the keys of regulation to the target of it is not the way to get it done. YT in th…

The reason to be hesistant is /because/ we saw how it was dealt with before! If we had the same godawful most self-righteous prude standards we would be censoring the very concept of LGBT people as "corrupting". It is no accident that acceptance's first step was from unregulated media who slipped through the crack and was able to laboriously crack and pry through the societal bullshit. Fuck the parents - they should…

What "unregulated media" do you feel was responsible for "acceptance's first step"? I'm not an expert on this by any stretch, but I've studied both media history and LGBT issues, and the shows that get cites most often for doing a shocking amount of work in shifting American attitudes toward LGBT folk were, well, regulated media. Specifically, the network sitcoms "Ellen" and "Will & Grace," with earlier tentative steps in "L.A. Law" and, in the late 1970s, "Soap."

While "unregulated media" may have become leading edge in LGBT presentation in the years since, it's also become leading edge in reactionary backlash, from Fox to internet media to the right-wing propaganda pushed by Sinclair Broadcasting to their local TV stations -- which in many markets they wouldn't have been able to own if local TV markets were still more tightly regulated.

I'm not suggesting regulation is a failsafe panacea by any stretch -- I'm just suggesting that deregulation isn't, either. There is probably a balance to be struck, and it is not at all clear to me that the balance we have now is correct.

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about “The Social Dilemma”?

#182

Post by dang »

Nasrudith wrote: post #126
neves wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The harms of social media are understated. I live in Brazil. Social media was one of the main reasons of the election of our president, Bolsonaro. Now we have more than 130.000 deaths from coronavirus, the Amazon and Pantanal are burning, our institutions are crumbling. My fellow software developers aren't just make some far way teenagers depressed. This is is real harm in the real world.

Have you considered that the root problem may be that a plurality of voting Brazilians are simply terrible people? Fascists rose before with radio and newspapers once and there wasn't any meaningful changes preventing the usage for such and yet they didn't reoccur indefinitely in the same nation. Stop blaming the tech and start blaming your countrymen for being awful people.

Nationalistic flamewar will get you banned here, so please don't post like this to HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about “The Social Dilemma”?

#183

Post by amelius »

rapnie wrote: post #35
newscracker wrote: post #8

Though there was hardly anything that I didn't already know , I liked the movie very much for its presentation that drove the point well to people who may not have understood how these platforms work, the privacy implications and the dangers therein. I've already recommended this movie to some more people. As for the cultural impact of the movie, I don't think it's going to be much. Cambridge Analytica had so much ne…

> Don't tell me that Mastodon and Mastodon clones can be replacements for Twitter, Facebook, Facebook groups, Facebook events, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, etc. Of course not. Because Mastodon is a federated microblogging service. As that it is a good alternative for Twitter. My Mastodon client has a better UX than twitter, no algorithmic feed, no ads, no trackers, no distracting recommendations, and - importantly -…

> My Mastodon client has (...) no trackers

Perhaps your client hasn't, but how do you know that others don't track you through their clients (or perhaps even bots)?

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about “The Social Dilemma”?

#184

Post by quickthrower2 »

nikivi wrote: post #2

I personally never understood the value of ads. I subconsciously turn off my brain and press skip whenever I encounter any kind of ad because I know it was made to influence me into doing an action (and I don't want to waste any mental energy in evaluating whether I am being tricked or not). And most ads are bad: https://twitter.com/JonErlichman/status/1304793136494006272 So to me the whole thing simply doesn't make…

I think it’s worth being humble and admit that it is possible for ads to work on you, even if you think not.

Here are some examples:

For mass consumer products. Let’s say a smartphone. If an ad is shown every day you may not click it but now that smart phone might be in the list of brands you’d subconsciously consider.

Other ads are more direct I see a lot of start business ads that are very compelling. I ignore them or watch them out of interest in HOW the ad persuades and I can see why people would click them. They often offer a free thing that seems quite valuable to prove themselves which is a marketing tactic as old as the hills.

There are probably lots of other examples. Ads are powerful and it’s not hard to understand how they work. The human brain is a great ad blocker in general but it’s imperfect enough that the EPM of ads makes it still worthwhile and evidenced by how hard it is to pay less than a $1 a click most places.

So know your enemy! ;)

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about “The Social Dilemma”?

#185

Post by ses1984 »

timeuser wrote: post #177
ses1984 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're underestimating the power of algorithmic manipulation. Take a simple ecommerce AB test as a starting point. Should our shopping cart look like A or B? Apply Bayes theorem and it doesn't take that long to gather evidence that A increases conversions by 1%. Now replace the simple AB test with a multi armed bandit. Now run the multi armed bandit continuously across all social media platforms and keep twea…

I understand what you are saying and agree that algorithmic manipulation is a problem. I think it's very profitable for these companies and people can be manipulated by it. I still think it's a small aspect of the problems of the network & scale of information access/publishing which are leading to conspiracy content and mob amplification. Problems which exist even without algorithmic manipulation being involved. At…

Algorithmic manipulation happens on platforms outside of social media, it's just slower.

Anyway algorithmic manipulation isn't limited to just facebook, the data that enables it is generated on many other platforms.

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about “The Social Dilemma”?

#186

Post by PeterisP »

shuntress wrote: post #151
trabant00 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While I've been enraged for a long time about these platforms, the big gap here is that there is no good answer to the question, "what are the better alternatives?" This assumes we want something to replace these platforms. I for one want no social media. I admit I can't prove they are damaging no matter the implementation but I challenge anybody to prove the contrary.

"social media" doesn't have to mean "wall-to-wall influencers and hyper-targeted bad-faith political ads disguised as individual opinion". The original promise (a more convenient+reliable way to contact infrequent acquaintances, plan events, read/report local events, and broadcast personal updates) is certainly something worth having.

IMHO social media has a natural tendency to mean "wall-to-wall influencers and hyper-targeted bad-faith political ads disguised as individual opinion". If you build it, they will come - there's a strong practical motivation for these people to try and be there in any social medium that gets popular.

In the absence of a strong mechanism to actively, effectively keep them out or kick them out (what would that be? It's not easy) social media will become like that unless that's a niche platform that almost nobody uses, so all the influencers and political ads don't care because they are somewhere else - but they will follow the eyeballs wherever they go.

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about “The Social Dilemma”?

#187

Post by glitchdout »

I wish they had presented more solutions. The way I see it, infinite scroll feeds generated by algorithms should be outlawed. Same with Like counts. (It seems Instagram has begun testing this https://techcrunch.com/2019/11/14/instagram-private-like-cou...)

Facebook wasn't that bad when you had to visit each person's wall or when the feed was in chronological order.

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about “The Social Dilemma”?

#188

Post by merpnderp »

diob wrote: post #91
blueterminal wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These apps are absolutely addictive because they were explicitly and intentionally designed to be. Same goes with fast food, TV shows etc. It's your responsibility to not over-consume anything; and if you have children, teach them to not do that as well. The problem is not with FB, Google etc. The problem (which is over-consumption of everything) is cultural. Blaming some specific corporations is easy but it won't…

Speaking as someone who came from a rather colorful childhood of abuse, I'm wondering what your personal past is? You're assuming so much about the lives that folks lead, and to me it speaks of a lack of empathy for the personal struggles each individual is enduring. Stoicism will fix things in the west? I assume you mean the USA, but as a person in the USA, I have to say that we are about as stoic as you can get. We…

It's not just an argument about stoicism vs empathy, but freedom vs control. How much paternalism do you want from your politicians? How much control over your daily routine do you want to give some barely accountable millionaire legislator/governor/president who's loyalties are only to you based on how many votes their donors can buy (the rate differs greatly depending on the politician). The more effectively money buys their votes, the less they give a crap about you.

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about “The Social Dilemma”?

#189

Post by intended »

fellellor wrote: post #133
neves wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The harms of social media are understated. I live in Brazil. Social media was one of the main reasons of the election of our president, Bolsonaro. Now we have more than 130.000 deaths from coronavirus, the Amazon and Pantanal are burning, our institutions are crumbling. My fellow software developers aren't just make some far way teenagers depressed. This is is real harm in the real world.

Most systems won’t change overnight because of the guy on top. What makes you so sure Brazil would have done better with the opposing party candidate as president? Maybe the problem lies in a supposedly chronically underfunded healthcare system, by a number of previous administrations? This would then reflect, in an electoral democracy, of the citizenry’s misplaced priorities.

Most systems get built over time to be better.

Every crack pot on top harms the structure, until eventually One Guy does break the system.

Now if people want this outcome, its great. If you don;t want this outcome, its not.

Re: Ask HN: What do you think about “The Social Dilemma”?

#190

Post by elorant »

I doubt this will have the impact we wish it could have. Best case scenario some people with moderate the number of notifications they receive. Other than that I can't see anyone deleting their accounts because social media are so much interwoven into their everyday life.
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