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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”?

#81

Post by jayspell »

blueterminal wrote: post #51
skummetmaelk wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good old personal responsibility. It's your responsibility not to walk into traps laid out to catch you. Why stop people from laying out the traps? They're just trying to make a living, it's perfectly fine!

What do you propose to solve this problem besides teaching others to take personal responsibility?

Not the original poster - just replying with some ideas...

I would purpose that Google in particular be broken into many different companies. The fact that they own such a large part of mobile, browser, search, video, email, news aggregation, online office products is hugely problematic. I believe one of the issues that was not highlighted is the overall reach of these companies, they focus in on the mobile aspect, but there are huge swathes of data being collected via other means. Search in particular should not have a bias in the autocomplete - search should be agnostic, like Wikipedia. When I search it should show the same results as when you search. Next there should be a requirement that these companies provide access to a users data back to them, along with the analytical output that creates their digital avatar. There should be the ability to FULLY delete the data per a request. Next there should be a requirement that the sites provide ability to utilize their services with browser anonymity enabled. Much of the data leakage is harvested automatically from the mobile device or browser, the ability to slow the trickle of information should be required by law. Perhaps a requirement that a price that an advertiser paid for each ad should show up, and an opportunity for the user to opt-out and pay for the service instead at the same rates in truly anonymized fashion. More extreme options - restrictions on access based on age, we do this for cigarettes and alcohol, perhaps this should be applied to social media as well. Perhaps there should be a throttle on data gathering or hard limits placed on how much data can be pulled in and kept. Require maximum data retention periods on this data to make the models dumber. We have data retention periods set for health data - why not restrict it for social media.

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

#82

Post by Dumblydorr »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #78
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…

>> but I'm sadly not very optimistic about big changes in the next decade or so. Yeah. I liked it a lot as well, even though there was nothing new. This documentary is like walking into a crack house and saying "Hey guys! I've got this great PowerPoint presentation on how bad crack is for you!" Nice idea, I guess, but there's no reason at all I would think it has a chance of accomplishing anything. These efforts appe…

I quit FB 5 years ago due to a couple other friends quitting and explaining their reasoning. If .1% of FB or Twitter users delete after this film, I'd say it's still a win.

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

#83

Post by vorpalhex »

auganov wrote: post #74
rapnie wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 -…

> Much less risk to be de-platformed from your favorite walled-garden for obscure reasons. Federation does absolutely nothing for this. The risk is probably even higher given how small most of these instances are. Much more likely to run into an admin/moderator.

In the fediverse, you're more likely be able to say "Hey Lisa, why did you ban me?" than you can get into contact with the Youtube/Facebook/etc forces that be.

That may or may not be better because your admin may respond "Well because I think you're a jerk and disagree with your political views" but at least you can migrate to a new instance still instead of just being banned for all eternity.

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

#84

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

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 -…

I'm not sure I agree there's less deplatforming risk. It's structurally harder to be completely excluded from the network, since each instance has its own banlist, but that won't be of much comfort if you're banned from the instance with all your friends in it.

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

#85

Post by eivarv »

Just about nothing new wrt content.

I remember I kept thinking how naive, imaginationless and without knowledge of history these people must be if they genuinely never thought critically about what they were doing – if no one ever saw any potential for abuse.

That, and the fact that they kept pushing unfounded conclusions, like correlation between diagnosed mental issues and appearence of social media allegedly pointing to a causative relationship; alleging that this thing is so "new" and "different" from any other tool that has played on weaknesses inherent in the human mind that we just can't deal with it, etc.

I tend to think proper education, including critical thinking skills (including logic and cognitive biases), critique of media, etc., as well as defining privacy clearer as a human right (including explicitly stating that data subjects own data about themselves) and enforcing this hard will solve many problems.

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

#86

Post by hef19898 »

The funny thing is, i always wondered how it would have been to live in the 30s. Mass media, populist movements and all of that. I kind of get it now. Social Media is the new mass media And as the last time something similar happened, smart populists used it to their advantage, industry supplied the tools and we all know how it happened. Not saying we are heading the same way just yet, but the possibility exists.

One could have propably made the same documentary about radio and TV like 80 to a 100 years ago. Just watching the film now, thanks for posting this question, I could have missed it otherwise.

EDIT: The guy having invented the LIKE-button is right up there with the guy having invented FCKW. Not that he had any bad intentions. Which worries me, that when a group of people with good intentions is doing good things can create easily exploited, dangerous things in the wrong peoples hands.

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

#87

Post by DanielBMarkham »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #82
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> but I'm sadly not very optimistic about big changes in the next decade or so. Yeah. I liked it a lot as well, even though there was nothing new. This documentary is like walking into a crack house and saying "Hey guys! I've got this great PowerPoint presentation on how bad crack is for you!" Nice idea, I guess, but there's no reason at all I would think it has a chance of accomplishing anything. These efforts appe…

I quit FB 5 years ago due to a couple other friends quitting and explaining their reasoning. If .1% of FB or Twitter users delete after this film, I'd say it's still a win.

Agreed.

If nothing else, this makes for a great explainer video. Find somebody who needs to know it and show it to them. The key problem is that 99.9% of folks even when they understand the problem can't fix it.

Having said that, knowing beats not-knowing. There is good here.

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

#88

Post by [deleted] »

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 -…

[deleted]

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

#89

Post by mensetmanusman »

hef19898 wrote: post #86

The funny thing is, i always wondered how it would have been to live in the 30s. Mass media, populist movements and all of that. I kind of get it now. Social Media is the new mass media And as the last time something similar happened, smart populists used it to their advantage, industry supplied the tools and we all know how it happened. Not saying we are heading the same way just yet, but the possibility exists. One…

Over 100 years ago.

Read the first paragraph from this famous document from 1891 to get a taste of the concern:

https://www.papalencyclicals.net/leo13/l13rerum.htm

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

#90

Post by avgDev »

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 feel the same. Oddly enough my wife is in marketing and looks at every billboard we pass. She sometimes mentions it and I'm like what billboard because I hardly notice them.

When it comes to online ads, if I get a very annoying ad or a pop up on stores website, I'm out and taking my money elsewhere. I also generally try to seek real world reviews but it is hard. So many youtube videos, bloggers and even comments are just paid advertisement, it sucks.

I remember early days of the internet when the information was decent before the MBAs figured out how much money could be made from it.

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