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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”?

#121

Post by Nasrudith »

otachack wrote: post #54
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…

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 be adults and taking responsibility for their life's direction if they have kids.

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

#122

Post by TeaDrunk »

blueterminal wrote: post #36
save_ferris wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The fact that people spend lots of time on social media just demonstrates that they derive something from it, not that it’s addictive or harmful. I was totally with you until this moment. This is like arguing that people with alcoholism get something out of drinking too much. It’s one thing to say that you’re comfortable with the amount of information that’s collected about you and how it’s used, but how can you ig…

> 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…

This is an utterly unscientific and healthcare ignorant view on the level of "spirits cause tuberculosis". Science and medicine have long past moved from the model of personal responsibility in treating addiction behavior. We now know that a wide variety of factors completely out of control of the user, such as trauma in childhood, genetic influence, isolation, depression, etc. contribute to someone's tendency to become addicted to something.

Additionally, we also know that it is possible to make something addictive by spacing out dopamine hits in such a way that can be designed to cause a person to pursue this over other necessary duties. Pairing this with people who are more vulnerable to addiction through no factors they could've possibly controlled essentially takes advantage of people.

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

#123

Post by messo »

partiallypro wrote: post #73

I think the presentation was kind of silly to be honest. I liked the talking to experts, etc...but when they had dramatizations it felt so forced and silly.

It is a bit silly, but at the same time an effective way to illustrate some very technical concepts to non-techies. Judging from the response I got from my partner, it did the trick.

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

#124

Post by Nasrudith »

mthoms wrote: post #110
alexmingoia wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spend lots of time reading. Is reading an addiction? I don’t think spending time on something is necessarily an addiction. Can social media be an addiction? Sure, in the same way videgames can be an addiction. I wouldn’t go as far as saying video games are harmful. Social media is also different in that it’s a means of communication. It does have utility for communicating whereas video games or drinking doesn’t.

Is the book dynamically changing its content based on what it knows about your psychological profile in order to influence your beliefs and behaviours?

The deck of cards isn't changing its contents and yet gambling is an addiction. And if influncing behavior is such a sin why are you speaking? Don't you knoe that could influnce beliefs and behaviors?!

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

#125

Post by intended »

soylentcola wrote: post #93
vorpalhex wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I guess the questions this raises next for me are: Would this scale if a given instance somehow gained the level of adoption people seem to value in a Twitter or a Facebook? It seems to me that the major draw and reason people stay on those services is the fact that they can communicate with essentially everyone in one place. Also, to follow the first question, given that a major (if not the only) draw for most users…

I agree. The issue with social media isn't the tech, its the people and its power structures forming over social networks.

This whole thing, social media, derives from 2 types of issues: Errors/Flaws in natural thinking, and malignant hacking of brains.

The second will always arise when you have more than 100 people in a group, and said group has some non trivial impact on voting patterns.

At that point, this group is like a unprotected bank account - which will be hacked.

The normal response is to protect this account and to target hackers - but current social thought (excluding China) has huge issues when it comes to censoring speech - and especially political speech.

Add to it layers of additional complexity, (political parties can abuse the laws and say they are being unfairly censored), and the distance between this solution and the underlying human problems seems equidistant as that of current Social media and the same problems.

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

#126

Post by Nasrudith »

neves wrote: post #49
alxmng wrote: post #28

I think what I think about docudramas in general: Hyperbolic. I think the harms of social media are exaggerated, and not entirely unique to social media. I don’t have a problem with Facebook knowing what content I interact with and using that to serve me ads, or content that I want to spend time consuming. I don’t agree with the characterization of publishing or volunteering information (likes, posting photos, profil…

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.

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

#127

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#128

Post by intended »

I think movie will be pretty major, since it summarizes many points that people following it "know", but in one place. I essentially live and breathe this stuff at this point, and yet it is ridiculously hard to talk about.

You can see it in the start of the show - when people are asked what the problem is. Everyone's brains just stall with the scope and challenge of putting it into words.

It is great at explaining concepts and problems to people, which are very hard to discuss just using conversation.

I was discussing polairzation increasing since the year 2000, and the implications of that with someone. It took me almost an hour of discussion, to get an acknowledgement of the possibility.

One look at the Social Dilemma's animation on polarization trends over time? Never have to make that argument again.

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

#129

Post by Nasrudith »

nyxtom wrote: post #113

Social media is this generation's smoking issue. One of the predictions made in this movie was that humanity will not be able to survive if we continue to be blinded by our own willful ignorance due to these addicting sources. I think they hit the nail on the head that ultimately the goals of the platforms are at odds with your own intrinsic goals and the goals at large for society. Something is going to have to chan…

Believing willful ignorance is due to any external X is itself willful ignorance. We have it documented in the bronze age with Philosophers.

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

#130

Post by fellellor »

I couldn’t help but thinking of the movie/documentary itself as an act of manipulation and an attempt to distract from the real issue.

The real problem is the way big venture capital is funding these companies. Allowing them to become so big, while suppressing all competition in order to concentrate profits. This is what has made these companies into the monsters they are now. In this era of big tech focus has shifted, IMO, from creating and implementing fair and simple common standards to , among other things, walled gardens and egregious bullshit wherein people don’t even own most things they’re paying for.

The act of manipulating others into situations that are favourable to yourself is not something new and has probably been practiced for centuries. The documentary, which I admittedly couldn’t force myself to finish, seemed to gloss over the big money aspect to focus (in the most cringe way) on the psychological manipulation aspect, which made its insights unoriginal and shallow.

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