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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”?

#151

Post by shuntress »

trabant00 wrote: post #13
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…

> 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.

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

#152

Post by fluffernutter »

egypturnash wrote: post #101
auganov wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I run a small instance and I don't think this applies. New signups are closed on my instance, and the only way to get on is for you to ask me for an invitation, or for a friend of yours who's on the instance to ask for you. If you look like someone who I'd be likely to kick off my instance, I won't let you on in the first place . It's a private garden that I let my friends hang out in, not a public park where I have…

> But no other instance is obligated to listen to you.

So deleting DNS solves this for the Internet?

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

#153

Post by teawrecks »

auganov wrote: post #92
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.

If you want to keep your followers you'd need to migrate before they ban you. But yes, I guess you can start over somewhere else while on big ones you're out forever. So in that sense I guess it is a tiny improvement. But if most of your followers were concentrated on server[s] that don't like you, you may not be able to reach them anymore.

And if they don't agree with the censorship on their instance, they are free to migrate too.

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

#154

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

messo wrote: post #120
koolhead17 wrote: post #114

Why was Netflix not there? How are they different from other addictive platforms?

Netflix is also guilty of using algorithms to recommend content, but to be fair, they do not gather nearly as much data on your behavior and life in general as i.e. Google and Facebook/Insta/WhatsApp. They also have different incentives as all of their users are actually paying for their product, and are not shown ads to the same extent (only product placements in movies as far as I know).

Funny enough, of all the platforms I take part in (Facebook, twitter, reddit), Netflix is the one the one with the most notifications and emails. I imagine that's simply because I don't find them as offensive as the others so I haven't neutered them yet.

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

#155

Post by dsanchez97 »

Like a lot of other people that replied, I enjoyed the documentary because it provided the information in a more accessible way. I think the documentary does a good job explaining the current harms of these companies, but I think the problem can be viewed more clearly through the lens of externalities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality). As discussed in the film, these companies curated feeds are shaping peoples realities and creating a more divided society. Like with most externalities, the way to account for this cost is through regulation. I think that a tax that increases exponentially with each ad served (over a certain period of time and then it resets) would be an interesting idea that could adjust the business model to not optimize for addictive behavior.

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

#156

Post by input_sh »

MrGilbert wrote: post #147
auganov wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to keep your followers you'd need to migrate before they ban you. But yes, I guess you can start over somewhere else while on big ones you're out forever. So in that sense I guess it is a tiny improvement. But if most of your followers were concentrated on server[s] that don't like you, you may not be able to reach them anymore.

If your followers are "real" followers, and if you are important to them, they'll get in touch outside the fed and will know where to find you. Maybe that's what we should strive for. I have 200+ followers on Twitter, but if you ask me, I can only name 15 with real, social interaction. And I think that's great.

I second this. While I foolishly didn't export the list of people I was following when I've decided to shut down my own instance and just use an already established one, I've seen other people switching between instances without really losing much in terms of interactions.

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

#157

Post by mensetmanusman »

It should be called something else besides ‘the social dilemma’ because Netflix also does this to make sure people watch nonsense as much as possible as well...

every company hiring the best algorithm developers want people to spend as much time as possible on their ‘thing’

not sure what to call this though...

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

#158

Post by mawise »

motohagiography wrote: post #53
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…

While many of us (technologists) were unsurprised, is there any reaction from friends and relatives who say, "wait, you knew about this and you didn't say anything?" This doc is way less dramatic, but when the Snowden leaks happened I responded to people with, "what parts of this could I have told you about that you would have believed if you hadn't seen it in the news?" Reality is, most people are more afraid of bei…

> Reality is, most people are more afraid of being thought of as an outsider than any conceivable consequence that befalls their perceived in-group

I think that very nicely sums up the problem. Very few people are willing to socially isolate themselves this way. I've been working on an open-source self-hosted private blogging platform[1] that I have visions of being a facebook replacement, but the truth is very few people want to tell their friends: "follow me on this website I built with these separate login credentials". Reminds me of stories I read on here about middle school kids being ostracized for sending text messages without iMessage and showing up as a "green bubble"

[1] https://simpleblogs.org

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

#159

Post by input_sh »

messo wrote: post #58
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. It has been for me. But I am very aware that the fediverse is far from ready to capture the large masses currently using all the regular social networks. And that's fine, if the fediverse were growing at the same rate as VC-funded, growth-hacked social media…

I feel like pointing out that the fediverse isn't really growing at any significant rate. Looking through some pretty-rudimentary-but-best-we-can-get stats (https://the-federation.info/), the number of users active in the last month hasn't really changed compared to a year ago, remaining steadily at 400k-500k.

I personally find that slightly demoralising, but as someone already pointed out, there are fediverse platforms that are inches away from being usable (Lemmy, Mobilizon, Zap, Epicyon).

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

#160

Post by hef19898 »

lefrenchy wrote: post #116
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…

I’ve often thought about this too, I think the printing press is a similar time to examine as well [1]. I do think the internet provides an entirely new scale, the dissemination is global and instantaneous, and that makes the previous problems that much more explosive and harder to contain. [1]: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/01/before-...

Yeah, scale and speed are maybe the worst part compared to other periods of the past. Ways to manipulate the masses have always made some extremely powerful. Religion and church in medieval Europe for example.

Ultimately, we will figure it out. We found ways to cope, as societies, with mass media, radio, TV and so on. We will with social media as well. I'm just a tad worried about the way we have to pass to figure it out and what might go horribly wrong along that way.

EDIT: They lost me a little bit on the AI scare part. Up to now, we talking about ultra-complex algorithms. The kind of algorithms that screwed up Wall Street. Hard to understand, sure. But still "stupid" algorithms. Difference between Wall Street and Social Media? Wall Street has a public, closely monitored, public real time KPI to measure, indirectly, what the algorithms do. Social Media has no such thing.

Oh, and we should read up on Goebbels theories on propaganda. The principles still apply, just the scale is so much bigger. The algorithms have no intentions yet. People using these algorithms do. And we have to find a way, as societies, to cope with that.

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