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The Social Dilemma

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Re: The Social Dilemma

#301

Post by aembleton »

amelius wrote: post #18
erentz wrote: post #5

I would like to see the ad driven model removed as an option. I think it would help. And I think there is a separate case to be made to end ad targeting for other (privacy) reasons. But while watching this I realized that wouldn’t be the entire solution. Social platforms would seemingly still be incentivized to drive up engagement and to keep users addicted to their platforms vs other platforms. So what are some othe…

Another solution is to break the network effect. Allow people to move to different (less intrusive) platforms without losing their contacts. For example, I would quit Facebook if "events" were public, and I could easily see which events my friends go to without logging in to Facebook, perhaps through some open protocol. I think universities should be more active in inventing secure, open protocols.

Would your friends be happy having which events they're attending to be made public? If not, how would Facebook know it was you requesting the information unless you log in?

Re: The Social Dilemma

#303

Post by ASlave2Gravity »

moksly wrote: post #281
codysc wrote: post #3

I just watched this last night. A lot of the content will already be well known to the HN audience. There was one big light-bulb moment for me. One of the speakers was clarifying the "If you're not paying then you are the product" idea. He refined it to, (rough quote), "Changes to your behavior and actions are the product" That distinction made the insidiousness much more clear than the former statement.

I work as en external examiner for various CS students, and in my country they do a couple of internships at real companies as part of their degree. At some point around five years ago, or perhaps a little before that, there started being psychology students on some of the courses. A trend that has since grown quite a bit, especially if you happen upon a group project involving mobile gaming. It’s something I would h…

Blimey, that's super interesting. The ad model needs to die IMHO. We need regulation from a super-national level if you ask me. Bitcoin should pay the way for a paid-for internet. Anything to get ads off the web.

Re: The Social Dilemma

#304

Post by rbanffy »

ForHackernews wrote: post #293
rbanffy wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies are not software. They are services. Services people engage with voluntarily. When you engage with a company, any company, you can be sure your incentives are not completely aligned. In the case of social networks, the misalignments are particularly troubling.

> These companies are not software. Oh whoops, you better tell Big Goog so they can stop paying all those expensive software engineers. I'm sorry but the apologist arguments on this thread are really laughable: "Nobody could have known!", "It's not software!", "Young teens can just voluntarily not use the software (sorry--"service") that all their friends are on!"

Are they selling you any software? I don't think so. They build and use software for their own goals. Your argument on open source doesn't really apply here.

Re: The Social Dilemma

#305

Post by hazz99 »

ricardo81 wrote: post #295

Nothing new in it for the HN crowd I suppose. For me, privacy is the core issue, though "free" is part of the problem. A social network charging a dollar a year wouldn't be great for investors but would essentially pay for itself. (As a Brit, I'd be more inclined to pay that dollar than the BBC license fee at ~170x the expense for all the "soft power" it has.). With the monetary dial removed, filter bubbles are still…

I don't remember where I saw this, but I remember reading something about each user costing Facebook about $8 a year due to all the complex DB querying they do.

That'd probably shrink if they didn't need targeted advertising, but a lot of the complex friend graphs might result in some hefty computation at scale.

Re: The Social Dilemma

#306

Post by sriku »

codysc wrote: post #3

I just watched this last night. A lot of the content will already be well known to the HN audience. There was one big light-bulb moment for me. One of the speakers was clarifying the "If you're not paying then you are the product" idea. He refined it to, (rough quote), "Changes to your behavior and actions are the product" That distinction made the insidiousness much more clear than the former statement.

Agree. That was a sharp observation by Jaron Lanier (father of VR?)

Re: The Social Dilemma

#307

Post by gfxgirl »

codysc wrote: post #3

I just watched this last night. A lot of the content will already be well known to the HN audience. There was one big light-bulb moment for me. One of the speakers was clarifying the "If you're not paying then you are the product" idea. He refined it to, (rough quote), "Changes to your behavior and actions are the product" That distinction made the insidiousness much more clear than the former statement.

not as catchy but much better than "If you're not paying then you are the product". Wikipedia free. Linux in all its flavors are free. Libre Office, Firefox, LLVM, gcc, python. Lots of things are I'm not paying and don't make me the product.

Re: The Social Dilemma

#308

Post by TeMPOraL »

shajznnckfke wrote: post #235
adamsea wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would reduce it all to atoms.

I’m just trying to take the ideas in this thread seriously. If we are going to argue that it’s bad to try to influence people’s behavior, we ought to think through what that means when applied to entities other than Facebook. That will help us figure out if we really mean what we are saying. Is it an actual value we hold, or only a rhetorical point when we are taking about a few tech companies?

Intent matters. Intent of 1:1 conversations between people is usually win-win, or at least win-neutral. Advertising beyond the point of informing that a product exists is exploitative; it's intent is very much win-lose.

Put another way: if your friend came to you and started manipulating and pressuring you the way ads do, for the reason ads do, they'd very quickly stop being your friend.

Re: The Social Dilemma

#309

Post by sriku »

gundmc wrote: post #17
codysc wrote: post #3

I just watched this last night. A lot of the content will already be well known to the HN audience. There was one big light-bulb moment for me. One of the speakers was clarifying the "If you're not paying then you are the product" idea. He refined it to, (rough quote), "Changes to your behavior and actions are the product" That distinction made the insidiousness much more clear than the former statement.

> "Changes to your behavior and actions..." Isn't this the definition (or goal) of all advertising? I don't see the connection to the first half of the statement tying it to free products and services. There are plenty of paid services that are riddled with ads as well. Movies, Cable TV, airline flights, etc. The fact is that people and organizations are _constantly_ trying to influence your behavior. It's not obviou…

The Jaron Lanier quote (with the first part paraphrased but the rest exact) is this -

"that we are the product being sold to advertisers is too simplistic. It is the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behaviour and perception that is the product."

Yes manipulation is also the goal of all advertising, however the power to manipulate is not mostly in the hands of advertisers. The platform owners wield tremendous power and can decide what gets shown when and what gets priority over what. It means their political leanings influence people whether or not those advertise on the platform. We've never had this kind of concentration of power over the collective mind I think.

Re: The Social Dilemma

#310

Post by ForHackernews »

rbanffy wrote: post #304
ForHackernews wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These companies are not software. Oh whoops, you better tell Big Goog so they can stop paying all those expensive software engineers. I'm sorry but the apologist arguments on this thread are really laughable: "Nobody could have known!", "It's not software!", "Young teens can just voluntarily not use the software (sorry--"service") that all their friends are on!"

Are they selling you any software? I don't think so. They build and use software for their own goals. Your argument on open source doesn't really apply here.

I'm not talking about "open source" (a corporate red herring) -- I'm talking about free software. Free software empowers users to "run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software."

Are any of those true of Facebook's software? Do you think these cloud companies could get away with the abuses that they do if users did have these key freedoms?

The problem of software that works for its owners, rather than its users, is not a new one. It's disingenuous to pretend you only built an exploitative panopticon by accident.

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