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Nearly a third of social media research has undisclosed ties to industry

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Re: Nearly a third of social media research has undisclosed ties to industry

#31

Post by cortesoft »

shimman wrote: post #15
terminalshort wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What counts as research? If I make UI changes, I guess it's ok to roll it out to everyone, because that's not an experiment, but if I roll it out to 1%, then that's research? If I own two stores and decide to redecorate one and see if sales increase vs the other store, do I need government approval? Also I would like an example of something a social media company does that you wouldn't be able to get approval to do o…

Are you being serious right now or just engaging in "asking questions" to suppress others thoughts? Why are these types of comments so common on this site? No obviously we aren't in fact talking about making basic code changes, but maybe if those changes are being consistently done that clearly show users getting more depressed or alienated it should be questioned more and finally regulated. Fun fact, the last data p…

I don’t think it is fair to criticize the person you are responding to for asking the question they did.

These types of comments are common on this site because we are actually interested in how things work in practice. We don’t like to stop at just saying “companies shouldn’t be allowed to do problematic research without approval”, we like to think about how you could ever make that idea a reality.

If we are serious about stopping problematic corporate research, we have to ask these questions. To regulate something, you have to be able to define it. What sort of research are we trying to regulate? The person you replied to gave a few examples of things that are clearly ‘research’ and probably aren’t things we would want to prevent, so if we are serious about regulating this we would need a definition that includes the bad stuff but doesn’t include the stuff we don’t want to regulate.

If we don’t ask these questions, we can never move past hand wringing.

Re: Nearly a third of social media research has undisclosed ties to industry

#32

Post by hsuduebc2 »

I’m half expecting headlines thirty years from now to talk about social media the way we now talk about leaded gasoline, a slow, population-wide exposure that messed with people’s minds and quietly dragged down cognition, wellbeing, and even the economy across whole generations.

Re: Nearly a third of social media research has undisclosed ties to industry

#33

Post by anonymars »

terminalshort wrote: post #22
CodingJeebus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also I would like an example of something a social media company does that you wouldn't be able to get approval to do on animals. One possible example is the emotion manipulation study Facebook did over a decade ago[0]. I don't know how you would perform an experiment like this on animals, but Facebook has demonstrated a desire to understand all the different ways its platform can be used to alter user behavior and…

Isn't this just what every media company has done since the beginning of time? You think the news companies don't select their stories based on the same concept? And I'm pretty sure you would get approval to do something similar to animals given that you can get approval to actually feed them drugs and see how that affects their behavior.

Can you provide evidence that [non-social] media companies have performed research specifically to see if they can make people sadder, similar to what was described above?

Re: Nearly a third of social media research has undisclosed ties to industry

#34

Post by everdrive »

Social media itself is a grand experiment. What happens if you start connecting people from disparate communities, and then prioritize for outrage and emotionalism? In years prior, you would be heavily shaped by the people you lived near. TV and internet broke this down somewhat, but social media really blew the doors off. Now it's the case that almost no one seems to be able to explain all the woes we're facing today: extreme ideas, populism, the destruction of institutions. All of this because people are addicted to novelty and outrage, and because companies need their stock price to go up.

Re: Nearly a third of social media research has undisclosed ties to industry

#35

Post by terminalshort »

asdff wrote: post #23
terminalshort wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large and complex systems are fundamentally unpredictable and have tradeoffs and consequences that can't be foreseen by anybody. Error rates are never zero. So basically anything large enough is going to kill people in one way or another. There are intelligent ways to deal with this, and then there is shooting the CEO, which will change nothing because the next CEO faces the exact same set of choices and incentives a…

Pretty predictable what happens when you deny coverage for a treatment someone needs

But do they need it? How do you know? And don't say because the doctor said so, because doctors disagree all the time. When my grandfather was dying in his late 80s, the doctor said there was nothing he could do. So his children took him to another doctor, who said the same. And then another doctor, who agreed with the first two. But then they took him to a 4th doctor, who agreed to do open heart surgery, which didn't work, and if anything hastened his inevitable death due to the massive stress. The surgery cost something like 70 grand and they eventually got the insurance company to pay for it. But the insurance company should not have paid for it because it was a completely unnecessary waste of money. And of course there will be mistakes in the other direction because this just isn't an exact science.

Re: Nearly a third of social media research has undisclosed ties to industry

#36

Post by quesera »

windowpains wrote: post #12
imiric wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people in these industries are collectively responsible for millions of preventable deaths, and they, their families, and generations of their offspring are and will be living the best lives money can buy. And yet one person kills a CEO, and they're a terrorist.

You say “a CEO” like it’s just a fungible human unit. In reality, a CEO is much much more valuable than a median human. Think of how many shareholders are impacted, many little old grey haired grannies, dependent on their investments for food, shelter and medical expenses. When you think of the fuller context, surely you see how sociopathic it is to shrug at the killing of a CEO, let alone a CEO of a major corporatio…

CEOs are not special humans. They know lots of people, but that's not an unusual trait.

When one gets fired, quits, retires, or dies, you get a new one. Pretty fungible, honestly.

But yeah, shooting people is a bad decision in almost all cases.

Re: Nearly a third of social media research has undisclosed ties to industry

#37

Post by terminalshort »

asdff wrote: post #26
windowpains wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say “a CEO” like it’s just a fungible human unit. In reality, a CEO is much much more valuable than a median human. Think of how many shareholders are impacted, many little old grey haired grannies, dependent on their investments for food, shelter and medical expenses. When you think of the fuller context, surely you see how sociopathic it is to shrug at the killing of a CEO, let alone a CEO of a major corporatio…

The CEO literally is a fungible human unit. Any job can be learned.

In that case it also accomplishes nothing to kill him because another will just take his place. So either way you lose.

Re: Nearly a third of social media research has undisclosed ties to industry

#38

Post by decipherer »

everdrive wrote: post #34

Social media itself is a grand experiment. What happens if you start connecting people from disparate communities, and then prioritize for outrage and emotionalism? In years prior, you would be heavily shaped by the people you lived near. TV and internet broke this down somewhat, but social media really blew the doors off. Now it's the case that almost no one seems to be able to explain all the woes we're facing toda…

We have exited the age of information, and entered the age of irritation.

Re: Nearly a third of social media research has undisclosed ties to industry

#39

Post by terminalshort »

anonymars wrote: post #33
terminalshort wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this just what every media company has done since the beginning of time? You think the news companies don't select their stories based on the same concept? And I'm pretty sure you would get approval to do something similar to animals given that you can get approval to actually feed them drugs and see how that affects their behavior.

Can you provide evidence that [non-social] media companies have performed research specifically to see if they can make people sadder, similar to what was described above?

Turn on cable news for a minute and it's quite obvious that it is designed to make you angry. What difference does it make if they performed research or not?

Re: Nearly a third of social media research has undisclosed ties to industry

#40

Post by asdff »

terminalshort wrote: post #37
asdff wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CEO literally is a fungible human unit. Any job can be learned.

In that case it also accomplishes nothing to kill him because another will just take his place. So either way you lose.

A message is certainly sent in the process that previously was going unheard.

"Former UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty published an op-ed in The New York Times shortly after the killing, expressing sympathy with public frustrations over the “flawed” healthcare system. The CEO of another insurer called on the industry to rebuild trust with the wider public, writing: “We are sorry, and we can and will be better.”

Mr. Thompson’s death also forced a public reckoning over prior authorization. In June, nearly 50 insurers, including UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, Cigna and Humana, signed a voluntary pledge to streamline prior authorization processes, reduce the number of procedures requiring authorization and ensure all clinical denials are reviewed by medical professionals. "

https://www.beckerspayer.com/payer/one-year-after-ceo-killin...

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