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The Social Dilemma
341–350 of 421 posts
Re: The Social Dilemma
#342Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Do you think these cloud companies could get away with the abuses that they do if users did have these key freedoms?
The software doesn't run on the user's computer. You don't run Facebook - Facebook does, on their computers.
The option rests with the users not to engage with their software. Being exploited by a corporation is not a universal right.
Re: The Social Dilemma
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe the extra step of social media is that they are not satisfied by changing your behavior from not buying a product to buying a product. They also change your behavior in somewhat indirect ways with the goal that you continue to engage with their platform more and more and be subject to more advertising on the future. So they make you more fanatic or more extremist or more polarized, because it will lead you…
> They also change your behavior in somewhat indirect ways with the goal that you continue to engage with their platform more and more How is this different than any other kind of media like TV, magazines, newspapers, etc.? All of them are trying to make their product engaging so that you consume more of their media and more of their ads. Just because those services also charge a subscription fee, doesn't change the…
>How is this different than any other kind of media like TV, magazines, newspapers, etc.? All of them are trying to make their product engaging so that you consume more of their media and more of their ads. Just because those services also charge a subscription fee, doesn't change the dynamics of what they're trying to do. Social media has maybe just been more successful in doing so, partially because
I think this trivializes the problem. The issue isn't that these things have existed for ages and are simply getting better, the problem is that we have gone from mass-marketing designed to appeal to a broad audience to personalized marketing designed to appeal to just you. With that in place, the more data that gets collected about you, the more precise the message delivery can be. The more sophisticated the algorithms that input all that data get, the more susceptible you'll be to their messaging because they are designed to capitalize on human psychological weaknesses.
Re: The Social Dilemma
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
It never occurred to me until now that Hacker News is free and this statement could be applied here as well, though I'm not exactly sure in what way.
> This is one of the few places where a tech outsider can be exposed to some of the topics that are on the minds of insiders. The caveat is that criticism of any of the conceptual bodies orbiting the starry notion of "tech startup" (social ramifications, diversity and discrimination, wealth and income, etc.) are heavily frowned upon. Now, are mods going through and sweeping away every comment that proclaims, "Tech ba…
> The caveat is that criticism of any of the conceptual bodies orbiting the starry notion of "tech startup" (social ramifications, diversity and discrimination, wealth and income, etc.) are heavily frowned upon.
Perhaps in the US time zone :). I read and comment mostly when EU is awake, and I assure you, I haven't seen a place more deeply cynical and reserved about tech startups than HN (and having the reasons and reasoning to back the cynicism up) :).
I wonder if anyone did an analysis of how HN sentiments change during the day, as people from different parts of the world are participating?
Re: The Social Dilemma
#345I 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.
This kind of wording is conspiratorial mumbo jumbo. A social media's product is it's platform and software. Their revenue comes from advertising. No one ever told someone watching network TV in the 80s, "you are the product", because that would be ridiculous. It's no less ridiculous to do that with websites and phone apps. Why can't we just have a frank discussion about advertising and privacy without this kind of ma…
A social media's product is its platform/software only if it manages to sell those or extract rent. That could apply to "Facebook at Work" and LinkedIn, but they're the exception. For other social media, the platform and software are infrastructure, not the product.
The key difference between network TV in the 80s and social media now is the former had content to offer. As such, you could call the ads supplemental. TV also has dual income streams: subscriptions and advertising.
A social media platform has no content to offer, except the content provided by its users. If you provide content for free and the company benefits through increased eyeballs and therefore ad revenue, in a sense you're an unpaid employee. That makes you the product as shorthand for you providing the product.
Based on main revenue streams, network TV is either in the entertainment or advertising sector (I haven't looked up the numbers), but social media are squarely in the advertising sector. That makes the user's data the product, and "you are the product" a totum pro parte.
Re: The Social Dilemma
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Ads are definitely a large part of the problem, but they are not the only problem. Ads are what turn us from customers into cattle, yes, but I think that online services could be almost as bad if we paid for them. Indeed, micropayments might actually result in many of the same issues as ads do: in a world with micropayments for each page load, publishers would still want to increase engagement, because that would dir…
The system has been built to track you in order to show you more relevant ads. Whilst micropayments wont solve every problem pointed out in the documentary, it will offer an alternative business model which doesn’t require pervasive tracking to work. We are working on this problem, shameless plug: satotious.com
Re: The Social Dilemma
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Do you think these cloud companies could get away with the abuses that they do if users did have these key freedoms? The software doesn't run on the user's computer. You don't run Facebook - Facebook does, on their computers. The option rests with the users not to engage with their software. Being exploited by a corporation is not a universal right.
You're refusing to engage with the point I'm making (as is your right).
But just to summarize:
- "Nobody could have foreseen people getting sick when we fed them these poisoned cakes! Oh if only I hadn't made these millions of dollars making people sick!"
- "Actually, many people over decades have argued that people should be able to see and modify the recipes that go into their food."
- "No, that's completely different because, you see, these days Facebook is baking the poison cake in their own oven. It's not even a cake. It's a service that offers cake slices, and you're free to not eat them. (ps we also put little bits of our cake in 90% of the other food in the grocery store)"
Re: The Social Dilemma
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's hyperbole, but it still indicates a hidden very real and well known social dynamic: humans have an intrinsic drive to belong to a tribe. This is a very real behavioral mechanism which was essential to human survival as early as the paleolithicum and the emergence of the first hominid species. Not belonging to a tribe meant being exposed to hardships that you might not survive. Feeling lonely is part of that mech…
There are some mechanisms like that but I think this explanation, as well as that from the video, is layman psychology at best. Yes, there are factors or mechanisms that drive your desire for belonging, but it is a pretty unconvincing observation. It doesn't have to be tribalism to prefer being around people you trust. But if so, being enlightened about the failures and limits of human psychology certainly would cons…
> I think this explanation, as well as that from the video, is layman psychology at best
Well, kurzgesagt back their statements with references to academic research:
https://sites.google.com/view/sourcesloneliness/startseite
They also vet their videos with experts and are transparent in their methodology:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtUAAXe_0VI&vl=ar
> Yes, there are factors or mechanisms that drive your desire for belonging, but it is a pretty unconvincing observation. It doesn't have to be tribalism to prefer being around people you trust.
Why would you assume that I didn't consider other explanations?
> FOMO is more connected to the fear of the unknown and fear of loss in my opinion.
In what way wouldn't "the fear of the unkown" or "the fear of loss" be less connected with the fear of likely missing crucial parts of the conversations your social network is having?
e.g. you might miss out hearing about a party, where someone makes an personal announcement (e.g. getting married, moving to another country,...). So, now your friends have a shared experience of having heard the news first hand that you aren't part of.
> A "tribe" would shield you of course, but it is mostly a sign of other needs not being met. Advertisers use it to their advantage for decades. Some appeal to their audiences to be the source of other peoples FOMOs. "think different" instead of "stay connected".
What "other needs" are these?
> There are less suicides than in the 90s.
How is the number of suicides 30 years ago relevant to a dynamic observed over the course of the past 15 years?
> That there is a suicide epidemic is a media scare.
[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db362.htm [2] https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/suicide.shtml [3] https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/
The exaggerating wording you're using here hints towards minimizing the issue, rather then a willingness on your part to acknowledge that social media usage and mental health are a public health concern.
> The main factor reducing the numbers seem to be economic perspectives, not some facebook group where taste was made illegal.
... but also seems to correlate with social media usage. They aren't mutually exclusive.
Look, we both know that establishing definitive observations on something as sensitive as suicide is hard. It's widely understood that suicide is underreported, and in many cases it's quite hard to establish exactly what compelled individuals to commit suicide.
The documentary equally stated that there's a correlation between increased social media usage after 2007 and an increase in suicide rate. But that's as far as it goes. In and of itself, I think that's compelling enough to warrant paying attention to.
Finally, this is touching upon a serious mental health issue, there was absolutely no need to make your comment sound as dismissive as it did.
Re: The Social Dilemma
#349I 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.
It's an interesting counterpoint, but I'd argue that none of those are really businessman or are expected to have revenue models. The exception being Firefox, which I believe is paid by Google for search engine placement and does make you the product.
Re: The Social Dilemma
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Most people in this movie were early employees, before we knew how bad it could get. Back then, social media was connecting people in new ways. Facebook in the early days was fucking magical." no, before facebook, there was myspace and friendster (and more primitive social networks before that). we all knew exactly how bad it could get. facebook was not fucking magical. it was a psychological exploit for profit's…
> we all knew exactly how bad it could get. You were very smart then, congratulations. Back in 2006 there was no mention anywhere of "fake news", "bias bubbles" and such because there was almost no news sharing in Facebook, and your feed was not curated to only show you what you were most likely to like. There was no political advertising on Facebook for a long time, and even no ads at all until like 2007 or 2008. Us…
As I like to say, Facebook should have stayed within the area of Universities and schools;
A platform born in Harvard, by well-fed white male US Americans, for use and consumption by their peers, was not meant to be used by billions of regular people.
At some point in the documentary, I was expecting someone in front of the question: "what is the real problem here?", to answer: "people are horrible"