I have a (unverified) hypothesis that the root cause is government spending: government spending -> inflation -> need for high returns on investments -> investor pressure -> growth -> advertising -> need for attention -> sensationalization.
The Social Dilemma
371–380 of 421 posts
Re: The Social Dilemma
#372This is one of the few Netflix documentaries that I regret wasting my time on. Not only there's no new information in it, but it seems to be deliberately done in a way to promote outrage and get attention from the political apparatus to regulate social media to death.
This film was not made for you. Techies like us have been up to speed on these topics for years, but most people have not.
Many people might have a creeping feeling that something is wrong in the world of social media, but almost none understands the actual mechanics of an algorithm and what it can do when applied on a global scale. This film is made for them, and judging by the reactions to the movie from non-tech people around me, it has had a profound effect and made them reflect deeply about their use of social media.
Re: The Social Dilemma
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it is fine sending a comment expressing opinion. There are so many qualitatives differences: - This is human to human communication, not an optimised algorithm. - People here are not sending you 10 comments and looking at the one which you engaged the most time, because they don't have the metrics. Social media knows how many seconds you looked at a post and classify it with AI, they can make a profile of your cur…
In a conversation, you subconsciously build a model of the mind of person you are talking to, and your words are tuned to fill the gap between what they know and are thinking and the ideas you are trying to express. If I think back through my life, the communication that has affected me most as been from humans in face-to-face conversations, not on websites. But I could be bad at objectively evaluating this. I think…
In a conversation, the influence goes both ways: if you try to persuade me of a political point of view, I can do a number of things: (and whether these are valid or not, they will impact the flow of argument, and the success of the persuasion)
- I can suggest you're biased
- I can try to change the subject
- I can decide you're a bad person for holding the "wrong" views
- I can directly argue against your point
- I can attack the structure of your argument
- I can make an emotional appeal regarding why I must hold my point of view
- etc ....
In these and other ways, I can push back and modify how much I'm influenced by a one-to-one argument. I won't always be successful, for sure. But sometimes as well the persuasion go will go the other way, and I will influence you.
This is not true on social media because another power is dictating which one-to-one conversations may happen in the first place, and then loading the deck with idea before those one-to-one conversations even happen. Further, social media changes the scale of communications. If we worked together, and saw each other regularly, we could mediate each other's influence, place boundaries, etc. With social media, there is always a crowd of strangers: too many people converse with, know, and set boundaries with.
There are obviously other distinctions between one-to-one conversation and social media, but I particularly wanted to talk about the key differences here: lack of real back and forth, and scale.
Re: The Social Dilemma
#374This is one of the few Netflix documentaries that I regret wasting my time on. Not only there's no new information in it, but it seems to be deliberately done in a way to promote outrage and get attention from the political apparatus to regulate social media to death.
This film was not made for you. Techies like us have been up to speed on these topics for years, but most people have not. Many people might have a creeping feeling that something is wrong in the world of social media, but almost none understands the actual mechanics of an algorithm and what it can do when applied on a global scale. This film is made for them, and judging by the reactions to the movie from non-tech p…
Maybe not. I am 40+ years old and I clearly remember how the 80s and the 90s were full of stories about satanism. How listening heavy metal will turn kids into satanists. How there are satanist societies with child sacrifices. That's exactly the feeling I got after watching this documentary. Oh, social media is the next satanism and Zach is new Anton LaVey. Got it.
Re: The Social Dilemma
#375Watch out for misinformation on all sides. This film tries to use bicycles to make a point and gets it completely wrong. See https://twitter.com/peteyreplies/status/1306186884683567104 .
Yeah, I was quite surprised by this historically incorrect analogy when I saw the film, but this does not invalidate many of the other good points that was made. Every argument should be evaluated on its own merit.
Re: The Social Dilemma
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the poster above is suggesting that whatever conditions led to worldwide tensions (and world war) may be resurfacing now. Not that these tensions always existed to this degree. Just that they have before, and are again now.
I get the point. In my experience I can safely say that Social Media impact on our information ecosystem is a huge step change from anything we have seen before, to the point that it is effectively new. That the current problems build on human neuronal frailties that have existed since the dawn of time, is also true. So it is natural this conversational junction will come up repeatedly in future conversations. How do…
IMO we can all see how the spread of misinformation is unproductive and benefits only a few stakeholders. So I have confidence that some way or another we will figure out a solution. It will be a new solution, unlike things we've experienced in the past, and it will also be similar to the past in that we will overcome it.
Re: The Social Dilemma
#377An interesting thread that points a couple of issues in the movie: https://twitter.com/vaishnavi/status/1307455391249301504 Summarizing: the people interviewed were not the one who should have been interviewed. People from in house policy temas and others are much more knowledgeable about this and have been raising these types of issues all along. It would also have helped to show a much more diverse picture than a b…
This twitter user seems to be currently working on Instagram and much of the thread seems to be an awkward search for a way to justify her industry's existence and finding ways to blame former colleges for their ignorance. Some of the points made are interesting, but at the same time quite biased.
Re: The Social Dilemma
#378I 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…
Do you happen to know what titles they go by?
Re: The Social Dilemma
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a big difference when you take informed consent into account. When I go to the doctor I understand the scope and goals of my healthcare provider. I'm not surprised when my behaviors are changed to enhance my health. When the average person uses social media to connect with friends they aren't informed on the scope or goals of the social media provider. When I RSVP to a birthday party I only expect that my res…
> When I go to the doctor I understand the scope and goals of my healthcare provider. Are you sure about that? The fact that I have to sometimes argue for a test, and their counter argument isn't "the test isn't useful or even worse", but rather "the test is expensive" makes me wonder what their goal is. I'm paying for the test (or my insurance is), aren't I? It seems they're trying to optimize for something, but I'm…
You should ask your doctor! I don't have enough information to give you a confident guess, but my intuition is that theyre trying to save you money when an expensive test is unlikely to be helpful.
Many people struggle to make ends meet, so it makes sense to avoid superfluous medical costs. If you tell your healthcare provider that money is no object I'd imagine that they'd be able to weigh the financial aspect more accurately.
Re: The Social Dilemma
#380Earlier 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…
Ads don't turn people into cattle. That is a huge exaggeration, or at least, you should only speak for yourself.
The sort of ads that make the big bucks for companies like Google and even Facebook are niche or local firms buying very simple ads that let people know they exist. Brand advertising on publisher websites is not the biggest source of value, and these tech firms started out by trying to get rid of it entirely. AdSense's entire reason for existence was to chip away at the terrible brand ads that littered the web beforehand, and of course, those are the only kind of ads that you get on other media so they above all others have done more to rid the world of that kind of thing.
Publishers can use subscriptions today if they want to. That's no solution to psychological manipulation. Look at how many cable or satellite TV news channels there are which spend all day trying to create as much outrage and hate as possible, all paid for by subscription.
I haven't watched it but the documentary is probably junk. Seeing the Sundance Festival logo and reading the blurb is enough to get the gist of what it'll be like - a bunch of social activists who want you to feel weak, useless, sheep-like and filled with hate towards people who dare to make and give you useful services. No thanks.