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The Social Dilemma

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Re: The Social Dilemma

#61

Post by ZephyrBlu »

tubularhells wrote: post #52
_mkef wrote: post #20

Great movie that I agree with 1000% . I suggest Lost Connections and 10 Arguments for deleting your social media ( mentioned in the movie) as well. I stopped using all social media as of last year and the results have been amazing. I'm more at peace , I no longer getting into stupid Facebook arguments. Online you aren't interacting with whole people, so being absurdly mean is easy. Most people online are just their f…

No offence, but you are arguing on HN, Reddit, Chan boards, /. now. Where is the difference? I did similarly but keep getting sucked into these communities simply because I'm alone in my head a lot of the time.

Discussion on HN and Reddit tends to be more thoughtful in my experience.

Yes, it's still just wasting time away but it can be somewhat more mentally stimulating than FB drama.

Re: The Social Dilemma

#62

Post by ppod »

ffggvv wrote: post #39

i tried to watch the movie and i honestly don’t get the hype. It really seems to be confirmation bias where those who already hate social media just rave about the movie. and i actually think it did a very poor job at explaining things to people completely unfamiliar with the issues. i wonder if it will change a single mind or just preach to the choir

Mindchanging market's tough. Now the choir, the choir dollar's a good dollar.

Re: The Social Dilemma

#63

Post by threentaway »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #30
gkoberger wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, I don't think that was the point of the movie. It was more about social media, and no adblocker in the world will save you from Facebook or Google or YouTube tracking your usage and recommending ex boyfriends or "rabbit hole" videos to you. In fact, with the exception of one scene, I don't think a computer was even shown – all the interactions were apps on phones. (They did mention, at the end, extensions for bl…

I think your parent's point is that ultimately these platforms run us down the algorithmic rabbit holes that keep us on the platform in order to show us more ads. So, ad blockers might undermine that incentive.

Facebook and many others don't use third party ad networks anymore due to the rise of ad blockers, so most ad blockers don't even work on them since they work by blocking DNS lookups for those advertising domains.

Re: The Social Dilemma

#64

Post by rbanffy »

gkoberger wrote: post #35
clairity wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

of course everything looks rosy with rose-colored glasses on, but facebook not only encouraged those glasses, but made you believe the glasses didn't even exist. same with google. it only took a little perspective shift and foresight to realize the future dangers under a relentless profit motive. the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.

The first time you loaded up TheFacebook in high school and saw your friend set his status to "Greg is making dinner!", you thought "ah yes, someday this will topple governments due to disinformation campaigns"? Are you sure you aren't conflating "it's obvious" with hindsight bias?

We can call it a failure of imagination, but when you have a tool that knows a lot about your political views and your location, we should have predicted that information would be used to hypertarget political propaganda.

And all advertising has the goal of swaying some election - which car you buy, where you get your groceries, what clothes you choose. You think you made those choices without external influence when you didn't.

Re: The Social Dilemma

#65

Post by rbanffy »

carlinmack wrote: post #43
pgrote wrote: post #33

I thought the movie was well made and did a good job explaining things, especially to people who don't follow the business. There is one consideration no one seriously thinks about when it comes to social media companies, in particular Facebook and Twitter. They cannot be fixed. They are failed experiments and need to end. The whole premise of the companies is to guide people's emotions for profit whether where they…

thoughts on nationalisation or decentralization as ways to solve this?

Or forbid targeting of ads on certain dimensions. Say, limit legal targeting to age and location.

Re: The Social Dilemma

#66

Post by rbanffy »

cassianoleal wrote: post #58
dgudkov wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As my ex-colleague says "Any advertisement is propaganda".

I believe in most Latin languages there isn't a separate word. At least in Portuguese and Spanish, both advertisement and propaganda are simply "propaganda".

You can also use "publicidade" in Portuguese, but "propaganda" is not used exclusively for "political propaganda".

Re: The Social Dilemma

#67

Post by hapticmonkey »

dgudkov wrote: post #21
gundmc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

As my ex-colleague says "Any advertisement is propaganda".

I prefer David Foster Wallace's description of advertising:

"It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.”

Re: The Social Dilemma

#68

Post by rbanffy »

ForHackernews wrote: post #46
crystaln wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were in their early 20s trying to build a company not knowing if they would succeed, and the downside of social media is still not well understood. People who realize their past actions caused harm should be praised not denigrated.

Please. The free software movement has been highlighting the danger of software that works for its authors rather than its users for 35 years. If these very intelligent people are going to claim they didn't understand what they they were doing, my only response is: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

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.

Re: The Social Dilemma

#69

Post by gkoberger »

rbanffy wrote: post #64
gkoberger wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first time you loaded up TheFacebook in high school and saw your friend set his status to "Greg is making dinner!", you thought "ah yes, someday this will topple governments due to disinformation campaigns"? Are you sure you aren't conflating "it's obvious" with hindsight bias?

We can call it a failure of imagination, but when you have a tool that knows a lot about your political views and your location, we should have predicted that information would be used to hypertarget political propaganda. And all advertising has the goal of swaying some election - which car you buy, where you get your groceries, what clothes you choose. You think you made those choices without external influence when…

That's my point, though – that wasn't true in 2006! Maybe, just maybe, I posted "Gregory is voting for ______" in 2008, but that's not how people used Facebook back then.

There was no realtime location collection (no iPhones), no sharing of articles, no commenting on posts, no groups, no minifeed, etc. There wasn't any mechanisms for all the data to be used for targeting. When I started using Facebook, you literally had to go to a person's page to check on them. There was no newsfeed or algorithm or ads. There definitely weren't bots.

It was pretty unimaginable that you could figure out who someone was voting for and influence them based on how FB was in 2006. Now, of course, it's different.

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