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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

#61

Post by cluckindan »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #44
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…

> the destruction of institutions More like the exposure of institutions. It’s not like they were more noble previously, their failings were just less widely understood. How much of America knew about Tuskegee before the internet? Or the time National Geographic told us all about the Archaeoraptor ignoring prior warnings? The above view is also wildly myopic. You thought modern society overcame populist ideas, extrem…

Maybe social media is just another level of unethical human experimentation by corporations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...

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

#62

Post by imiric »

terminalshort wrote: post #60
imiric wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about unpredictable tradeoffs and consequences. I'm talking about intentional actions that lead to deaths. E.g. [1] and [2], but there are numerous such examples. There is no plausible defense for this. It is pure evil. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Institute [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purdue_Pharma

Well those get handled. Perdue was sued into bankruptcy and the Tobacco Institute was shut down when the industry was forced to settle for $200 billion in damages.

So human lives have a price tag, and companies can kill millions for decades as long as they pay for it. Gotcha.

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

#63

Post by Aurornis »

rr808 wrote: post #49
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…

Its interesting that TV is regulated. You can't put certain content on there and I'm sure the governments can ultimately control things. Now todays eyeballs are controlled by Meta and TikTok and I dont really trust them at all - they have too much unchecked power.

> I'm sure the governments can ultimately control things

In the US there is free speech protecting the ability of people to say what they want.

Public TV has limitations on broadcast of certain material like pornography, obviously, but the government can’t come in and “control” the opinions of journalists and newscasters.

The current US admin has tried to put pressure on broadcasters it disagrees with and it’s definitely not a good thing.

You really do not want to encourage governments to “control” what topics cannot be discussed or what speech is regulated. Sooner or later the government will use that against someone you agree with for their own power.

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

#64

Post by fergal »

terminalshort wrote: post #11
Grimblewald wrote: post #7

From history we know that research left unchecked and unrestricted can start leading to some really dark and horrible things. Right now I think it's a problem that social media companies can do research without answering to the same regulatory bodies that regular academics / researchers would. For example, they don't have to answer to independant ethics committees / reviews. They're free to experiement as they like o…

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…

Nice example there to trivialize and confues the issue but yea if your hypothetical store redecorating has a public health impact on a large scale then you should need approval.

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

#65

Post by slg »

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…

>and then prioritize for outrage and emotionalism

This isn’t inherent to social networks though. It is a choice by the biggest social media companies to make society worse in order to increase profits. Just give us a chronological feed of the people/topics we proactively choose to follow and much of this harm would go away. Social media and the world were better places before algorithmic feeds took over everything.

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

#66

Post by BeetleB »

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…

> Are you being serious right now or just engaging in "asking questions" to suppress others thoughts?

I don't know why people are being overly reactive to the comment.

Research means different things to different people. For me, research means "published in academic journals". He is merely trying to get everyone on the same page before a conversation ensues.

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

#67

Post by dathinab »

slg wrote: post #65
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…

>and then prioritize for outrage and emotionalism This isn’t inherent to social networks though. It is a choice by the biggest social media companies to make society worse in order to increase profits. Just give us a chronological feed of the people/topics we proactively choose to follow and much of this harm would go away. Social media and the world were better places before algorithmic feeds took over everything.

> This isn’t inherent to social networks though. It is a choice by the biggest social media companies and to make society worse in order to increase profits.

going beyond social media it's IMHO the side effect of a initially innocent looking but dangerous and toxic monetization model which we find today not just in social media but even more so in news, apps and most digital markets

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

#68

Post by BeetleB »

Grimblewald wrote: post #7

From history we know that research left unchecked and unrestricted can start leading to some really dark and horrible things. Right now I think it's a problem that social media companies can do research without answering to the same regulatory bodies that regular academics / researchers would. For example, they don't have to answer to independant ethics committees / reviews. They're free to experiement as they like o…

> Right now I think it's a problem that social media companies can do research without answering to the same regulatory bodies that regular academics / researchers would. For example, they don't have to answer to independant ethics committees / reviews. They're free to experiement as they like on the entire population.

If they are going to publish in academic journals, they will have to answer to those bodies. Whether those bodies have any teeth is a whole other matter.

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

#69

Post by cal_dent »

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…

Throw into the mix inherent mimetic desire and where we are in society makes sense. There's a need for a more that frankly can't be satisfied and hard to see how we turn back from that without a structural rejig

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

#70

Post by trevwilson »

dathinab wrote: post #67
slg wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and then prioritize for outrage and emotionalism This isn’t inherent to social networks though. It is a choice by the biggest social media companies to make society worse in order to increase profits. Just give us a chronological feed of the people/topics we proactively choose to follow and much of this harm would go away. Social media and the world were better places before algorithmic feeds took over everything.

> This isn’t inherent to social networks though. It is a choice by the biggest social media companies and to make society worse in order to increase profits. going beyond social media it's IMHO the side effect of a initially innocent looking but dangerous and toxic monetization model which we find today not just in social media but even more so in news, apps and most digital markets

Yeah unfortunately this seems to be a common, if not inevitable, result of any product where "attention" or "engagement" are directly correlated with profitability.
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