71–80 of 129 posts
The film explains that when they say “you are the product” they mean Facebook is selling a chance to influence your behavior. It’s an interesting perspective, but this PR piece from Facebook seems to willingly misinterpret this
I’m surprised they bother to make a response at all. The popularity of the the documentary must be making someone at FB a little nervous
I found this press release pretty disappointing. It is very weak. This press release is like saying when the documentary about how bad McDonald is for you (Super Size me) came out, McDonald's issues a statement saying, oh but they (filmmakers) were not fair, they did not show you guys the steps we take to keep harmful bacteria from your food and ensure we don't poison you. This whole Press release is about the "Steps…
Also really every media format so far relied heavily on curation. I think this is ultimately the problem to be solved if they still want to act as news distributor. Like button doesn't really work, especially it's not possible to downlike instead the "like emojis" only indicate how emotionally charged the topic is.
The entire lingo of this “release” is mind-numbingly vapid: “made improvements in...”, “partnered with ${vague}”, “take steps to...” Many words saying nothing.
... “Ah, so they’re doing nothing.”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The average person spends 1h15m on FB Source? That sounds very high. Regardless, it's definitely a silly statistic. It could be that people just lost interest in Facebook.
Source is here: https://www.emarketer.com/content/average-social-media-time-... Not sure how they collected the data though.
(for those who don't remember https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/17/17989712/facebook-inaccu... )
I found this press release pretty disappointing. It is very weak. This press release is like saying when the documentary about how bad McDonald is for you (Super Size me) came out, McDonald's issues a statement saying, oh but they (filmmakers) were not fair, they did not show you guys the steps we take to keep harmful bacteria from your food and ensure we don't poison you. This whole Press release is about the "Steps…
Apart from the bad points, posting a PDF press release in response to a documentary people watched on Netflix is kind of stupid. How many people who watched The Social Dilemma will actually see this press release, let alone evaluate its points?
I have to say I'm normally on Facebook's side (it's not the toxic, fair election destroying, divisive hole Twitter is) but this document is junk. The Social Dilemma explains how the stupid 'you are the product' meme is incorrect, for instance. It also explains the emergent behaviours are not planned, so equally they are hard to stop from planned actions.
Compare the parallel logic of "steers are not the product: this ranch is funded by meat buyers so it remains free for cattle."
Go da we da peyeting. (follow the money)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Influence your behavior" seems like an over dramatic description of "show me ads".
They literally did it, it’s not over dramatized. From 2014: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-... > now Facebook, the world's biggest social networking site, is facing a storm of protest after it revealed it had discovered how to make users feel happier or sadder with a few computer key strokes. > It has published details of a vast experiment in which it manipulated information posted on 689…
It's overly dramatic in the way that I could say "Axe weilding man splits homeowners door uninvited" and "Fireman had to break down a door" and both are technically true, but only one is apt.
Facebook's product is influencing my behavior, technically, maybe, but it's a clumsy description made for the sake of drama. It's more accurate to say their product is targeted advertisements.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it over dramatic? They are trying to make you buy something, sign up for something, or vote for someone.
Take "make you buy" - are they "making" you do it, or are you in the market for a camera and they're providing you with a really nice choice of one that will likely suit your needs? The answer of course is somewhere in between depending on context. People don't have zero agency, but they also don't have 100% agency.
A short version of this would be any product information media output that doesn't detail a products principle flaws is manipulation intended to sidestep your agency.
When did you last see a fizzy drinks (pop, soda) advert that said "tap water is better for you and cheaper but our brand advertising is supposed to associate drinking our drinks with being cool, so choose to avail yourself of our continued widescale brainwashing of your society to help you feel socially superior" or "we make sure our batteries mtbf is 2.5 years, with a narrow sd so that it needs replacing just after the warranty period expires; the battery though, it's glued in - clever eh!".
The central tenet of market capitalisms optimisation relies on consumers having perfect information and operating on that information. Advertising, the ads I've ever seen, are a direct effort at circumvention of that.
Yes, people still have some agency, otherwise ads wouldn't be needed. But ads purpose is to erode that agency.
Your post sounds like the attempted justification of someone who uses advertising?
I found this press release pretty disappointing. It is very weak. This press release is like saying when the documentary about how bad McDonald is for you (Super Size me) came out, McDonald's issues a statement saying, oh but they (filmmakers) were not fair, they did not show you guys the steps we take to keep harmful bacteria from your food and ensure we don't poison you. This whole Press release is about the "Steps…
Yes, they should put more effort into it and more than 1 page to argue against a 1.5h documentary. Speaking about McDonalds, they should also show that they are able to learn from other related businesses and not suffer from Not Invented Here. News about elections exist since hundreds of years. For instance in Germany during election day the media can only do limited news coverage about the election until the polls a…
Since this is infotainment I bet that it's way less than that. Another advantage when trying to get an objective perspective from reading, is that there is no dramatic or eerie music in the background giving you queues on how to interpret the contents on an nearly subliminal level. Furthermore there would not be any faces that your less advanced parts of the brain would attach feelings to.
The social dilemma might probably have been condensed down to a 5 page PDF. All these dramatizations are maybe good if you want to discuss this with 5 year olds, but it's not dense with fact in any sense.