😲 The Social Dilemma (⊙⊙)

General Discussion
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Have you seen it? It’s a documentary on SM. It will blow your mind and raise your awareness to a higher level.

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CR: news18
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CR: mancunianmatters

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Thank you, but I think I’ll just get upset if I do decide to watch it. After all, I live in Eastern Europe. Facebook thinks I’m some tribal from the “Wild East” as its employees put it. YouTube doesn’t even know I exist. It only protects the really big influencers, including their despicable behaviour. The rest are just happy to mine personal data. That also applies to Netflix. Just because they’re showing this documentary, it still doesn’t change the fact that they, too, are part of the problem.

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what is SM O-O

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I’ve just watched the documentary, thank you for posting. Sometimes you need a film to vocalize, express what you are already thinking about.

The documentary seems credible because their interviewees are former high-functioning employees of the biggest social media companies, as well as professors of well-standing universities. Here are some highlights for those who don’t have Netflix.

  1. You are the product and advertising companies are the users/clients.
  2. Your data is not the final goal. They don’t earn by selling it. They need your data to make prediction models of your behavior. The final aim is to manipulate you to either buy a product or change your opinion. Very, very gradually. So gradually that it is subconscious.
  3. The democracy is being endangered by social media in two ways:
    a. They change your political, social and economical opinions.
    b. They earn incredible amount of money which makes it easy for them to buy laws and people in key positions.
  4. Psychological manipulation has been used for over a decade, even taught as courses on prestigious universities as Stanford, to pursue this completely unethical goal. The process is enabled by the incredible growth of data processing speed over the same time period.
  5. Customisation of not only your news feed, but your google search, as well, creates two separate realities for two different people, leading to exaggerated conflicts. With human-to-human contact those conflicts might not even happen or they would be resolved, and resolved rather quickly.
  6. Fake news spreads 6x faster than true news because it is more interesting and creates more money.

The film ends on a high note, stating that the biggest critics are also the biggest optimists, because they criticise to improve. Because they believe we can do better. And offers some concrete forms of action.

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Social media, I’m guessing.

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For a minute I thought you meant SM, the entertainment company :joy::sweat_smile: I was like WAHATTT why do I not know about this??!! :joy:

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I still find that a funny name for an entertainment company, just because of the other meaning … :stuck_out_tongue:

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I suppose you’re not in the GDPR zone? :thinking:

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I am. But to use Google’s services I still have to accept their nasty Terms and Conditions. What’s to do otherwise? Use DuckDuckGo as my search engine? And Dailymotion instead of YouTube? :grimacing:

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Hmmm … limiting the damage by excepting only strictly necessary cookies? Or Private Navigation, so that all cookies get destroyed again as soon as you close the window? That last option would be a pain for sites where you have to log in, though.

This reminds me: years ago I accidentally came across a list with all the things Facebook thought I was interested in. The weirdest things were on the list and I had no idea where they got it from. And even though they did know I was a vegetarian, according to them I was also interested in …
…
…
…
BLOOD!!! :vampire: :thinking::roll_eyes::rofl:

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Oh my… Well, Halloween is coming up. Are we going to see your true form? :bat:
:vampire:‍♀

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I can’t tell you, otherwise my prey will go in hiding. :wink:

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Yup, interesting documentary. @bozoli gave a very nice summary :ok_hand:

This reminded me of my minor at uni :see_no_evil:. My minor was basically about how to manipulate people. My group members went on to study consumerism psychology after that.

And even if you know all of those manipulation tactics, you could still fall for them :confused:

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Did you have to practice on each other? :open_mouth:

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Haha no, but we did have to try to influence other people’s behavior (it was one of the projects you got graded on). I can’t go into specifics, but we tried to influence people to do a behavior that would protect their health.

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@bozoli guessed it. It is an acronym for Social Media. SM is otherwise known as SNS (Social Network Services), relating to mobile apps.

LOL. Well, SM Ent happened to be very good at using SM to connect with their fandom.
https://www.smentertainment.com/NewMedia/SNS

:rofl:

I tried this a while back. I like its mission. Unfortunately, it is still lacking in many aspects. Perhaps just a baby in comparison to the other BIG TECH companies. Hopefully, it will survive and thrive, and become our go-to option.

IKR! Frankly, it’s eerie and scary. Such “tactics” can know more about us than we do ourselves. Its ability to “predict” what we do and will do is even more “scary.” Somehow, I feel “apologetic” for being involved in it to some extent.

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