The Social Dilemma Detailed Summary

For the ones who don't wanna watch the documentary but read it

How social media is ruining humanity and leading to a dystopian future if not controlled @SocialDilemma_

A Thread

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Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse

- Sophocles

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"If you're not paying for the product, then you're the product"

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Every business has always dreamed of having a guarantee, that if it places an ad it will be successful.

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These businesses sell the same thing, certainty. And in order to be successful in this business, you have to have great predictions, and for that, you need a lot of data.

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We now have markets that trade in human future, at scale. Generating trillions of dollars and making internet companies the richest in the history of humanity

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Everything is being monitored. What images you look at, even, for how long you look at it.

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They know when you're lonely, they know when you're depressed, they know when you're looking at you ex's photos, they know whether you're an introvert or an extrovert

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Most of us think that our data is being sold, but it's not in Facebook's interest to sell data. But what do they do with that data...
They milk model that predict our actions, and whoever has the best model, wins.

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All the things you've ever done, all the clicks you've ever made, all the videos you've ever watched, likes, is used to create a perfect model. They predict what will keep you hooked the most

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These companies have 3 main goals:

1. Engagement: Keeping the interactions going
2. Growth: Bringing in more people, inviting your friends, etc.
3. Ads: During all of this, they'll show you ads and generate revenue

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These companies have total control over these factors, like they're having the dials. In Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg has the dials.
Want more users? Use the dials, run ads

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Magicians were like the first neuroscientists and psychologists, they understood how people's minds worked. They tested lots and lots of things on people in the real time

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Magician understands the part of your mind that you're not aware of, that's what makes the illusion work

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Persuasive Technology is being taught to the top technology leaders to hack into minds of their users

They dig down deeper into your brain stem and plant a seed, so that you can be programmed at a deeper level so that you won't even realize it

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It's like a slot machine, you reach out for your phone, you play the refresh button, and you know they got something for you

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When Facebook found out the photo tagging feature, they dialed the hell out of it to boost activity

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They even let you know that the other person in typing while chat, so that they don't lose you

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There's a concept called growth hacking, where engineers work towards getting the users to engage more and more with the products, so that they can get from you what they want, more and more ad revenue. We're lab rats for them

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Facebook conducted what they call Massive Scale Contagion experiments, how do we use subliminal cues on the Facebook pages to get more people to go vote in the election. And they were able to do that

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One thing they concluded that they now know, we can affect real world emotions and behaviors, without triggering user's awareness, they're completely clueless

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Exploiting the vulnerabilities of human psychology

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If something is a tool, it's genuinely just sitting there, waiting patiently. If something's not a tool, it's demanding things from you, it's seducing you, it's manipulating you, it wants things from you

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We've moved from a tools based tech environment to an addiction based tech environment

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Social media isn't a tool, it has its own goals which it pursues by using your psychology against you