Support NeoGAF

[Amiga]

Technology ethicist Tristan Harris joins Bill to discuss how Facebook's algorithm feeds users outrage to keep them engaged.


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important bit..


basically the opposite of what a forum mod would do. (what would NeoGAF in Earth-3 look like?)

 

[Clear]

This is how engagement is driven:

Their pitch: "hey, we offer you and your friends a booth to chat in".
They then make sure you're next to some loudmouths in the adjacent booth, to stimulate your convo.
Then they add more people they think are like you, to the other side. Of course they have their own noisy neighbours.
This goes on until your group, which potentially can grow quite large, is literally surrounded.
And at which point the stress and irritation has started to turn people within each cluster against one-another.
Now, once primed, they are ready to be sat next to the next new unsuspecting customer.

End result is a loud, noisy establishment, elevating everyone's stress and anger levels.

Which is great for them as they get paid according to volume, both in terms of clients but the amount of noise they generate.

However for society its a fucking disaster, as these newly angered and abused people spill out onto the streets, carrying their newly created grievances with them.

 

[BadBurger]

Twitter's engagement algorithms are definitely built around outrage. I had cleaned up my follows so it was 90% just my followers (nearly 300 normal, non-celeb people, mostly creative types and tech workers), some science-based lists, comedians, and TV shows. The only politics I had to suffer through was in news stories from say the NYT or someplace. I had gotten rid of all of those people who make political tweets all day.

I followed back one guy who is a writer for a few entertainment sites in the UK. Seemed cool. That same day I start noticing more lame political tweets - you know terrible photoshops from both conservative and liberal sources. I tracked it all down to that one guy I followed back - it seems before writing for entertainment sources he worked for some really political newspaper, so he still followed a bunch of those political sources. So Twiiter took all of the outrage and pointless gossip this guy was reading, and was like "here, maybe you'd like a bunch of this same nonsense back in your timeline weee!".

Just ass. If news and new science stories didn't break so quickly on Twitter I'd have gotten rid of my account the same as did Facebook years ago.

 

[Con-Z-epT]

They have sold their soul a long time ago. It is a platform to manipulate millions.

It is known but sadly nobody cares.

 

[Virt McPolygon]

This is true for every online social platform, but that's old news. After the election interference by fake accounts in 2016, Facebook's goal now is to be a part of users'(both new and old) daily lives with their metaverse thing. Doing this by having people use their virtual assistant across multiple products. Portal, RayBan glasses, Oculus, Messenger. They also want you to do meet virtually on Oculus for work meetings on their other platform Workplace.

The CEOs of both WhatsApp and Instagram left Facebook in 2018 because they knew all this shit was gonna get merged together.

Zuckerberg is gonna do whatever he wants because when he's inevitably summoned by congress again, he'll still be asked dumb questions by dinosaurs who don't really understand the online world.

The only person who can stop or maybe talk Zuckerberg out of doing stupid shit is Sheryl Sandberg, but she makes questionable decisions like choosing to date Bobby Kotick after her husband died.

Facebook is a horrible company run by psychopaths. It's pretty easy not to use their products in your daily lives.

 

[Tschumi]

I just kinda expected everyone to understand this 15 years ago, the fact that all too many of us are so obviously duped by these algorithms just, well, it just makes me feel superior to them. And it breaks democracy since so many people have broken/hacked judgement.

Well maybe future generations will be more savvy, less eager to be radicalized, after the extremists of this time cause the next tragedy.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

This is how engagement is driven:

Their pitch: "hey, we offer you and your friends a booth to chat in".
They then make sure you're next to some loudmouths in the adjacent booth, to stimulate your convo.
Then they add more people they think are like you, to the other side. Of course they have their own noisy neighbours.
This goes on until your group, which potentially can grow quite large, is literally surrounded.
And at which point the stress and irritation has started to turn people within each cluster against one-another.
Now, once primed, they are ready to be sat next to the next new unsuspecting customer.

End result is a loud, noisy establishment, elevating everyone's stress and anger levels.

Which is great for them as they get paid according to volume, both in terms of clients but the amount of noise they generate.

However for society its a fucking disaster, as these newly angered and abused people spill out onto the streets, carrying their newly created grievances with them.

And the stupid thing is people are hit with obvious product ads, which most people can probably avoid and are not discussion material.

But all the unskippable newsfeeds are what keeps it going. Even if someone blocked the newsfeed of everyone on their friends list, you still get hit with newsfeeds in different ways.

It would be great if FB allowed a permanent newsfeed blocker option, zero ads or only allow FB feeds from some friends, but their revenue and engagement model would drop into the toilet so they cant. I know I'd turn on that feature and filter my feed to only show 30 people's out of 300 even though my circle of friends and fam are chill and not crazy folk aside from the usual couple of anti-meat PETA promoters which I block.

 

[Mistake]

I just kinda expected everyone to understand this 15 years ago, the fact that all too many of us are so obviously duped by these algorithms just, well, it just makes me feel superior to them. And it breaks democracy since so many people have broken/hacked judgement.

Well maybe future generations will be more savvy, less eager to be radicalized, after the extremists of this time cause the next tragedy.

I think online awareness classes are really needed now for dissecting headlines, sources, posting personal info, and other things. But we don’t even have civics in the US, so there’s a fat chance of that happening.

A lot of these companies cracked the code for leading people by the nose and it’s kind of sick.

 

[Raven117]

WE all "knew" this was happening. Now we have proof of it.

I'm telling yall, go outside and unplug. It feels amazing. Limit your exposure to political discourse to just enough to know the issues. You want to discuss, find someone and do it to their face, not on the keyboard.

All feels so much better.

 

[EviLore]

"People have to stop talking politics all the time."

Amen, Bill.

 

[Men_in_Boxes]

I like Bill Maher but he's railing against the very thing that gets him paid. His profit incentive is the Arnold Schwarzenegger to social medias profit incentives T-1000.

Fast forward 20 years. We hopefully "fix" our social media problem. What does that fix realistically look like?

 

[6502]

Well, during the election (uk) I was in good spirits door knocking, everyone polite even when passing opposition party candidates / canvassers smiles and hellos were exchanged, had debates with friends and enjoyed some banter with people who disagreed. We were mostly strangers who came together to support our shared values and tried to sell that to our community. Just as our opposition did. That was real life.

An hour of social media in the evening would make me furious due to the crap posted from all sides of the debates. Its so binary. We want to save the world the others want to eat children, you are either a hero or a nazi. Its not down to class or education, it is just a pile on even when your opponent agrees with you. Its a disgusting invention that should be shut down.