An Analysis of The Social Dilemma

An Analysis of The Social Dilemma

A review from the perspective of someone who types code, understands design, and is a consumer of social media. WARNING: SPOILERS

“This documentary-drama hybrid explores the dangerous human impact of social networking, with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations. “

Cover to The Social Dilemma

This is the premise of Netflix’s original film The Social Dilemma. It then rolls through the opening credits and then starts off with ominous music and a quote from Sophocles that reads,

“Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse”.

From the start, this film has already established that it is going to point out all of the negatives when it comes to social media and technology. And they have every right to do so, especially when they ask tech experts (the same experts that worked for social media companies), “What is the problem?”. A question to which none of them have a clear answer.

Answers to the question

The answers that are provided to us are the following:

• Social Media and Mental Health
• Fake News (and the impacts of it)
• Kids having Phones (that lead to depression)
• Everyone living in their own world

(And the one that I believe to be the underlying issue of all of them)

• The addictiveness of mobile devices.

The reason why I highlight addictiveness as being the most important one is because it is the one thing I believe we can all agree is a common issue with our relationship to our phones. It is also the one attribute that is made on purpose that all social media companies want their apps to excel in. Tristan Harris, former design ethicist at Google, states that the decisions that are made in the design team impact more than 2 billion people. That is 2 billion people that being targeted to have a fixation to their phone.

Later, it is explained that the reason why social media applications are designed to be addictive is so companies have more people to advertise to. Companies have to earn money; that is a fact. Because if they don’t, then they go bankrupt and are no longer companies. So no matter how much you argue, “so-and-so company is making so much money and it’s unfair”, the truth is that they are providing a product or service that is worth the amount of money that they are earning. Big tech companies just so happen to be providing a service that is useful for (or just being used by) x amount of people for free. So how are they being funded?

Selling public information isn’t wrong

Google decided to make their service free, as did Facebook, and they had to earn money out of a free service that they were providing to the entire world at the cost of servers, electricity, developers, designers, etc. (which isn’t cheap). So they “sell” their users data (or some might say that they “sell their users”) to advertisers. And what that really means is that they show ads to users that fit a very specific persona because from what is established in the film, selling user data is not in the best interest of the company.

“If you are not paying for the product, then you are the product.”

“It is still wrong to ‘target’ people to sell advertisers to!”, you are probably thinking.

In which, I question, “What is wrong?” Is it bad that a company is selling marketing space to an advertiser to target a specific audience? Stores, TV channels, and radio stations have been doing something similar for years. They figure out the psychology of their customer or targeted audience and then notify advertisers by saying, “Hey! We have the attention of the audience that you want to sell to. We will let you advertise on our channel/ storefront/station in exchange for money.”

Some of you may still think that companies are wrong for doing this, in which I would disagree. But before we start having an imaginary argument about whether it is right or wrong for businesses to grant advertisers marketing space to target customers, I want to present another quote that is said by Jaron Lanier, a computer philosophy writer, that I do believe is unethical. He says that,

“It is gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception that is the product.”

Selling ad space, sure that’s fine. Oh, you want to put up a poster to sell your homemade cookies? OK. You want to announce a new toy that has more flashing lights and sound effects? Can do!

You want to advertise clothes to someone who is guaranteed to buy it, which based on algorithms is an 11 year-old-girl who just moved to a new school in France and has been watching dance videos with her friends. (For the record, I do not know if that is guaranteed or not, it is just an example.) “Ummmmm…. yeah…”, said with hesitation.

How about altering someone’s perception of reality by continually reinforcing false information just because you want to simply have them stay on the platform longer to advertise more of your clients’ ads without considering the consequences?

How much time do you spend on screen?

In the past we had it simple, you see something once in a specific place, at a specific time, and it was either something that caught your attention or didn’t. No permanent behavior change, no change in your perspective of reality. You either bought it (or did what it asked you to do) or didn’t. NOW, with a mobile device, you have it with you all the time, and it notifies you whenever anything, and I mean anything, happens on your “feed” so that it can advertise something.

A tagged picture, a discount, a connection request, an email, birthday of a friend you haven’t talked to in years, ANYTHING, and it makes a sound that notifies you that you received SOMETHING. And in that instance, it is conditioning users to pick up the phone to receive any sort of stimulus.

In the film, they compare it to a slot machine that if you pick it up, you might receive a dose of dopamine. Which is a fair comparison, considering that when you are awaiting for a positive response from someone and you hear a notification it can be:1) The response you wanted (win) or2) A birthday notification (lose).

Change in Behavior and Perception

Enforcing this behavior encourages users to spend more time on the phone. The more time you spend on the phone, the more screen interactions take the place of real-world interactions, and the more that people interact with the screen, the more they start to believe the information that is presented to them.

Some comic relief before crossing the line.

I enjoy memes, watching funny dog videos, cute cat gifs, and all of the other delightful things that the internet has to offer as much as the next person. However, when social media starts to present false information in the form of truth or without any disclaimer, that is where it crosses the line.

As demonstrated in the film, each user has their own feed and is presented with their own “news” and set of “facts”.

“Over time, you have a false sense that everyone agrees with you, because everyone in your news feed sounds just like you. And once you are in that state you’re easily manipulated.” — Roger McNAMEE

It is really startling to see how many people actually fall victim to conspiracy theories because of their own news feeds, all because they clicked on a suggestion that led them down a rabbit hole. It is also scary to hear that an MIT study found that fake news **spread 6 times faster than real news. Again, this is not done on purpose, it is just the way that the algorithm was set up. Something that is new, spreading fast, and gaining tons of attention will eventually be suggested to you because of your connections and people that fit the same persona as you. When it is seen on your screen, it will be your decision to click it. When you do click it, just keep in mind that it will most likely suggest something that is similar to what you just clicked because once it is clicked the algorithm will see it as an incentive to recommend you more of that same information.

The Unprecedented Power of Social Media

The most unexpected piece of knowledge that I learned from this film is how powerful of a tool social media has become not only to advertisers, but also to political leaders and other influencers. Considering the power that algorithms and designs hold to keep our attention and persuade us to do repetitive behaviors, I guess it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that politicians and other leaders would take advantage of social media and use it for their own agenda.

I have came up with this short explanation on how I think social media is manipulating us and causing us to have this “social dilemma”:

It is established that once a user is in their “little world” they are easy to manipulate. Once they are there, you can present them with information which they can take as true or false statements. The more the user engages in a post, the more the algorithm will curate posts that are similar to what they just liked or commented. The more “evidence” they see in something they believe in, the more they will take it as truth. And the more they take it as truth, the less they are willing to listen to the other side.

(I have translated into pseudo-code for all of you programmers reading.)

[This is a super-simplified version of what I imagine the algorithm is doing. I left out the last two statements on purpose because I figured I already took enough time writing a fictional algorithm that probably won’t run.]

From what we are shown in the film, this can cause shootings, riots and countries to implode.

Can A Few Lines of Code and Digital Drawings really Have this Much of an Impact?

YES. How to make an impact with these disciplines is the kind of stuff that is taught at the higher levels of psychology, art, math, and computer science. Designers are taught how to appeal to audiences and evoke emotions by using colors, shapes, and composition layout. Developers are able to use those designs and add another layer of depth by adding functionality and making the art interactive.

The biggest difference between the applications from before and the applications today is that everyone is collecting data now. In which developers (or more accurately AI) uses that data to be more effective at accomplishing a goal.

From my time supervising projects at Comida For Familias, Inc. we have yet to use any AI-powered, optimization processes on any of our published applications. Comida For Familias (CFF) designers have conducted studies on users that consciously volunteer to be used as test subjects to improve the ease-of-use for our applications so that anyone can use them no matter how tech-savvy they are. Now if it so happens that people get addicted to seeing aesthetically pleasing screens while volunteering, let the record show that it was not intentional.

Designed to be user-friendly

Final Thoughts

The Social Dilemma has provided examples on how social media has affected our behavior, children, community, governments, and world. Everyone believes that they are right with the information that they are presented in their own little worlds.

https://miro.medium.com/max/700/0*k8u_8fAZe89hLfZe 

Photo by Neil Soni  on Unsplash 

We have to change the way we look at social media. We have to remember that it was originally created to keep people connected by sharing pictures and videos and not to be used as a news source to be taken as fact. Mobile devices are amazing and powerful tools that could be used to inspire people to change communities for the better and could give its users easy access to resources like transportation, shelter, and food. It also has many different useful functions that doesn’t require user information (flashlight, camera, video recorder, notepad, and PHONE).

In my opinion, it seems like we are reaching (or we are close to reaching) the point where technology overwhelms human weakness. As stated by Mr. Harris, when we cross this point it will be the root of,

“addiction, polarization, radicalization, outrage-ification, [and] vanity-ification”.

Knowing that this threshold can have devastating effects, I suggest that social media be treated similar to any other sources of entertainment that we regulate like TV shows, video games, and films. Each of these in moderation is fine and we are still able to tell the difference between what is real and what is scripted. (Except with reality TV. I don’t understand it sometimes.)

While governments and organizations are still trying to figure out how to solve this problem. Here are some ways that we can regulate it ourselves.

Actions To do now (With Difficulty Lvl)

• Turn off all notifications to things that aren’t important (Easy) - You keep your things and you have more control on what you want to take up your attention.
• Don’t accept a Youtube video recommendations (Easy) - Just watch the videos that you already plan on watching.
• Install extensions to remove recommendations (Easy) Just install an extension and remove recommendations. This way you don’t go into rabbit holes.
• Fact check before posting a “news” article (Easy, at least should be) - Search reliable sources like medical journals, and academic resources. You might want to do search that goes against your opinion just to be exposed to the other side.
• Use a different search browser that doesn’t store your search history (Medium) - Qwant was one that was mentioned. There is also Good Search in which it donates a penny every time you search something to your favorite nonprofit *cough, cough Comida For Familias. It just maybe hard because of all the services that Google provides.
• Delete all apps that you feel are wasting your time (easy to HARD) - Dating apps and games I don’t play anymore are easy. However, social apps are hard especially because of the that need to connect with others.
• No devices in the bedroom (HARD) - Blue light, temptation to watch that one more video, random notification. Sound familiar?
• No smartphones until high school (Medium) - I didn’t have one until I was 16. If they pull out the, “how will I call you?” card just buy them a flip phone. It is just going to be hard hearing the, “all of my friends have one”.