“The Social Dilemma” Doc on Netflix

It was very enlightening and then Zuckerberg tells congress that the fix for everything is mor AI.  Just plain scary.  I'm so close to shutting down my FB account.  The censorship amongst FB, Twitter and YouTube is scary

Yeah it's pretty fascinating, isn't it?  I'll have to catch this documentary but I stumbled upon this little gem earlier this year and it really resonated with me.  Without watching this documentary, there seem to be quite a few parallels between that and this.

https://waitbutwhy.com/2020/01/sick-giant.html

Disclaimer: it's a bit of a long read, but - well worth it, IMO.  The current "divide" as I'm sure the doc mentions is further exacerbated by social media, AI, "recommendations" and this blog dives into a ton of that.  And, sad to say, it's also exacerbating the dumbing down of America.  People more often than not don't think for themselves anymore and simply repeat soundbites they've heard on the news/from their favorite talking head - often times without even fact checking it or internalizing it on their own and really reflecting on how they feel and think about it.  Original thoughts-a-fleeting. 

That's why I'm so reasonable, I don't have social media.

If anyone has any interest in this sort of stuff:

I'd recommend a Podcast called "Team Human", listen from the very beginning if you so choose.

It's creator is a CUNY-Queens faculty who is media theorist (and psychedelics writer!) who is pretty much ahead of the curve on everything. I could talk about his stupdi professional awards/recognitions, but honestly, the proof is in the pudding, just give it a listen. He talks about everything from micro-expressions, to Aristotle's 3-Act Structure, consulting for tech-billionaire's wanting to build private armies (unreal), to Stanford's infamous Captology Lab (Kurzweill, Sherry Turkle), to ancient Biblical Texts functioning as covenent-contractual language, to block-chain technology, plant-life root-signaling, and neurotransmitter moon cycles (actual research!), and was a documentarian of Timothy Leary.

(I bring him up because he's been in the same circles as The Social Dilemma's Tristan Harris for over a decade, and I remember him first interviewing him)

Take a listen!

I seen that Doc and it blew my mind. I've been trying to make a concerted effort to be on my phone less since seeing it. With mixed results. 

It's tough when you realized how addicted you've become.

One of the worst privacy invaders is actually Amazon.  When you are a Prime member, they track every single thing that you ever look at, whether it be a TV show, music, or a possible purchase.  They then sell this information to their business customers.  Amazon doesn't make money on your purchase of goods or entertainment, they make it through the sale of information about you.  Amazon is almost entirely responsible for the death of the average mom-and-pop retailer, as well as dozens of large retail chains.

I dumped Facebook and Twitter years ago.  I will not use a mainstream search engine like Google either.  The government needs to step in and break these piece of shit companies up!

I haven’t seen the documentary but that is a sad and scary but plausible explanation of what we are seeing in the country today.  I’ve hated social media from the beginning so I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised. 

Even to those of us in the tech industry, it’s very eye opening and quite frankly disturbing.  I do think they take a bit of advantage of the general lack of knowledge to make it seem worse than it is, but their point still remains.

Issa Joke

Our democracy will die in the light of these companies vying for our attention with increasing effectiveness. Our ability to see each other as human and have our minds be open to different ideas and opinions is fading. Tristan Harris, who is featured in the film, has been on a number of podcasts lately and mentioned the success of the film as perhaps a glimmer of hope for change but we are a decade + into an experiment that is fundamentally altering our society with little to no way to shape it for anything other than what makes tech companies money - selling access to our attention and doing it better than the next guy. The price we are paying is in the form of our humanity. Also we need to recruit better talent on the football team.

/end rant

I'll have to check it out.

Maybe Trump’s parting gift to society will be breaking social media and forcing them to be held responsible for moderating user posts 

This is why when I'm discussing things with people I say, "Let's get out of the minutiae. Let's talk about bigger concepts and ideas." You can cherry pick any set of facts/stats to make a thing/person look good/bad. This usually works quite well because it forces people off of their manufactured talking points and gets us to a point where we can have a conversation about things on a more conceptual level and find common ground.

How do you think society should be structured? What are your values and how do you connect them/how are they connected to what you believe we ought to do as a society? Etc..etc..

If you go down that particular rabbit hole I've found that conversation is much more productive. If the other person is incapable of having a conversation on that level, that is typically a sign the other person is not worth engaging with.

I've seen it and long been on the bandwagon that the internet and social media is ruining our societal values and worsening the world.  Obviously in some ways it's helped immensely.  But, it's made us lazy and impatient.  But, I never thought the crisis was "existential".  Apparently it will lead to civil war and the end of humanity.  I don't know what critical reviews it's had, but it certainly seems to be worsening our health, both mental and physical, our patience, and our tolerance of others.

After watching however, I did turn off notifications on my cell phone.  I was already off FB, Twitter, Snapchat, and was never on IG.  I've always powered my phone off at night.  But, I added a blue light filter to my computer and phone and have been aware of my internet use and tried to stay off it after 8pm.

As I mentioned above I will absolutely have to catch this and maybe the doc dives into this a bit - but I saw a staggering stat that 1/5 people claim they get their news exclusively from social media; and I bet that number is exponentially increasing.  A breeding ground for misinformation and confirmation bias.

“Making sense” podcast Sam Harris interviews Tristan Harris, one of the people behind that documentary. It might be worth a listen for you.

The only thing scarier than the tactics used by the social media private sector are the solutions generated by the comments on this board.  

The only thing that destroys American democracy is when the far left and far right find common ground.  That should scare the rational middle more than targeted advertisements on our preferred social media pages.  

 My wife and I watched it a few weeks ago. It certainly made a great case for why I should shut down all of my social media accounts, and I am very close to doing that with my Facebook account. I’ll probably be doing it fantasy football season since  i’ve got a group of friends that we all use a private group for almost strictly for fantasy football stuff. 

 But yeah, it doesn’t take much to understand that social media is a cancer. And truthfully, it’s only going to get worse as we get more and more plugged in in the coming years. I understand social media has some benefits to it, but those have gotten lost over the last five years or so. It’s a toxic wasteland now that allows people to become  The worst versions of themselves. I mean look at the comments section of a political board. You are witnessing the lowest  levels of humanity and how people interact with each other in that area.