How to fix Big Tech and Social Media

[Berkut]

I wonder....


What if you just made it illegal to sell people's attention? Or at least made it illegal to do so without compensating them?


Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Tik-Tok. All of them work on a model where they are selling your attention to someone else. That means that your attention is their product, and their resource. Which then means that capturing your attention is critically important.


This means that they are all incented to exploit what in many cases are the worst traits of human nature. Our ease of outrage, our desire to hate someone else, our tribalism, our cognitive dissonance and irrationality. When we demand that Twitter shitcan the President for lying, or that Facebook vet content for bullshit, we are basically demanding that they act against their own algorithms, models, and the basic foundation of their product. They might do so, but they will only do so in the margins, and as little as they can get away with.


And for what, exactly? What is the actual benefit to humans that this is the model for funding these services?


Note that I am not asking what the benefit of the services are - I think there are great benefits to those services.


I am asking (other than making their owners giant, monstrous piles of cash) what are the benefits of the market model where social media outlets make money from advertising, rather then simply charging the actual users for the use of the service itself?


How different would this be if Facebook was a subscription service, and was not allowed to sell advertising at all?

[DGuller]

To be devil's advocate (almost literally in this case), online ads are a more efficient way to advertise.  If you think that advertising serves a useful purpose, then you should conclude the same thing about online ads.  When you blast ads on TV, you're engaging in carpet bombing, whereas online ads coupled with smart algorithms will target audiences more appropriately.

[Admiral Yi]

I am asking (other than making their owners giant, monstrous piles of cash) what are the benefits of the market model where social media outlets make money from advertising, rather then simply charging the actual users for the use of the service itself?

I don't have to pay.

[Berkut]

I am asking (other than making their owners giant, monstrous piles of cash) what are the benefits of the market model where social media outlets make money from advertising, rather then simply charging the actual users for the use of the service itself?

I don't have to pay.

OK, that is true. You don't have to pay.

I would argue that while you might *think* that is a benefit, what you are actually paying instead of a fee, is both more valuable, and vastly more destructive to yourself and society at large.

It is, I will argue, basically mining human beings worst tendencies in order to sell their attention to someone else - a form of exploitation where the human is up against power they cannot possible be equipped to rationally contend with - it's you against the smartest people in the world devising complex data driven algorithms that you cannot even begin to understand or rationally evaluate.

It is, I would argue, akin to European settlers "buying" New York with a bunch of beads. The transaction is based on a complete imbalance in power and understanding of what is actually being transacted.

[Berkut]

To be devil's advocate (almost literally in this case), online ads are a more efficient way to advertise.  If you think that advertising serves a useful purpose, then you should conclude the same thing about online ads.  When you blast ads on TV, you're engaging in carpet bombing, whereas online ads coupled with smart algorithms will target audiences more appropriately.

This is easier for me to address.

I don't think advertising serves a *practical* useful purpose at all. (By this I mean it doesn't serve a purpose to society in and of itself - obviously it is useful to the companies that engage in it).

Indeed, in the modern world, the only theoretical purpose it had has been supplanted anyway. That would be the purpose of informing consumers about your product, which has the purpose of giving information to consumers, which is necessary for them to make informed choices that drive the functioning free market.

The problem is that advertising is only very loosely linked to actual information. Since it is funded by businesses who by and large don't care to actually inform you, but rather to convince you, then it has always been a pretty shitty way to achieve the "inform the consumer" service anyway.

Now? I don't see how it helps me at all to have ads thrown at me all the time. I make decisions based on available customer reviews, mostly.

So yeah, I don't think advertising itself has any particular intrinsic social value that needs protecting. It's not like if you took it out of the social media model, there would not still be other avenues of advertising open.

[Admiral Yi]

It is, I will argue, basically mining human beings worst tendencies in order to sell their attention to someone else - a form of exploitation where the human is up against power they cannot possible be equipped to rationally contend with - it's you against the smartest people in the world devising complex data driven algorithms that you cannot even begin to understand or rationally evaluate.

Yet you yourself, when faced with this power which humans can not possibly contend with, managed to contend with it.

I think your thesis is severely overcooked.  We all know what click bait is and how to contend with it.  We also know that Facebook and Twitter (maybe less than Facebook) can create cocoons of agreement and lead to full retard QAnon conspiracy theories.  Would this change if Facebook went to a subscription model?  Not sure that's a given.

Your thesis sounds ridiculous when I apply it to my relationship to Google search and Youtube.  I can browse with Youtube clips with ads or pay a whonking big fee to get rid of the ads.  Are the ads I see for Volkswagen's electric car and the new iPhone destroying society?  Are the clips of the US Open and Euro Cup Youtube's algoryithms bring up destroying society?

[Barrister]

Before we "fix" social media, it would help to identify what you think the problems are?

As for 'making it illegal to sell people's attention', that's already the business model for a lot of traditional media as well.

[Berkut]

It is, I will argue, basically mining human beings worst tendencies in order to sell their attention to someone else - a form of exploitation where the human is up against power they cannot possible be equipped to rationally contend with - it's you against the smartest people in the world devising complex data driven algorithms that you cannot even begin to understand or rationally evaluate.

Yet you yourself, when faced with this power which humans can not possibly contend with, managed to contend with it.

I think your thesis is severely overcooked.  We all know what click bait is and how to contend with it.  We also know that Facebook and Twitter (maybe less than Facebook) can create cocoons of agreement and lead to full retard QAnon conspiracy theories.  Would this change if Facebook went to a subscription model?  Not sure that's a given.

Your thesis sounds ridiculous when I apply it to my relationship to Google search and Youtube.  I can browse with Youtube clips with ads or pay a whonking big fee to get rid of the ads.  Are the ads I see for Volkswagen's electric car and the new iPhone destroying society?  Are the clips of the US Open and Euro Cup Youtube's algoryithms bring up destroying society?

You are missing the point - the ads are fine.

The need to keep your attention on YouTube so they can sell those adds means that Youtube MUST deploy some very serious and sophisticated algorithms to capture your attention. What they do with your attention is not the problem.

It's like saying strip mining is terrible, it destroys the environment! And you responding that copper isn't so bad, it does all kind of cool things.

And I don't think I manage to contend with it that well, and even if I did, I don't think that is relevant. We cannot structure society on the presumption that all humans contend with Youtube as well as those of us best able to do so. Again, that likes saying children laboring in mines is no big deal, why, just look at Joey here! *He* didn't die or even get black lung!

You say "we all know what click bait is and how to contend with it". Oh?

Then why is that we have the problems we do have? If we ALL knew how to contend with it, then it wouldn't work, and the entire ad driven attention model would not even work, or would not work very well.

To torture my analogy some more, this is like you saying "Hey, we all know how to deal with black lung and the occasional mine shaft collapse! Those miners are all volunteers....kind of!" in response to actual data showing that long of miners die of black lung and are killed in mine shaft collapses.

Your argument appears to be that the problem really isn't any problem at all. Which is a good argument against my solution, of course. Just say that the problem isn't worth the solution, and we should be fine with social media operating exactly as it does today.

[The Brain]

I'm not convinced that there is an illness, and even if there is my guess is that the cure would be worse.

[Berkut]

Before we "fix" social media, it would help to identify what you think the problems are?

Sure, but I would rather just discuss with people who recognize the problem. If you think there isn't any problem, then clearly there is no need for a solution. I think the problem of social media information siloing, the problems around greater and greater polarization of thought, and rise in extremist groups as a matter of routine are pretty well understood, and not really interesting to the solution discusssion.

But certainly if you don't agree that there is a problem to begin with, then this isn't a very interesting discussion.

As for 'making it illegal to sell people's attention', that's already the business model for a lot of traditional media as well.

Indeed it is, which is why it just kind of naturally morphed into the social media business model.

And traditional media had problems with this as well. I would contend that those problems, due to the nature of the technology and delivery systems involved, where not nearly as profound as what we are seeing now. Of course, this is back to the "Is this even a problem?" question.

[Barrister]

Before we "fix" social media, it would help to identify what you think the problems are?

Sure, but I would rather just discuss with people who recognize the problem. If you think there isn't any problem, then clearly there is no need for a solution. I think the problem of social media information siloing, the problems around greater and greater polarization of thought, and rise in extremist groups as a matter of routine are pretty well understood, and not really interesting to the solution discusssion.

I didn't say there isn't a problem with social media.  I would agree there is something unsettling going on with it.

But I don't think I could answer "What is the problem?".  So I wondered if you could either, since after all you just named 3 different albeit related problems.

You could also mention the problem of social media hollowing out traditional media (in particular newspapers).  The rampant intellectual property theft.  Various privacy problems / selling your data.

[DGuller]

Let me take a stab at it.  I think the problem with social media is the same problem we have with drugs: some people are highly susceptible to falling to addiction, to the point that for those people the assumption of them being rational actors, which we use to justify various freedoms, is demonstrably unreasonable. 

We choose to outlaw some drugs completely, and tightly control other drugs, in recognition of the reality that an addict does not have much in the way of free will, and society is better off with measures in place to keep people from getting addicted.

[The Minsky Moment]

I think the problem of social media information siloing, the problems around greater and greater polarization of thought, and rise in extremist groups as a matter of routine are pretty well understood, and not really interesting to the solution discusssion.

Those are one set of problems associated with social media; there are others.  And there are still others with Big Tech - which includes other significant domains. 

There are many potential solutions to the insular experience of social media, but that's only one part of the picture.

[Jacob]

I think the issue is less about the "consumer is the product" model of advertising, and more about the fact that the most virulent propaganda can be served, that there is no control for truth, and that there is no professional standards that apply to the content that's created and promoted; that and that the AI "you liked this so try that" algorithms create effective funnels into extremist content.

That butts into the free speech issue and the kind of social engineering that's dangerous - and that Americans are particularly allergic to - but that's where the actual issue lays IMO. The problem is not - as Yi rightly points out - the VW and iPhone and cereal ads particularly.

[The Minsky Moment]

It is a problem with social media but is it really a problem of social media?

It's always been true that people tend to associate with like-minded people and the resulting insularity can foster extremism and vulnerability to conspiracy theories.  For example, most white people living in say Mississippi in the 1850s would have held objectively extreme and conspiratorial opinions.  It was common to believe that chattel slavery was a positive good, to the benefit of the slaves and that the South was being targeted by horrific conspiracies from abolitionist zealots seeking to spread miscegenation and destroy the virtue of Southern womanhood.  Even by the standard of the times, there were extreme views and we know that led to great violence. That is perhaps an extreme example, but one can pretty easily show other examples of extreme polarization in other periods, such as the Gilded Age and the resulting civil violence.

It may be the case that the political polarization and extremism we see today is closer to the norm and that the seemingly less partisan era after WW2 was the departure from the norm.  The broad-based participation in the war fostered mixing of different kinds of people from different backgrounds and brought people together in a common pursuit.  The nature of mass media in the postwar period - eg. dominance of TV by a few corporatist networks - also worked against polarization. ( Even so, there were serious outbursts of political extremism - from McCarthyism and Jon Bircherism on the Right to the some the excesses of the New Left). 

The decentralized nature of social media helps foster insularity but it is not unique in this regard as the rise of politicized talk radio and cable news also facilitates people to choose their preferred reality.  Social media is less coherent in its messaging but it does draw some additional power from its direct peer-to-peer contact and the impact of emotive imagery ("memes" and videos).  But the broader point is even if social media disappeared overnight, the underlying problem doesn't go away.