The Social Dilemma

This is a must see for anyone using social media.  

https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/

Of course there will be critics of the film, but it is fascinating that their goal is to keep you on their platform and algorithms are feeding you what you want to see and they know what will trigger you to engage and when to deliver the trigger.

Perhaps down the road people will start using our platform for their personal communities to get a bit off the grid.  We will always be algorithm-free.   grin


No disrespect, but anyone who has been paying attention for the last few years knows this. It's been studied and reported on repeatedly. Dopamine tripping for ad revenue, baby, with a big side order of voluntarily shared personal information.

Delete your Facebook everyone!


I deleted my Facebook profile after leaving it unused for several years.  That is now 3-4 years ago.  I don't use any other social media (other than MOL), and yet, I am inundated with targeted ads.


Do you clear the browsing data in your computer (phone tablet etc)? From time to time? The technology is embedded in the browsers we use, especially Chrome.


My extended (and far-flung) family is on fb, and pretty much nowhere else, so what to do?  i hold my nose, and try to give as little as possible away, and never ever spend $ there or click on ads.

eta:  10,000 thanks for MOL, Jamie, and thanks for this reco too.


Mjc it just goes to show part of the dilemma. In less than 2 decades tech companies have inveigled their way deep into our lifestyles. We've become dependent on them, but it's not without cost.

I started using Google Drive a while ago to store digital photos. I thought it was fairly innocuous. A couple of years ago I took a couple of pictures of a restaurant sign that shared a name with a good friend so I could send it to him for a chuckle. Not long ago I was searching my Google drive for their last name because I had stored some pictures from their wedding party under their name. The photos of the restaurant sign came up. I never renamed those pictures, Google Drive did a character recognition on the photos and knew what it said.

I just did a test search for the word "house" and it came back with some pictures of early artwork from my daughter with the word "house" scrawled in crayon. Impressive.

A search for the word Alcatraz returned several photos of Alcatraz Island I took on a trip. I didn't label them in any way and I took them with a regular camera. So no GPS tracking. Likewise a search for "bridge" returned several pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge. 

Cool feature! Great! But here's my question: who else has that data? What are they doing with it? It's an example of how data companies can scrape for data in a way that a lot of us don't think about. I don't know if they are, but its definitely information Google could harvest about me to tailor advertising. 

So tomcat even if you just email a picture of something to someone there might be information about your interests that can help Google tailor ads to your interests.

mjc depending on what photos you share, there is information Facebook can grab from those.

Yeesh. I'll shut up now.


I know this sounds crazy, but I am almost convinced by this point that my iPhone is delivering up ads based on my phone conversations. 


mrincredible says:  "mjc depending on what photos you share, there is information Facebook can grab from those.

"Yeesh. I'll shut up now."

Happily (or not) i have no idea how to share a photo.  Most i can do is occasionally save one that someone else has posted.  No need to shut up pls!  Your post was enlightening (and picturing the child's scrawl of House made me smile).

Tech-enhanced son says, nothing's private, don't imagine it is, certainly don't post anything you don't want public.  So far, i think the worst i've done is share some grade school and high school memories in a group, and who could care about my commonplace experiences from 60 (!) years ago?  But then, oops! Is one of the teachers the answer to a "security question"??


yes - phone images a lot of info - such as GPS coordinates.  So social media will pretty much always know where you are if you post regularly.


You can disable GPS tagging in your photos. Any time you get a new phone you should go into the camera settings and turn off location.

I think it's about more than just not sharing info you want to keep private. The algorithms run by social media can triangulate seemingly innocuous information and get a good picture of who you are.


Dear sweetsnuggles,

You are the second person I know of just this week to say that. And it creeps me out. But I suppose it is technologically possible? UGH. 


mrincredible said:

You can disable GPS tagging in your photos. Any time you get a new phone you should go into the camera settings and turn off location.

 I'm torn on this one. It's so convenient to be able to view photos by location.


Anyone else read this?

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/10/08/simulating-democracy/

It seems to fit the discussion neatly yet place some of the ethics raising much earlier.  (Another viewer of the doco in this household suggested that having dates on those quotes placards would have been very helpful)


kthnry said:

mrincredible said:

You can disable GPS tagging in your photos. Any time you get a new phone you should go into the camera settings and turn off location.

 I'm torn on this one. It's so convenient to be able to view photos by location.

 I understand being torn.  I had the GPS tagging function turned off in my phone camera, but now wish I had left it on.  I did a long road trip with my late wife a couple of years ago. And while I can still see the date and time on each photo, and can probably work out the location from the tour itinerary, she would have been able to tell me where each photo was taken.  I can't ask her now.  LOL


My iPhone GPS trail will show I've visited three of the four Marxist-Leninist regimes (China, Laos, Vietnam).   When I get to Cuba I think I'll use a pinhole camera. 


marksierra said:

 I understand being torn.  I had the GPS tagging function turned off in my phone camera, but now wish I had left it on.  I did a long road trip with my late wife a couple of years ago. And while I can still see the date and time on each photo, and can probably work out the location from the tour itinerary, she would have been able to tell me where each photo was taken.  I can't ask her now.  
LOL

 Very sorry. I didn't know you'd lost your wife.



In order to add a comment – you must Join this community – Click here to do so.