The documentary does not clearly define the object of the description, and the "Internet platform" is used here to refer to it. Including but not limited to Google (search engine), Facebook, instagram, Snapchat and other Internet platforms with search and sharing functions.
1. Cause: Engineers are upset because of ethical issues, because search engines affect the vast majority of people through very few designed algorithms, ("It basically just said, you know, never before in history have 50 designers, 20- to 35- year-old white guys in California made decisions that would have an impact on two billion people. ”) He once put it forward in the company, which resonated with peers and the company paid attention to it, but never again, and now he hopes that this situation should not be the only one Insiders understand.
2. The operation mode of the Internet platform:
(1) Motivation for formation: change of profit model. Free-to-use software has turned Internet giants' patrons from users to advertisers, and thus goods from software to users. ("If you're not paying for the product, then you are the product.")
(2) Methods: data collection - repeated experiments - reverse programming to induce responses, repeated reinforcement using psychological methods, etc.
(3) Application status: The application started from Facebook, and now it has become the basic principle of Internet giants
(4) Principle: Use people's social desires to explore ways to stimulate dopamine, making people addicted.
3. Analysis of the nature of the problem
(1) Technology is not good or bad, but advanced technology will magnify the good or bad in society
(2) And this kind of stimulus feedback, manipulation algorithm is not strictly "technology", but with a certain motivation, the views embedded in the code (I like to say that algorithms are opinions embedded in code... )
(3) This is a defect of the basic rules. At the beginning of the design, there is a bias towards the bad.
4. The essence of the problem - it's not that technology is bad, it's that technology has released the worst and best things in society.
The motivation for creation is also positive social impact. He did change his life
5. Caused social problems
(1) Aggravated anxiety, prominently manifested as teenage suicide
(2) Social media divides society: Personalized recommendations allow people to receive different information. People cannot digest all information in the era of information explosion, and can only accept the information that is pushed, and think that other people have the same cognition as themselves; And the polarized information push is beneficial to prolong the viewing time of users. False information spreads much faster than real news. Social media tends to lead users to polarization and false information - the collapse of democracy
(3) Social media is used by bad political groups to manipulate people and cause real conflicts (such as the Rohingya Muslim genocide in Myanmar)
(4) The worst outcome of the above is the destruction of civilization. The opposite of harmfulness is people's unawareness of the manipulation behavior of Internet giants (Like, how do you wake up from the matrix when you don't know you're in the matrix? )
7. Unrealistic views that are currently emerging
(1) Humans adapt to changes in this technology - do not agree, because "the brain hardware is fixed, it will respond to this dopamine stimulation"
(2) AI can solve these problems: AI cannot, because their source of information comes only from opinions published by humans on the Internet, and humans vote with their feet on the Internet
8. The urgency of the solution and practical solutions
(1) Large-scale companies are difficult to change, and the solution is very urgent
(2) Legislation to set regulations and keep up with technological development trends
(3) To comply with economic laws
(4) Specific (as proposed by the interviewee):
such as taxing data collection and processing
Program to turn off notifications
Use the Qwant search engine, which does not store your search history
Never accept videos recommended to you on YouTube, always choose your own This is another way of fighting
Make a mechanism for reversing decisions in software
Follow people you don't agree with on Twitter and see a different point of view
Before forwarding, do a little Baidu to confirm the authenticity
View more about The Social Dilemma reviews
