By Adam Goodrich
Blog III in a series illustrating how marketing informs stories. This week we are challenged to write a response to the Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma.
For me to tell you that The Social Dilemma is thought provoking will be the understatement of your day, perhaps week, and maybe month or year. For 94-minutes you are drawn to parallels between the documentary’s message and your life activities and thoughts, the social, cultural, environmental, economic world landscape, and the future. The story of how social media and big tech platforms are efficiently and effectively leveraging science-fiction-novel-like algorithms to steer the thoughts and actions of individuals, organizations, and countries is told first hand by former employees of Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and the like. The Social Dilemma is a medium for sounding an alarm and beginning a movement to hold accountable those who are using data mined from our social media use and search histories to manipulate the unknowing (us) without concern for consequence.
Three Perspectives
- Psychological
- Political
- Marketing
Psychological
As the closing credits rolled I systematically turned off all notifications on my iPhone. From a psychological perspective I connected to the ‘nudges’. By nudge I’m referring to the notifications we receive when an app sends an alert to you. The alert could be a text message, a new friend on social, a work email, or a weather update. I see it at home with each time a device rings, vibrates, or lights up. Almost immediately a response is activated by someone in the room. Problem is that these notifications have no manners and no concern for how involved you may be in another activity. Notifications are essentially interruptions… and the next time an app asks if you want to receive notifications, ask yourself if you’d like to receive interruptions instead, and then say NO. Step one of rewiring your psychology to restore presence in the moment sans the anticipation of receiving a nudge is to simply turn them off.
“Persuasive design techniques like push notifications and the endless scroll of your newsfeed have created a feedback loop that keeps us glued to our devices.”
– www.thesocialdilemma.com
Political
From a perspective of politics I’m alarmed at how possible big tech’s impact is. The documentary used visuals to graph the increase in polarization of political parties. Since the launch of social media the divide has grown wider. According to an internal Facebook report from 2018 noted in bold on thesocialdilemma.com, “64% of people who joined extremist groups on Facebook did so because the algorithms steered them there.” Anecdotally it appears from my social feed that the left think the extremists are on the right, and the right think the extremists are on the left. Cleverly, the ‘Extreme Center’ was the fictional group used in the docu-drama hybrid hit (96% of Google users liked it) to illustrate how social users are drawn into influential ‘rabbit holes’ that for many result in a hard-line perspective and opinion. Again, anecdotally this appears to have strengthened the consensus on either side that you are either with us or against us, and there is no in between. Further complicated and enflamed by the apparent need to place a label on anyone and everyone… perhaps social media has truly led to the end of conversations.
“People fail to get along because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they have not communicated with each other.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
Marketing
Lastly from a marketing perspective… what a bummer! That is to say that if organizations like the Center for Humane Technology (CHT) can successfully reverse the curse that has become big tech, and restore an appropriate level of privacy to internet-users. Sadly it sounds as though we have given up our ability to trust anything is real and not steered by an algorithm, including marketing. I say bummer with tongue in cheek, of course. Truth is, I believe there is a benefit to tailored marketing developed from user habits. If the PGA Tour Superstore is having a sale I don’t know about I’m happy to see those beautifully targeted discount golf shoes in my Facebook feed. If my local running shop is running a promo on a brand of sneakers they know I wear, slide that info ad into my Instagram, please and thanks. Maybe that is a perfect example of humane technology in motion.
“Today’s technology has increasing asymmetric power over the humans that use it.”
– humanetech.com
Conclusion
Now if this is all true, and not another business play by folks who have cashed in and were run out of Silicon Valley with their new way to make a buck (or another billion), I’m eager to see where it lands. Their message is compelling and inspiring. Their website and the organizations belonging to advocates of the movement offer information on how to engage with the movement, and make changes to take control back from a system that may have control over you. Perhaps one day we’ll look back at this era and realize how close we came to the shredder, or perhaps we’ll proceed mind-first into said shredder.. In the meantime, take a moment to explore the CHT’s resource page, and consider sharing to your social sites ; )