#I had massive socioeconomic advantages to start out with. and my current position is mostly self-inflicted. I should be idiotic to complain

[scarletblob]

Today it transpires that I am currently unable to apply for new jobs because my passport is in the process of being renewed and my birth certificate is on the opposite side of the country in a place to which I hope never to return, which means I have, as far as I can tell, no proof of U.S. citizenship. Somehow this did not occur to me until now, because I have no idea what I'm doing. I can probably get my birth certificate in a few weeks, but that's a few weeks in which I can't do anything...

Just in general I'm feeling a fair amount of anxiety about employment. I'm in my third year of university already and have no good prospects because I spent the last two years rotting in my bed and failing to function as a person instead of doing anything productive. And it really feels like the sort of thing where, once you fall behind, it's near-impossible to catch up. I don't even know now what I'll do in the upcoming summer holiday.

[darealpatyu]

The Social Dilemma: get off your phone now

This film has been a huge wake-up call for me. I am legitimately scared of how social media has become a tool for third persons to further their own commercial or political interests through the manipulation of users. As a person who uses social media quite a lot, I am alarmed and astounded that I am unknowingly consuming tons of propaganda and allowing this subliminal content to change my world view. Reader, I hope you’ll be glad to find out that after this film, I have turned off my notifications on all my social media applications – even Messenger. I feel incredibly manipulated whenever I turn on my phone and find myself wanting to have a notification, and so I want to un-program my brain. These have been my initial thoughts after watching the movie, but let’s get into a deeper analysis of how these insights relate to the bigger picture.

 What roles do technology and social media play in your life?

Technology and social media have made my life infinitely easier and more entertaining. Technology allows me to learn new skills, communicate with my relatives in the US, and find communities that share the same hobbies as me. I can also order food, clothes, and virtually everything that I could ever want through the Internet. Also, on my phone, it has become a daily routine of mine to learn some French through Duolingo and exercise using this fitness app. I also use my phone to track my menstrual cycle, so I’m never caught off-guard. (Life is tough as a woman, isn���t it?) Social media, on the other hand, is not just a place for me to stay updated on my friends’ lives, it has become my go-to source for entertainment and news. So, technology and social media are an essential part of my life now, and if I were to go even a day without it, I would have an extremely tough time finding things to do, and I wouldn’t be nearly as productive and efficient. Hence, I could go, at most, twelve hours without my phone. And that’s already pushing it.

So, it’s not surprising that I do identify with the two extreme portrayals of social media users – the teenage boy who gets indoctrinated by an extreme movement and the little girl who has anchored her self-worth on approval on social media. I feel that I was once that little girl when I was in high school. Back then, I used to post an absurd amount of information about my life and I always monitored the number of likes I was getting because it made me feel important and loved when I was getting positive attention. I also used to feel really sad about posts that didn’t have as many likes as my other ones, and I would delete those if they didn’t do well. I would also obsess over the number of followers I had on Twitter. Looking back now, that was an extremely dark and toxic time in my life because I was just living for what people thought of me. As I grew older and got into college, I outgrew this phase and moved onto the extreme movement phase. I am currently in it now and I am quite scared that I will end up becoming a brainless pawn in politics. I see a lot of propaganda online, and I used to react very strongly and recklessly to “information” like this. I am glad that I now know to be critical of emotionally charged news and facts to not let my biases get the best of me.

Can you give us insights on a SWOT-PEST analysis of yourself?

The PES factors affect my life more than I am capable of understanding. Most DDS possess an inability to piece together how the larger system affects all of us individually; so, it’s a good thing I’m not a DDS! All of these factors DO affect us massively; politics affect the way legislation and national and local initiatives are imagined, inflation and investor confidence affect prices and even the growth of infrastructure in the country, and our society is affected by mostly intangible social factors like the trend of younger people of a higher socioeconomic class to take on liberal stances. These all influence our individual lives because we live in a bigger bubble than our personal environments – all the ideas and the actions that we do are largely determined by the larger environment.

The technological factor greatly influences the PES factors, and it is easy to see why. Whenever there are any technological advancements, humans find a way to use these to reach their goals efficiently. When the wheel was invented, trade became easier (economic), communication became faster (social), and this might be a stretch, but the wheel played a huge role in power relations as it was used to have the upper hand in ancient battles (political). In the same way, the T factor influences the PES factors today – financial transactions have never been more efficient, social interaction continues to evolve, and politicians can campaign (and scheme) more effectively through social media.

The technological factor continuously affects every factor that affects our lives to an unimaginable extent. Because it affects the PES factors, it certainly also affects the opportunities and threats present in my life as well. Through modern technology, I can join many webinars, watch many informative videos about topics that interest me, and even find jobs online. However, because of technology, I am threatened by cybersecurity and data privacy issues, and I am vulnerable to fake news and propaganda which could drastically affect my world view. The documentary actually perfectly captured how technology, particularly social media, has affected our lives – business, politics, society, and our personal lives have become more productive yet somehow more vulnerable at the same time. The film echoes my assessment of the PEST factors when it exhibited how: 1) businesses use data to make advertisements more effective, 2) extreme political stances polarize society and destroy democracy through fragmented truths, 3) social interaction has deteriorated into a drug that causes people to crave attention and validation more than the essence of social interaction itself, and 4) all of these factors and their interactions have real-life consequences that affect our personal lives more than we know.

How do you foresee the future use of technology?

I have a bad feeling that this downward trend of abusing technology will continue. I do think that businesses and politicians will continue to milk the heck out of this disinformation and advertisement cow just because they can. I don’t mean to take on such a radical view of the world, but I do believe that the elite in society ultimately are the ones who decide on what’s allowed and what isn’t. Because these unethical practices have become the industry standard and even a competitive advantage for some of these social media platforms, it’s going to tale a long time to push back against this current, especially because there are going to be financial consequences that harm the elite. Would a drug pusher advocate for making drugs illegal? Would drug addicts want drugs to be illegal? Would politicians who benefit from having a medium for effective campaigning want social media to be regulated?

This was mentioned in the film and I think that it’s worth mentioning again -- these corporations make the public feel like they are capable of regulating themselves when in reality, they are doing the bare minimum when it comes to ethically handling our data. It’s horrible that they’re doing the bare minimum because the public can’t easily demand that this bare minimum be changed to a higher standard because again, IT’S ALREADY AT THE BARE MINIMUM. It’s like when you ask a man who’s DECENT ENOUGH to start treating you better – and he replies with, “At least I don’t beat you as other men do.” As if that’s a good enough excuse to continue on this path to human destruction.

So, how do we push back?

I want to say that we should all boycott social media applications until they decide to do right by us, but I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon. I also want to say that we should have everybody watch The Social Dilemma for them to become aware of the unethical practices that have become the industry standard. However, there are only a few of us who have access to this film and only a few of us who can comprehend it in the way that it was meant to be comprehended. Being individually aware is a great first step to pushing back, but it’s the uneducated masses that are most vulnerable to the fake news and propaganda being spread online. So, a better solution to halting these unethical practices is having an external body regulate these corporations. An organization has to intervene and create ethical standards for these companies. It’s the only real way to start pushing back.

What are your thoughts about these quotes from the film?

"If you’re not paying for the product, then you’re the product."

When something is free and too good to be true, be critical of what the product is doing to you and how it is affecting your life. More often than not, the world is not some great place where you get great stuff for free. Everything has a price, and we have to be wary of when we’re being used.

"There are only two industries that call their customers 'users': illegal drugs and software."

Social media is addicting. The reason why they make it so addicting is that their business model is most effective when you have users spending every waking minute on the application. More user engagement means more advertising exposure. Hence, we need to know that we are not the target customers of social media platforms, but we are merely users. To quote the film, “if something is not a tool, it’s demanding things from you.” When social media begins to demand your time from you, then it’s not playing the role of a tool for communication and entertainment anymore, but it is playing the role of a drug.

"Social media is a marketplace that trades exclusively in human futures."

What is social media selling exactly? On the surface, it might seem like it is just selling the promise of effective advertising to third persons. However, this effective advertising has a goal – to change your behavior in some way to fulfill the commercial or political interests of a third party. You might plug into the app that you own a dog. It starts showing you dog videos, and then a cute chew toy that you might like to buy. Slowly, the algorithm recommends you rabbit videos next. You end up liking rabbits and then proceed to buy two chew toys – one for your dog and one for your newly acquired rabbit. Social media changes us in tiny ways that we aren’t aware of. So, we have to be cautious, especially because the algorithms, driven by purely financial incentives, could end up transforming our world view.

"The very meaning of culture is manipulation."

The algorithm used to power this effective advertising medium manipulates people into staying on the application as long as possible. But very few of us understand this. If more people knew about the unethical tactics used by companies to keep users engaged, they would feel incredibly manipulated. Is this what business and politics have come to? Has human culture evolved to a point where it’s perfectly fine to toy with people’s lives to fulfill a financial or political goal? Or has it always been this way, and the abuse of social media has just uncovered human nature’s tendency to value self-interest above all else?

To conclude this lengthy blog entry, an algorithm that blindly recommends fake news and propaganda to keep users engaged should not be the industry standard. People cannot be manipulated to serve commercial or political interests. Let people have access to unbiased truths and let them think for themselves what they’d like to think. We cannot rely on corporations to regulate themselves. These corporations must be regulated by an external organization.

Humans are better than this. We can do better than this.

#GreedyCorporationsCanKissMyAss