Drowning in Social Dilemma
💡 We live in the information age, but ironically meaningful content is far less searchable or discoverable today than it was ten years ago.When I login to Twitter, my feeds are full of Elon Musk's bullshit and trash talk, Instagram is full of half-naked ladies sipping coffee in some beach house in the Bahamas, and TikTok is full of idiots trying to fuck themselves and make people laugh.
This is not how I want my social media to be, and it is not how I want to spend my day. However, billions and billions of people are desperately, hopelessly addicted to those toxic social media platforms. They couldn't put down their phones for even five minutes to check their feeds; they are connected to the Internet 24/7, while they wake up in a beautiful morning, while they are on a date, while they are studying, and I’m not trying to exaggerate, some folks even check their phones during SEX!
I don't blame humans for being human, constantly chasing for chic and drowning for fun. What I'm seeking to oppose here is the greedy, shameful technology corporations that control all social media platforms.
More and more individuals are realizing that internet companies hold our data, and many of them have this misinterpretation that it’s our data has been sold.
So, what do they do with our data?
Why do they collect our connections, relationships, browsing history, likes, dislikes, and comments?
In fact, companies are utilizing our data to build models that predict our actions, and whoever with the best model wins.
Picture this: whenever we are scrolling down, there's a voodoo doll on the other side of the screen who looks precisely like us. Everything we've ever done, every click we've ever made, every video we've ever watched, every like, every dislike... is being brought back to build a more and more accurate model.
Once they have the model, they can forecast what a person will do next.
They can predict what type of video will keep you watching, what emotions will trigger you, and whose current status you want to know.
SO WHAT ARE THEY BUILDING THE MODEL FOR?
Let’s figure out the 3 main goals of technology companies.
- Engagement Goal.
- They have to drive up your usage to keep you scrolling down and down.
- Growth Goal.
- Growth/Organic Growth is essential for any platform or product to thrive. To put it another way, they need to bring you back and make you invite more of your friends, who will then invite more of their friends, and so on.
- Advertising Goal.
- The majority of the revenue for technology companies comes from advertising, which means that "users" (we) are not their true customers; their actual customers are the advertisers. To keep their "sugar daddies" (advertisers) satisfied and make more money from the advertisers, they must utilize algorithms to keep users (us) staying longer and scrolling down. The algorithm's job is to figure out what to show you next and keep those numbers increasing.
💡 SO DO YOU NOW KNOW WHY THEY ARE COLLECTING OUR DATA?
AS GREEDY AS THEY ALL ARE, THEY ARE BUILDING A MODEL WITH OUR DATA, PREDICTING OUR ACTIONS WITH ALGORITHM, SELLING TO THEIR CUSTOMERS (ADVERTISERS), AND PROFITING!Prediction models powered by advanced algorithms are not designed to liberate us fundamentally through superior discoveries, or to make our searches easier, faster.
They are designed to categorize us into more predictable buckets with predetermined labels. They feed us our favorite snacks, which are usually toxic to our health and minds, in order to make us feel too full and content to leave.
Then one day after another, one step after another, we find ourselves addicted to those ostensibly life-changing social media platforms.
And one day, we find ourselves chewing bitter candles without even knowing.
And one day, we wake up obese, ugly, lazy, and stupid, and we couldn't live even one second away from the social media that has made us this way.