Netflix's "The Social Dilemma"

[walrus]

Ok watched it. But first yes I only use a PC at work rarely use the one we have at home it’s always my phone it just gave me a full picture of how much time I devote to the little screen.

Anyway I watched the documentary. They added some filler which I thought was unnecessary it distracted from the documentary aspects a bit. Overall I thought it was good and yeah each of those creators who now critique are probably billionaires or close to it with stock options etc but remember the creators of the atom bomb later condemned. The dude who designed facebooks like button struck me. He was so pleased at first, he was thinking his little like thingy would spread joy. He wasn’t thinking of people who don’t get likes or not enough likes. I have never created anything that impacted the world and I hate to say it but the chances of me doing so are looking pretty slim so I can’t fully relate to that but I get his point.

I’m at a little bit of a loss because I’m so unfamiliar with the active use of Facebook and Twitter. I think I had Facebook for a few months. Never tweeted in my life. Only read tweets on the news. But the google thing. It feeds you the news you look at. So if you have a certain political leaning and you seek articles that are for one point of view, well that’s all google is going to start feeding you. Where do you start questioning yourself when you agree with everything you read. We tend to blame certain people or parties for the divisiveness going on around us. Is it really that? Or is it this media and social media?

Interesting the time these hundred billions to trillions of market cap companies spend on the imperfect science of psychology as they develop their features and algorithms. It’s been proven that Facebook itself influenced the 2016 election. Or at least tried to. Yet we focus on Russia. Well that’s if we believe former Facebook employees.

There really is a lot to think about. If you follow stocks many are looking for the big “AI” company that will come out. Like people are waiting for it. And here Facebook and google are using it and saying it will fix the problem it created. IMO google is the bigger offender. You sign up for Facebook and use their services. They got demonized for perfecting something all these companies are doing. I’m not saying it’s good. They quickly mentioned the conspiracy theories but I think the bigger picture was that main stream news is becoming a conspiracy theory.

Touching on the psychology for a second, yes we need the opinions of others about us sometimes. Other people can point things out or as we are growing up we learn what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior (to a degree) from others. But we weren’t meant for the opinions of thousands of others as we develop. That’s what these kids today growing up are facing. They join social media at 12, thats seems to be the average age. That can be quite taxing especially if you are hypersensitive or have low self esteem to begin with which many kids do as they try to find their place.

You want to be optimistic but we see this shit can tear a country apart let alone a person and it’s built so we don’t notice the change in us yet it’s built to create change in us. I need to consider selling my Facebook stock. I don’t have a lot but I got in several years ago and I didn’t get google stock because I don’t like what the company does I’m getting that way with Facebook now. In the end I think it’s a good documentary to watch. Whether you use it or not these social media companies are a large part of life for 100’s of millions, well billions of people. Countries don’t need to screw with us, we do it to ourselves.