They're just naively ignorant to what these platforms do. Exactly. Now, is there an issue where they should give you more information on what it is that they are doing with your information? Sure. But I think a lot of the time, especially when we talk about fake news. It's just a lot of people just don't have the critical thinking skills to ascertain between what is factual and what is fictitious. Simple as that take away social media
I'm actually very glad to see Dr. Grande get shared around on here because I've been a fan of his YouTube channel for a year or so. I really respect to balance well thought out views on really important and sensitive topics. And I think he does a great job of providing real qualified psychologist perspective
People need to start learning more skills, more background of technology and how these things work that are becoming quite integral to everyone's lifestyle. People need to understand how much data they generate when they use all these services and the fact that platforms are not collecting and using your data in your best interests. And once you've produced all that data and it's out there, you can't do anything about that. It's out there. It's gone and in the hands of advertising agencies
This is one link I wanted to share. It is an article about basically how recently the government has wanted to attack back our Privacy via encryption. So if you want to take control of your Privacy and your security by having encrypted communications, this would ideally extend to all the services you use online. So a lot of platforms and services, they try to encrypt your data somehow
This is another relevant link not released directly from the NSA or some other related government entity, I guess. But these are security practices is an actions that they're trying to spread. I think essentially in response to the security threat from China, this might be too technical code to glean too much info from. I know that there are some other released documents floating around. I just can't find the proper link to them right now, but here's one of them
Dewuan .
@FryedOreo · 3:38
And I'm not really a worry rat when it comes to information, because it's like, I know what I'm signing up for, but you're right with the kids. I think it would be great incentive to teach kids at a young age the importance and relevance of keeping your data secure. And unfortunately, my kids, especially they don't really have a choice. They're already kind of out there in the world before they even are of age
Or what often comes under scrutiny nowadays is video game platforms, things like Fortnite and oh, man, especially Chinese games, because they especially like to collect your data and you're not supposed to be collecting data on children. That's why whenever you start using a service, usually it either forces you to acknowledge that you are above age or you have parental consent. That doesn't work perfectly, obviously. But it is a practice that exists
Although I feel like you might be hard pressed to find a lot of transparency from the government. However, maybe that's a question that needs to be brought up to where if the government is going to be taking these actions and collecting this information and doing this, maybe they should be required to publish reports of what have they done? What data have they been collecting? What did they stop? What actions did they take?
It keeps evolving. It learns because every time it makes a decision, it gets feedback. In this case, the feedback is, did you or did you not click on the ad? In some cases, they might even look at other things, like when this ad was on your screen, did you stop? Did you pause? Did you look at it for a little longer? Because that's a thing that can be detected just by the fact that you're scrolling and then you stop
Dewuan .
@FryedOreo · 4:56
Would it help if you start putting a price on social media? How much people will pay for Facebook monthly or Swell monthly? I think you wouldn't see a lot of the same people here. I think it would be a really different platform. So I'm wondering, what are your thoughts on net neutrality? Maybe I'm missing something with net neutrality and the dangers within it
Now there's a lot of really good things that I'd like to respond to here. So this is going to take maybe a few messages. First of all, though, I do want to be clear that I have not. I personally watched the Social Dilemma documentary. I did watch the Doctor Grande video you shared, but I want that context in mind that I don't know. I I can't really respond to anything that was brought up in that documentary, specifically
So first of all, I'd like to respond to the topic of ads. So one of the things that you said that really stands out is you said we don't know enough about human behavior, and unfortunately, that is very untrue. We know a lot. There's a lot of science behind all of this. The people that design these things and the people that do marketing, they don't just come up with their methods and strategies
Now the topic of marketing and what essentially comes down to a field called UI and UX. So UI meaning user interface. This is essentially just the design of each screen in the app. What does it look like? So right now I'm looking like we got the chat still in the background, but it's grayed out. It's dimmed because it's not the focus. Right now. The little recording box is the focus, and that's just a little UI trick
So imagine that you start getting targeted ads for something quite personal to you, so I can't think of a better example right now, but there are better examples out there, but imagine you search for some information on erectile dysfunction and guess what you're getting tracks all over the web. Google is tracking your searches and Google shares data with everyone. They have one of the biggest monopolies on data and advertising on the Web
And we need policy changes to get up to times with technology because law was not ready for all of the crazy new things that are happening in technology. There's been so many controversies already over data breaches, over bad security practices, how our company is handling our data. Facebook's continued misuse of data. They keep having issue after issue, which is like, I don't understand how they still function as a company with how many times they've had widespread scandals
So say you have two different connections you want to make to the Internet. One of them is to Wikipedia, Netflix, dot com. Now, if net neutrality is not in effect, then something that the ISP is allowed to do is they can treat those connections differently. They can be like, oh, Netflix. Well, guess what. You don't pay for our special Internet fast track plan for media streaming and so services like YouTube, Netflix, any media streaming
He was the figurehead that allowed net neutrality to be destroyed, even though the American people were very vocal about not being happy with that. But net neutrality is essential for the freedom of information. And it needs to be a protected right, not just in America, but across the whole globe. Because imagine what happens in a Dystopic country, like, say, China, which every day it gets more and more scary because the thing is that China, they're in tune with tech
This is just one little introductory article into different dark patterns. I would highly recommend reading through this, but this is just the first drop in the well, and there's a lot of information out there, a lot of design patterns and tactics out there that get used on you
Dewuan .
@FryedOreo · 4:53
No, it's obviously working to some extent, but I'm wondering exactly how accurate how much are they benefiting from it versus how much is it the company's agenda to spend on marketing to look like they're doing something when really people are just buying into a brand anyway, regardless of all the dazzle and razzle that they put out in terms of market research. So market research has been going on long before the internet. It's nothing new
But one thing that you just said that I do want to respond to is you mentioned that market research is nothing new, and that's absolutely true. I don't disagree with that. But the thing that is new is big data and machine learning, and they're extremely effective, and they are completely new ways of doing market research where you said market research only looks at kind of a specific situation. It doesn't apply it to the masses
Also, this is a topic that I've just had a growing interest in. My interest in being vocal and active about these issues is increasing, so I probably did get carried away with articulating the information that I've gained about all this so far, and I also thought I don't see anyone else joining this conversation. It doesn't seem like anyone's going to, so I figured why not?
Dewuan .
@FryedOreo · 0:14
And I like to thank you, Robin, for taking the time to listen. Sometimes you really don't know how much people listen out here. It would be nice if they had a listen counter, but it's good to know that people care about the community of swell
Dewuan .
@FryedOreo · 5:00
It's still art at the end of the day, too. So marketing isn't just this soulless entity at times. Sometimes it's done creatively and people are part of it, and they support it because it represents their brand, their culture, et cetera. So, yes, I guess I'm just trying to say there's many ways to look at big data and machine learning. This could improve. Man. My YouTube knows exactly what I want to watch. It knows me perfectly
Dewuan .
@FryedOreo · 1:16
Yeah, it's kind of good. And also, too. I think it promotes more listening here. Now, believe it or not, there used to be platforms where they would show you who's listening. It would say the name of the user. So imagine that sort of you're listening to somebody's stuff, but you never respond to them. It would look weird to the person that's making the content, especially if they were to respond to your stuff. Right