Social Media: Mind Control?
In the video How a handful of tech companies control billions
of minds every day, Triston Harris discusses how these companies can change our
minds without us even thinking about it. We are in a day and age that the thing
that mostly controls us is the size of a 3x5 card, can be carried almost
anywhere, and never more than an arm’s reach. Yes, our cell phones some costing
up to $1000 and as low as $20 whatever the case maybe they let you connect to
the world wide web and connect to millions of people via social media. These companies
have control rooms full of people all seeking one goal, and that is to keep you
on the site for as long as possible and for us to click on the most ads. All
while Mr. Mark Zuckerberg collects his billions of dollars. After all its not
about you it’s about them getting their millions while we click our valuable
time away. 
What these social media companies do is that they are
keeping us glued to their company. Say for instance Facebook, when you first
sign up your asked a series of questions on what your interests are. Then you
start seeing notifications on what interests you selected when signing up for
the account. In turn those notifications keep you glued to your phone clicking
link after link until you get lost in the Facebook world. From there you start
getting adds popping up, ads that make Face Book money. “Skillfully targeting
ads based on personal information users share, the site knows what it’s doing”.
YouTube also does this by adding the auto play feature to its videos. When I am
on YouTube more than likely I just click on music videos or something that
interests me. Eventually I automatically get suggested what I should watch next.
Most of the time the video is picked for me and they have ads that must be watched.
Before you can even think you can just skip it there is a time delay you must
wait until it can be skipped, sometimes the ads can run for as long as seven
minutes. These ads range from games for your cellphone to refinancing your mortgage.
If these companies would invest ethically in our time and
draw us to what we really want to see, and not just think us as a monetary sign,
the investment would be greater. They should acknowledge that we are
persuadable, with all the money that is being made companies should be able to
create new models that help the user instead of pulling the user in in many
directions. Users should be able to decide on their own what they want to watch
and what interests them. It is more likely that someone will return to a
company if the users input is acknowledged rather than pushed on to them. While
most people fear change it is important to note that people also always want
something better. What better way to promote something than to have the input
of the user.
Sources:
I'm not sure I'm understanding your suggestion about how these tech companies could behave ethically. Right now they look at your own searches to target you with what they feel you like, based on what you've linked to in the past. How is that unethical? Perhaps we should look in the mirror on this issue and realize that WE are the reasons that targeted advertising works because we seldom even think about the fact that we are being manipulated.
ReplyDeleteManipulation is what ALL advertising does, whether it be through social media, TV, radio, or even magazines. How is social media any different?