4 ms·

If Facebook/Google wanted to programm you

5 points by aszantu 8y ago

... how would they do that, if they wanted you to engage in behaviour that is beneficial to you, while preserving that addiction that keeps you sticking with them? Example: They want to help you be less fanatic about race, gender, etc.... right now the algorythm suggests more and more extreme views to keep you hooked, but it's not doing something beneficial to you apart from providing the links

r721 8y ago
Relevant: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1747016115599568 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17470161155995... >The Facebook study, entitled Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks (Kramer et al., 2014), was a collaborative endeavour between Facebook and Cornell University’s Departments of Communication and Information Science. In it, Facebook researchers directly manipulated Facebook users’ news feeds to display differing amounts of positive and negative posts from the people they followed in order to determine whether their subsequent posts were affected by the positivity or negativity of the set of posts they were viewing. This effect, that more positive or negative posts read by a user could change their own emotional state positively or negatively, is the ‘emotional contagion’ referenced in the article. Other links: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/every... https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29475019 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29475019
pdkl95 8y ago
While the goals are slightly different, I highly recommend reading[1] about the methods used by GCHQ's JTRIG unit (including the full Snowden document[2]). They are not really about specific metho9ds to manipulate groups of people, but the general ideas behind solving that type of problem. A particularly important topic discussed in [2] is "Attention Management". The first step humans use to process sensory input is deciding which (small) part of that data is important. We end up blatantly ignoring[3] most sensory data, because our capacity for attention is surprisingly small and very easily manipulated[4] if you know how to flood someone's input buffers[5]. The more troubling problems start when it isn't a human deciding how to manipulate attention, but instead it's a bunch of machine learning trying to "optimize engagement" (attention). [1] https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ [2] https://theintercept.com/document/2014/02/24/art-deception-training-new-generation-online-covert-operations/ https://theintercept.com/document/2014/02/24/art-deception-t... [3] how long does it take you to notice the difference between these two flickering frames: https://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/se367/10/presentation_local/Change%20Blindness_files/plane.gif https://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/se367/10/presentation_local... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZGY0wPAnus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZGY0wPAnus [5] Apollo Robins is shockingly good at using banter to DoS someone's attention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTa7rC1oUnk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTa7rC1oUnk , https://youtu.be/1kkOKvPrdZ4?t=1882 https://youtu.be/1kkOKvPrdZ4?t=1882

5 points by aszantu 8y ago

r721 8y ago

Relevant: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1747016115599568 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/17470161155995... >The Facebook study, entitled Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks (Kramer et al., 2014), was a collaborative endeavour between Facebook and Cornell University’s Departments of Communication and Information Science. In it, Facebook researchers directly manipulated Facebook users’ news feeds to display differing amounts of positive and negative posts from the people they followed in order to determine whether their subsequent posts were affected by the positivity or negativity of the set of posts they were viewing. This effect, that more positive or negative posts read by a user could change their own emotional state positively or negatively, is the ‘emotional contagion’ referenced in the article. Other links: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/everything-we-know-about-facebooks-secret-mood-manipulation-experiment/373648/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/every... https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29475019 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29475019

pdkl95 8y ago

While the goals are slightly different, I highly recommend reading[1] about the methods used by GCHQ's JTRIG unit (including the full Snowden document[2]). They are not really about specific metho9ds to manipulate groups of people, but the general ideas behind solving that type of problem. A particularly important topic discussed in [2] is "Attention Management". The first step humans use to process sensory input is deciding which (small) part of that data is important. We end up blatantly ignoring[3] most sensory data, because our capacity for attention is surprisingly small and very easily manipulated[4] if you know how to flood someone's input buffers[5]. The more troubling problems start when it isn't a human deciding how to manipulate attention, but instead it's a bunch of machine learning trying to "optimize engagement" (attention). [1] https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/ [2] https://theintercept.com/document/2014/02/24/art-deception-training-new-generation-online-covert-operations/ https://theintercept.com/document/2014/02/24/art-deception-t... [3] how long does it take you to notice the difference between these two flickering frames: https://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/se367/10/presentation_local/Change%20Blindness_files/plane.gif https://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/se367/10/presentation_local... [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZGY0wPAnus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZGY0wPAnus [5] Apollo Robins is shockingly good at using banter to DoS someone's attention: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTa7rC1oUnk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTa7rC1oUnk , https://youtu.be/1kkOKvPrdZ4?t=1882 https://youtu.be/1kkOKvPrdZ4?t=1882