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The Social Dilemma


CheddarReds

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The Social Dilemma is a newly released documentary on Netflix. 

It's about the dangers of social networking and the impact it's having on our society, including rioting, extremism and an increase in mental health issues. It highlights how Russia have been able to impact the 2016 election in the US (and similarly in the UK EU referendum). 

Daunting but definitely worth a watch! 

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Great watch, not a massive amount of stuff I didn't already know but they put it into a really digestible format.

The biggest concern for me isn't the mental health side of it, though that is terrible. It's genuinely the fake news problem - Brexit itself, whichever side you're on, has shown we're absolutely abysmal at filtering out fake news, and Cummings through Cambridge Analytics exploited that vulnerability to devastating effect.

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2 hours ago, nebristolred said:

Great watch, not a massive amount of stuff I didn't already know but they put it into a really digestible format.

The biggest concern for me isn't the mental health side of it, though that is terrible. It's genuinely the fake news problem - Brexit itself, whichever side you're on, has shown we're absolutely abysmal at filtering out fake news, and Cummings through Cambridge Analytics exploited that vulnerability to devastating effect.

Yeah this was frightening to hear about. I'd never considered this and the wider impact it's having on society. 

Obviously a computer can't recognise what's true and what isn't as they said, but whoever's controlling the platforms will have a bias (or lack of care) that'll make it difficult to control what news and messages are passed out I suppose. 

So a complicated one to figure out!

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2 hours ago, AshtonGreat said:

Twitter is a horrible place

Twitter has some vile and horrible people on it. But you choose who you follow, if you're seeing lots of horrible stuff, you're following the wrong people.

Facebook is more dangerous as it's your friends, family and work colleagues that are being horrible. It's far harder to cut them out of your life.

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15 minutes ago, BS2 Red said:

Twitter has some vile and horrible people on it. But you choose who you follow, if you're seeing lots of horrible stuff, you're following the wrong people.

Facebook is more dangerous as it's your friends, family and work colleagues that are being horrible. It's far harder to cut them out of your life.

Agreed. I think social media is an addiction. I think using our smartphones are an addiction. We have picked up repeatable habits over time and now I think millions across the UK are now addicted to these apps. 
The issue is when we get a 'like' on a tweet, or a photo on instagram or facebook it produces dopamine into our brains which is the addiction, which we all crave for approval from our peers. I worry for the people under 25 today who have been brought up into the scene of Social media being the norm.

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3 hours ago, nebristolred said:

I still think Facebook is the worst. Absolute cesspit.

Yep agreed for the reasons @BS2 Red said. On Insta/Twitter/Youtube you can choose who you follow. I create new accounts on Insta when I'm focusing on different things so I can filter my feed and what I see tailored to my current interest e.g. the gym, or running. Still got my personal one on private but never update it anymore.

Facebook is your friends and family, and people get quite funny if you "unfriend" them. You can manage your feed and who you choose to see updates from but if you've got a lot of friends it's quite time consuming to manage that. Plus, FB algorithm's decide who and what you see which I really dont like. Deleted the app some time ago and I often forget to even look at it (sadly a bit of a boredom thing when I do). It's clever though, it ramps up the emails to tell you that you've got notifications when you haven't seen them for a while!

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6 hours ago, 2015 said:

Agreed. I think social media is an addiction. I think using our smartphones are an addiction. We have picked up repeatable habits over time and now I think millions across the UK are now addicted to these apps. 
The issue is when we get a 'like' on a tweet, or a photo on instagram or facebook it produces dopamine into our brains which is the addiction, which we all crave for approval from our peers. I worry for the people under 25 today who have been brought up into the scene of Social media being the norm.

If you look at the logic then forums such as OTIB are addictive. Its how we (the end user) use the tool we have.

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5 hours ago, MarcusX said:

Yep agreed for the reasons @BS2 Red said. On Insta/Twitter/Youtube you can choose who you follow. I create new accounts on Insta when I'm focusing on different things so I can filter my feed and what I see tailored to my current interest e.g. the gym, or running. Still got my personal one on private but never update it anymore.

Facebook is your friends and family, and people get quite funny if you "unfriend" them. You can manage your feed and who you choose to see updates from but if you've got a lot of friends it's quite time consuming to manage that. Plus, FB algorithm's decide who and what you see which I really dont like. Deleted the app some time ago and I often forget to even look at it (sadly a bit of a boredom thing when I do). It's clever though, it ramps up the emails to tell you that you've got notifications when you haven't seen them for a while!

I always laugh at people with about 500 friends. Yeah right and get real. Mine is circa 40 and even that is probably stretching things.

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6 hours ago, elhombrecito said:

I quit FB a couple of years ago, and I can honestly say that I haven't missed it in the slightest. 

I binned mine during lockdown - i will never have FB again, Twitter is a place for faceless cowards to spout horrible things, i do however find it a bit more useful than FB for when i want to see things about City etc 

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13 hours ago, BigTone said:

If you look at the logic then forums such as OTIB are addictive. Its how we (the end user) use the tool we have.

They are, but they don't have complex algorithms in the backend designed to show you content that will make you engage, regardless of truth. So in that sense, forums are far less dangerous.

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2 hours ago, nebristolred said:

They are, but they don't have complex algorithms in the backend designed to show you content that will make you engage, regardless of truth. So in that sense, forums are far less dangerous.

Agreed, but we all have brains and can make up our own minds about the truth and whether we want to engage further. I could read 3 newspapers and get 3 different perspectives on an issue. It's up to me which one I agree with. Likewise with posts on a forum. 

I use FB to interact with family & friends, very little else. I don't use any other apps apart from LinkedIn which would be about once a month.

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31 minutes ago, BigTone said:

Agreed, but we all have brains and can make up our own minds about the truth and whether we want to engage further. I could read 3 newspapers and get 3 different perspectives on an issue. It's up to me which one I agree with. Likewise with posts on a forum. 

I use FB to interact with family & friends, very little else. I don't use any other apps apart from LinkedIn which would be about once a month.

I was watching this thing where Arron Banks (guy who funds Farage) and he was talking about the idea of Cambridge Analytica hypnotising people over facebook to vote for Brexit being ridiculous, it made complete sense but like the masses were susceptible to being influenced by the likes of Rupert Murdoch in the past its now moved on the Mark Zuckerberg's of this world. Our minds are the product of the information we hear and whoever controls that can control us to a pretty large degree. How many times have we seen people acting like lemmings who just go along with the prescribed group think? If you speak for the group that a person believes in then you can get them to follow almost subconsciously lots of the time.

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52 minutes ago, BigTone said:

Agreed, but we all have brains and can make up our own minds about the truth and whether we want to engage further. I could read 3 newspapers and get 3 different perspectives on an issue. It's up to me which one I agree with. Likewise with posts on a forum. 

I use FB to interact with family & friends, very little else. I don't use any other apps apart from LinkedIn which would be about once a month.

Unfortunately mate, that is pure complacency. We really, really can't. You'd be absolutely amazed at how easily influenced you or I could be.

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5 minutes ago, nebristolred said:

Not to be rude mate but it's psychology that disagrees with you, not just me. We've all seen someone share something fake on Facebook through motivated reasoning. That gives it every chance that we ourselves have done it too.

Quite possible as in all walks of life and not just social media.

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