The Social Dilemma: A Marketer's Perspective

 

Those who do not understand technology become slave to it

So, I guess you must be reading this post on your smartphone or computer and you might be probably from India and you got the referral to this post through social media (probably Instagram or Facebook). Am I right?

I can confidently say that 98% of what I said will be true. I am not just guessing. Let me show you some data.

via Google Analytics

Haha. I just wanted to show how this works. Okay.

I might be writing this blog with some amount of guilt.

So, the thing is, I am planning to dissect the buzzing documentary released on Netflix, directed by Jeff Orlowski, "The Social Dilemma", through the perspective of a marketer.

I hope by doing that I can put some sense of awareness into you.

Firstly, I'd like to introduce you to my day job so that I can assure you about the authenticity of the things I write. I am a digital marketer. I guess you might have been familiar with digital marketing since it is a buzzword these days.

Why digital marketers come into this scene is, basically, we are kind of the middle persons between users and social media engines. We pay social media channels to show ads to a certain amount of people who have a higher chance of buying a product.

Rather than being a traditional marketer, digital marketers have an upper hand because they have much bigger access to their prospects through the digital medium.

If you just look around you can see that every social media that you use has become a marketing tool. 

Businesses rely on social media to manipulate people and make them purchase their products. What social media really do is, literally sell "information" of their customers to these businesses.

When we were thinking that Facebook or Instagram was given to us for free, in fact, they are profiting from us.  

It is estimated that every year a mammoth amount of around $500 billion is spent by advertisers.

Let me quote these words that were published in the Social Dilemma, from people who was working for the tech giants.

For the last ten years the biggest companies in Silicon Valley have been in the business of selling their users - Roger McNamee, Facebook Early Investor, Venture Capitalist

 

Advertisers are the customers and we are being the thing that is been sold - Aza Raskin, Firefox & Mozilla Labs Former Employee

 If you are not paying for the product, you are the product - Tristan Harris, Google Former Design Ethicist

Basically when an ad is being put across social media, what we pay for is based on some factors like engagement or views.

Let me show you a sample where I can customise my audience to my needs.

This is how we target people. There are different criteria that I can choose people, like from gender, age, location to your political orientation.

I know this can get a little scary but this is the reality.

The thing is businesses around the world are competing for your attention. The business model is designed in a way that people are engaged on their screen. Social media make them do things they don't really want to. The only ones benefitted from these are the businesses who pay for these and the social media companies.

We're the product. Our attention is the product being sold to advertisers- Justin Rosenstein, Facebook Former Engineer, Google Former Engineer.

Justin was also the coinventor of Google Drive, Gmail Chat, Facebook Pages and the Facebook like button. So you would want to remember him. 

Its the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception that is the product- Jaron Lanier, Founding Father of Virtual Reality

Jaron is also the author of the book "Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now"

Social media have a huge amount of user data. We know data is said to be the next oil. What these companies do with data is, use it for predictions. The thing is, with some data about you in hand, the intelligent engines can predict what might be your favourite colour, food or cloth etc. More the data, more accurate the predictions become.

We are all sometimes surprised by the ads that are shown to us right?

What they do is basically mould this data to create models that can predict our actions. As it evolves these machines can actually predict what emotions can trigger you.

Great predictions begin with one imperative, you need a lot of data -Shoshana Zuboff, Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School

All of this data, that we're pouring out all the time is being fed into these systems that have almost no human supervision and that are making better and better and better predictions about what we're gonna do and who we are - Sansy Parakilas, Facebook Former Operations Manager, Uber Former Product Manager

Sometimes these machines know more about us than we consciously fail to acknowledge.

In the documentary, they show us these triplets who are an analogy for engagement, growth and advertising, powered by algorithms.

 Source: The Social Dilemma, Netflix

These algorithms are the ones which are tricky. They learn things from us to use against us. We are manipulated to do things that we never wanted to do in the first time. Sometimes these algorithms discreetly make decisions in our lives.

Now that sucks right?

The Social Dilemma shows us how technology can be so misleading and persuasive.  Technology is related to magic by Tristan Harris.

It implants a habit without u being able to realise it.

Also, this all comes down to a design technique where brilliant engineers work to create these user interfaces that work the best. These are only a handful of people who have the power to make technologies that can impact billions of people around the world.

It is said that the 'photo tagging' in which was introduced on Facebook is a part of that.

There is also this thing called Growth Hacking, which we marketers are also familiar with. 

Growth Hacking is a new field and a combination of marketing, data and technology. It helps to improve the systems.

They test with different sets of data and people and analyse the output to build better systems. When we think like that every user is a lab rat to them.

But the ironic thing is that the one who builds these systems are unable to escape from its clutches. Here is something that Tim Kendall said:

Its interesting that knowing what was going behind the curtain, I still wasn't able to control my usage - Tim Kendall, Facebook Former Executive, Former President of Pinterest

The dopamine effect:

"Just like a gambling or substance addiction, social media addiction involves broken reward pathways in our brains. When a person posts a picture and gets positive social feedback, it stimulates the brain to release dopamine, which again rewards that behaviour and perpetuates the social media habit. " - via Now

When talking about dopamine effects, the first thing that comes to my mind is Google Pay rewards. I still remember people running mayhem over it. Now that I think of it now it seems a little scary too.

 We curate our lives around this perceived sense of perfection because we get rewarded in this short term signals like hearts, likes, thumbs-up... - Chamath Palihapitiya, Facebook Former VP of Growth

 Suicide rates have climbed since the social media made an upper hand in our society. Mostly youngsters are affected by it. These kids are too much worried about other people's opinions over their appearance and it put them in a state of depression and later to even suicide. Even though there are laws to restrict usage, no law could effectively repair the damage it has done.

When people think about that day, when robots or artificial intelligence will overpower us, they only think about robots in the film Terminator. But the truth is that AI already runs today's world. Through social media and the internet, which is outsmarting us.

Algorithm has a mind on its own - Bailey Richardson, Instagram Early Team

People think that the algorithm is designed to give them what they really want, only it's not - Guillaume Chaslot, Youtube Former Engineer 

To conclude, The Social Dilemma is an eye-opener to what is really happening in our society. The making was pretty good and all the contents were to the point, raw. That is why many of us got scared.  We got hit by the harsh reality that we did ignore and is ignoring.

The ironic thing is, Netflix, is one of the pioneers, who used a recommendation based algorithm in OTT platforms which is also the basis of all the social media feeds.

Anyhow the documentary is really a wake-up call for all of us and was much needed, especially the youngsters. 

The one thing I like about my job is the way I am close to these things. I get to learn from the root of how these works.

What I have to say is take a break. Try to understand technology. Master self-control.

I think everyone can learn how your data is used and be aware of. That is the least thing you can do if not, you are not planning to dump your phone in the closet. 

Try this lecture on LinkedIn

The results of being tracked: How marketers collect and use your data 

Google has this program for digital awareness: Google Digital Wellbeing

Try either of these out :)

I would like you to explain more about this and get past this. But this has become a more TLDR kind of writing.

I think we can talk more on the next blog.

For now adios and take care of yourself.