Yes, they have certainly tried to. Have you heard of the Cambridge Analytica scandal? They were using ad targeting and misinformation campaigns to try to sway people's votes. People who use social media are basically data for these companies, and then that data is sold and used to manipulate the users. Do you remember those Facebook quizzes they use to have? e.g. "What color are you?" Those were all designed to collect data on people, which was then used to further manipulate them in the form of ad-targeting, content geared towards their interests to keep them more engaged on FB, etc.

You know, there is a slogan here "métro, boulot, dodo", so imagine you squeeze in some fake investigation, pretend uni debate and arm-chair justice, who wouldn't sign up for that? That said there are things really well done out there, I like a bunch of people here, having a bit of distance as a mod past ten years also creates a different view, but genuinely - I think people know the limits of online make-belive, majority is for connecting socially. Platforms are not free, it's paid by our volatility, loss of focus, induced sleep problems, inflated or deflated egos, time wasted..With large platforms - it is naive to trust the guards or the guards' guards, if they make money by manipulating users and distractibg them. But gov doesn't want to be the arbiter of truth and represent the cancel culture, platforms know it's iffy because they risk traffic translated to income.

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"L'homme ne peut pas remplacer son coeur avec sa tete, ni sa tete avec ses mains." J.H. Pestalozzi

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is a matter of depth.” S.P. Cadman

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." A. Einstein

I don’t think facebook was made with the endgame of manipulating politicians, that it happened is true, but i don’t think zuckerberg sat down with a grand plan, he literally just wrote a website using relatively common code techniques, was in the right place at the right time in a place full of influencing people, and, just, it’s really not that clever in terms of awesome software engineering challemges

Zuckerberg was never a programmer, he hired people to write that website. He is an entrepreneur. He swims on the volatile waves of an internet legislation that started to catch up with what some people are using it for.

I know some folks here are all for the total "freedom" of the interwebz but it doesn't function that way. It can't. Innit.

Ok, that is some bs, if you’re quoting someone, please provide the link
I fail to see how any of that is relevant in software engineering
What i will give you is that there are people who have learnt to manipulate the tools that have, maybe naively, geeks have given the world.

Bleh, anyone can scrape site, i’m not saying he’s a Genius programmer

This article is pretty good at explaining it...

Trapped – the secret ways social media is built to be addictive (and what you can do to fight back)
https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-...to-fight-back/

I don't think Zuckerberg designed FB with the intention of manipulating politicians, but it has certainly been designed to manipulate its users. It's called a "dopamine feedback loop" and that's why the "like" function was put in place -- because even though you're not consciously aware of it, your brain processes a "like" as a reward in the form of a dopamine burst, which then generates a desire for more "likes." Similarly, people get a dopamine burst with notifications. It's basically behavioral reinforcement mechanisms -- an operant conditioning chamber.

Has dopamine got us hooked on tech?
https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...-pt80G5nlIX-C8

They aren’t secret

Ha haaa. Perhaps not for you or me, but I think a lot of people use those sites and never bother to question the ways they're designed to control their behavior or affect them in general.

And on that note... I'm getting off of the EF and going to read a book for a while before bed.

Ffs, i’m a software developer, i just write things coz i think, maybe, it would be cool, yeah, i wrote stuff for projectors, and i had zero idea that some guy would get it in a drive by van to project onto the side of a building, “ trump”, some other tosser could have dome the same with a different message, i wrote it, it’s done, i had high hopes for it to be used well, most people can’t say that

Teachers teach hoping it's all going to be used well.

I wonder if we would have heard so much moaning from "canceled people" had Trump won. Just observing from the distance, as I rarely used FB and Twitter almost never....

But this very site for instance is designed the same way....to get as hooked. Like and groan buttons, green rep, red rep, the whole shebang..it's almost funny we complain about FB where one is supposed to have at least a iota of responsibility in regards with what they're posting there (theoretically) and don't see how these internet fora exploit the same weaknesses. For instance, I bet most of us come here for socialising and having a pleasant time, or simply getting some opinions or info about all things Swiss (especially corona times), but end up reading and replying to posts that are not really worth their time. That is not to say that FB doesn't deserve any criticism!

Totally agree.

Yeah, the EF is designed similarly in some respects and does also work on our dopamine levels. But I think it's not designed to be quite as addictive as most social media sites are. For one thing, most of us are anonymous here and are not using the EF to essentially project idealized versions of ourselves and our lives and to collect compliments (e.g. via "selfies"), and we don't use our profiles here to build a base of followers. And, thankfully, there is no infinite scroll feature here, as there is on FB and Instagram, etc. I find it quite easy to step away from the EF once I find the content to no longer be interesting or when the "bickering" here just becomes annoying; but with the infinite scroll features on regular social media sites, they're designed to trap people in a cycle of seeking new information because our minds perceive new information as a reward/dopamine hit. So that's why people become addicted to scrolling.

How the Invention of Infinite Scrolling Turned Millions to Addiction
https://www.supernova.io/blog/how-th...urned-millions

A few summers ago, I was at the lake with my son and began chatting with another mother there. She was scrolling on her phone the whole time we were talking and eventually we started discussing social media. She told me that she's completely addicted to scrolling and had been struggling to stop. She said she would tell herself "only 15 minutes" and then 2 hours later, she would still be scrolling. Or she would step away for a few minutes with the intention of staying away and getting things done and then come right back to it. It's really creepy the way these sites can take over people's lives and minds.

I have a friend whose husband was so addicted to scrolling that, whenever we were together, he would just sit and scroll on his phone the entire time, barely engaging in our conversations. Eventually, he fell into severe depression because his mind was producing so much dopamine that it was no longer producing serotonin. He was unable to sleep and even quit his job because of the depression. Once he finally stopped using social media and deleted his accounts, his depression finally went away and he was able to sleep, etc. (When the brain produces dopamine, it suppresses serotonin).

FYI those quizzes and stuff are still all over FB. What's your name mean? What animal are you? What celebrity do you look like?

It’s over forty years ago, since I did marketing in college and even then we were trying to design products that were addictive, although it was presented as ‘methods to increase repeat buying’.

Everyone I know is addicted to some thing, they spend vast amounts of their time every week doing it - golf, football, knitting, wood work, online gaming and dozens more... I don’t find any of them to be less or more acceptable than another.

The only ones I’d be concerned about are the ones who let it impact their basic functioning in life.

Exactly.

For some it's FB or Instagram or whatever, it's only when it affects one's behaviour and as you say, basic functioning that it becomes a real problem. Plus of course, when some people are using social media for let's say unorthodox agendas.

I agree in principle but I refrain from commenting on projecting idealised images and collecting compliments. Some here really need validation.

I know, that irritates me as well. And it's sad they can't resist scrolling, it makes me avoid their company.

TBH I prefer a definition of "addiction" that would only include the latter group. If it's not affecting you in that way then it's just a hobby, even if it does take up a lot of your time.

And everyone needs a hobby........

Except these are NOT private companies. Big tech is made up of companies that are all publicly traded and listed on NASDAQ or NYSE. As such, they are subject to numerous regulations and codes of conduct. Sarbanes Oxley was passed in 2005 and tightened things up a bit, but it was still pre-Social Media, and there are several loopholes, omissions or things that simply were never anticipated. Laws/legal framework never keeps pace with technology.

The platform vs publisher topic was high on Trump's list of priorities and he would have solved it if he had been reelected. Same for the monopolistic behavior of big tech. Yes, Republicans are generally against regulation, but they are pragmatic enough to see the problem, and recognize that Big Tech is infringing on people's rights, privacy and numerous other consumer issues. Those topics are more important than putting certain regulation in place to fix an unbalanced system.

I have not only grown up in Silicon Valley, but spent 20yrs working in the Valley building some of these firms that I now work against. The last 5yrs in Europe have been mostly with privacy firms and we DO seek to dismantle the monster that we created.

It is no secret on EF that I lean conservative, but that shouldn't take anything away from the argument that Big Tech is using all of us and needs to be reigned in. Just because your ideology is safe today, doesn't mean that the digital overlords won't cancel you tomorrow. Do you really want Big Tech to have that power?

PS - Yes, when you sign up for free/paid services, you DO agree to abide by the ToU/ToS, but did you even know that often these are not legal agreements? Big Tech counts on the public not challenging them and get away with it 99% of the time. GDPR addresses this (it needs to go further) and California has strong consumer laws and are about to pass more... but notice how Google/FB/MS all just pay huge fines and consider it a "cost of doing business."

I remember reading not long ago that Trump is or will be creating his own social media network. I wonder if that site will kick people off for posting anything that is anti-Trump or that doesn't conform with Trump's narrative.