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Tech companies use “persuasive design” to get us hooked. Some psychologists say it’s unethical. Children are particularly susceptible to "hidden manipulation techniques," but lots of adults are also taken in by its use, especially in social media and advertising on the Internet. by companies like Facebook and Twitter. 

It is in front of our faces when we are getting notifications on our phone and even when that next episode or video on Netflix or YouTube loads itself as soon as we finish one.

Back in the 1970s, there were plenty of articles and theses written about the dangers of too much television affecting children. Kids have 10 times the amount of screen time now compared to just 2011. Of course, now we are talking about more screens than just the family TV set. They spend an average of 400 minutes using technology, according to Common Sense Media.

Media companies have been using behavioral science for decades to create products that we want to use more and more. Remember how the tobacco companies were sued for the ways they hooked people on cigarettes? Big tech uses persuasive technology which is a fairly new field of research based on studying how technology changes the way humans think and act.

Using persuasive design techniques, companies incorporate this research into games and apps. As soon as a child begins to move on to Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft apps, they have been pre-conditioned for specific behaviors. 

Apple CEO, Tim Cook, has warned that algorithms pushing us to catastrophic results, though critics will say that Apple itself is not free from using persuasive design.

Social media companies are being targeted for deliberately addicting users to their products for financial gain. Some design features, such as infinite scroll, are features that are seen as highly habit-forming. Along with features that may appear as a "plus", like notifications, they keep us on our devices and looking at advertising and clicking longer. They encourage the "fear of missing out" (FOMO).

The infinite scroll was a feature designed by Aza Raskin when he was working for Humanized - a computer user-interface consultancy. He now questions its use.

He is not alone. Leah Pearlman, co-inventor of Facebook's Like button, said she had become hooked on Facebook because she had begun basing her sense of self-worth on the number of "likes" she had. But Ms Pearlman said she had not intended the Like button to be addictive, and she also believes that social media use has many benefits for lots of people.

Defenders of persuasive tech say it can have positive effects. There are apps that remind/train people to take medicine on time or develop weight loss habits. But critics are concerned with persuasive design that is not intended to improve lifestyles but to keep people on their devices in order to sell.

A letter signed by 50 psychologists was sent to the American Psychological Association accusing psychologists working at tech companies of using “hidden manipulation techniques” and asks the APA to take an ethical stand on behalf of kids.

The phrase "cancel culture" is showing up in the news more frequently. Cancel culture (or call-out culture) is the term sometimes used when someone is shut out of a social or professional group. This could be either online (particularly on social media), in the real world, or both. Those who are subject to this ostracism are said to be "canceled."

I wrote earlier about moderating content and issues about freedom of speech. One conclusion in that article was that private companies (Twitter, Facebook, et al) have the right to remove accounts that violate their terms of service and that is not a freedom of speech issue.  

Let's look at definitions of a non-legal nature. Merriam-Webster says that "cancel" means "to stop giving support to that person." Dictionary.com has a pop-culture dictionary that defines "cancel culture" as "withdrawing support for (canceling) public figures and companies after they have done or said something considered objectionable or offensive."

The latest spin on the expression "cancel culture" has given it a more negative connotation. Some politically conservative people and groups view recent examples (like Donald Trump being removed from Twitter) as a free speech and censorship issue. My thoughts on that are clear in that earlier post.

Cancel culture or call-out culture can also be less "official" when large numbers of people boycott an individual or company or group who they feel has acted or spoken in a questionable or controversial manner.

When President Biden was inaugurated, a number of accounts changed hands. As has always been the case, the @whitehouse Twitter account has different administrators with a new President. The @POTUS and @FLOTUS accounts also have new administration.

When those kinds of changes occurred, many followers of those accounts unfollowed them. Is that "cancel culture"? No one would have used that term when Barack Obama became President, but people did follow or unfollow those accounts at the time of Presidential change too. Of course, former President Obama still has a Twitter account as simply @barackobama as do other living ex-Presidents. 

For individuals losing access to social accounts or any form of cancel culture, it can mean losses to reputation, personal branding, and possibly income. For a company or group to lose access, the income portion can be a much greater concern, though all three things are important. 

 

 

Image by JamesDeMers from Pixabay

The social media platforms are finally turning off the opportunities for President Trump and many others to pump out misinformation and foment violence. Twitter and Facebook get the most attention because of their audience sizes, but there are lots of other places less obvious for those conversations and misinformation disguised as truthful information.

The right-wing app Parler has been booted off the Internet over ties to the siege on the U.S. Capitol. As the AP reported, "...but not before digital activists made off with an archive of its posts, including any that might have helped organize or document the riot. Amazon kicked Parler off its web-hosting service, and the social media app promptly sued to get back online, telling a federal judge that the tech giant had breached its contract and abused its market power. It was a roller coaster of activity for Parler, a 2-year-old magnet for the far right that welcomed a surge of new users. It became the No. 1 free app on iPhones late last week after Facebook, Twitter and other mainstream social media platforms silenced President Donald Trump’s accounts over comments that seemed to incite Wednesday’s violent insurrection."

Is that an attack on freedom of speech?

As Amber MacArthur wrote recently in her newsletter, "It's easy to say that moderating content is an attack on freedom of speech, but many fail to realize that freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. Moreover, private businesses do have the right to set their own rules of engagement, which in the case of social media platforms is often outlined in their Terms of Service."

Germany - which has tighter controls on hate speech than the U.S. - nevertheless had Chancellor Angela Merkel saying that Trump’s eviction from Twitter by the company is “problematic.” Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert, sent a kind of mixed message saying that operators of social media platforms “bear great responsibility for political communication not being poisoned by hatred, by lies and by incitement to violence” but also that the freedom of opinion is a fundamental right of “elementary significance” and that “This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators — not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms. Seen from this angle, the chancellor considers it problematic that the accounts of the U.S. president have now been permanently blocked.”

Opinions in America are probably also pro and con with people on either side and some who are partially on both sides, like Merkel's opinion.

 Jillian C. York says "Users, not tech executives, should decide what constitutes free speech online. Social media companies aren’t very good at moderating speech. So why do we ask them to?" She continues: "...While some pundits have called the decision unprecedented—or “a turning point for the battle for control over digital speech,” as Edward Snowden tweeted —it’s not: not at all. Not only do Twitter and Facebook regularly remove all types of protected expression, but Trump’s case isn’t even the first time the platforms have removed a major political figure. Following reports of genocide in Myanmar, Facebook banned the country’s top general and other military leaders who were using the platform to foment hate. The company also bans Hezbollah from its platform because of its status as a US-designated foreign terror organization, despite the fact that the party holds seats in Lebanon’s parliament. And it bans leaders in countries under US sanctions."

I think Snowden's sense of a turning point is correct, but it's not clear into which direction we will be turning.

 

While lots of people online are making predictions about all kinds of things for the year ahead, I like to look back at the predictions that were made for the year that is ending. Did anyone get it right?

Clearly, the pandemic wasn’t on anyone’s radar in December 2019 although the first signs of it in China were starting to emerge then. That is the story of the year and it is hard to find any industry or sector that wasn’t affected by it.

I’m just looking here at social media which played a large role in not only the pandemic but also in the American Presidential election.

Social media has moved in the same way that the Internet itself has moved – from a social sharing place to a marketplace. Whether you are selling CBD oil or a candidate, social media (SM) is part of your strategy.

One prediction was that Facebook and other SM would get more expensive in 2020 was a safe bet. But the bigger story was the pressure on the big platforms (but especially Facebook) to control fake accounts, posts, news and its promotion.

Things still went viral but some controls were put in place, though more is needed. AI is playing a bigger role but human intervention and monitoring are still needed.

In January 2020, I read that worldwide there were 3.80 billion social media users. That was about a 9 percent increase (321 million new users) from the previous year. Globally, more than 5.19 billion people now use mobile phones, with user numbers up by 124 million (2.4 percent) over the past year.

Listing the top SM sites early in the year as (in order) Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest. and Snapchat, is a numbers game and those rankings varied a bit throughout the year as earnings were reported to stockholders based on users and user growth.

I don’t see LinkedIn listed there but it certainly has a place in the more serious and business-oriented side of SM. LinkedIn advertising costs took a jump up in cost per click (CPC) when the platform released objective-based advertising back in early 2019. All the platforms have had to do similar things and Facebook was both publically called out for its ability to target ads very specifically and privately by marketers praised and

Another prediction was a further increase in using high-value video content. Facebook, IGTV and YouTube content in social marketing and the more subtle simple sharing of content certainly increased.

A much longer list (75 SM sites) might include some that you have never used or heard of and perhaps don’t even think of as SM, such as GoodReads, Flickr, Twitch, or ones that are foreign, like Skyrock in France.

And, of course, predictions for 2021…  like these from socialmediatoday.com

Crossposted at Ronkowitz LLC