TikTok: Some Interesting Assertions
March 22, 2023
Note: This essay is the work of a real, still-living dinobaby. I am too dumb to use smart software.
I read the “testimony” posted by someone at the House of Representatives. No, the document did not include, “Congressman, thank you for the question. I don’t have the information at hand. I will send it to your office.” As a result, the explanation reflects hand crafting by numerous anonymous wordsmiths. Singapore. Children. Everything is Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. The quip “NSA to go” is shorter and easier to say.
Therefore, I want to turn my attention to the newspaper in the form of a magazine. The Economist published “How TikTok Broke Social Media.” Great Economist stuff! When I worked at a blue chip consulting outfit in the 1970s, one had to have read the publication. I looked at help wanted ads and the tech section, usually a page or two. The rest of the content was MBA speak, and I was up to my ears in that blather from the numerous meetings through which I suffered.
With modest enthusiasm I worked my way through the analysis of social media. I circled several paragraphs, I noticed one big thing — The phrase “broke social media.” Social media was in my opinion, immune to breaking. The reason is that online services are what I call “ghost like.” Sure, there is one service, which may go away. Within a short span of time, like eight year olds playing amoeba soccer, another gains traction and picks up users and evolves sticky services. Killing social media is like shooting ping pong balls into a Tesla sized blob of Jell-O, an early form of the morphing Terminator robot. In short, the Jell-O keeps on quivering, sometimes for a long, long time, judging from my mother’s ability to make one Jell-O dessert and keep serving it for weeks. Then there was another one. Thus, the premise of the write up is wrong.
I do want to highlight one statement in the essay:
The social apps will not be the only losers in this new, trickier ad environment. “All advertising is about what the next-best alternative is,” says Brian Wieser of Madison and Wall, an advertising consultancy. Most advertisers allocate a budget to spend on ads on a particular platform, he says, and “the budget is the budget”, regardless of how far it goes. If social-media advertising becomes less effective across the board, it will be bad news not just for the platforms that sell those ads, but for the advertisers that buy them.
My view is shaped by more than 50 years in the online information business. New forms of messaging and monetization are enabled by technology. On example is a thought experiment: What will an advertiser pay to influence the output of a content generator infused with smart software. I have first hand information that one company is selling AI-generated content specifically to influence what appears when a product is reviewed. The technique involves automation, a carousel of fake personas (sockpuppets to some), and carefully shaped inputs to the content generation system. Now is this advertising like a short video? Sure, because the output can be in the form of images or a short machine-generated video using machine generated “real” people. Is this type of “advertising” going to morph and find its way into the next Discord or Telegram public user group?
My hunch is that this type of conscious manipulation and automation is what can be conceptualized as “spawn of the Google.”
Net net: Social media is not “broken.” Advertising will find a way… because money. Heinous psychological manipulation. Exploited by big companies. Absolutely.
Stephen E Arnold, March 22, 2023
Social Unhappiness, Disruption, and the Crime Explosions
March 9, 2023
Note: No smart software on earth writes like a dinobaby channeling his inner Jonathan Swift.
The mobile phones are responsible for: [a] fights on Carnival Cruise ships, [b] teens killing themselves, [c] stupid committee decisions that make the camel analogy comparatively harmless, and [d] an efflorescence of cyber crime.
How do I know this?
I read an essay called “Honestly, It’s Probably the Phones.” I admit I took the main argument of the essay and extended it. That argument proved stretchy, and I think the write up is on to something.
I noted this passage:
The first reason smartphones should be our prior is that the timing just lines up really well. The smartphone was invented in 2007, but it didn’t really become commonplace until the 2010s, exactly when teen happiness fell off a cliff…. First, they’re a distraction — the rise of smartphones was also the rise of “phubbing”, i.e. when people go on their phones instead of paying attention to the people around them. Second, phones provide a behavioral “nudge”, like a pantry stocked with junk food — when your phone is right there in your pocket, it’s easier to just text a friend instead of going and hanging out, even if the latter would be less fulfilling. And third, in-person interaction is a network effect. If 20% of people would rather be on their phones, that reduces everyone else’s options for in-person hangouts by 20%.
Okay, I am sold.
I want to shift gears and switch to a write up which purports to present facts. For the purposes of this blog post, I want to assume that the information in The US Sun (an estimable news source) article “Google Issues Six Major Alerts to Billions – You Face Bank Wipeout If You Ignore Them” is correct.
The article identifies a lottery scam, a tech support scam, fake jobs and invoices scams, Google account recovery scams, gift card scams, and blackmail and extortion scams. The idea seems to be that Google has created a massive ecosystem of crime. With most Google interactions taking place on mobile phones, it seems as if Google and its fellow traveler Apple are making clear that more than teen self-harm is a consequence of these gizmos.
Now what’s the fix? Perhaps a variation of “first, let’s kill all the lawyers” is a step too far. What about a driver’s license approach? No mobile and no phone until one reaches a certain age? What about a variation of the ever popular Chinese social credit system? Trouble in high school? No mobile for you.
I prefer that parents and guardians play a major role. I think smart software might be worth considering as a method for filtering to certain demographics some content. Why not ask the Dilbert cartoonist for some ideas.
I would suggest that the confluence of mobile phones and outfits like Google may have been like a lab experiment gone wrong. A clueless high school student (not in the science club, of course) mixes two apparently harmless household substances and makes the entire class sick. How does that get fixed? The answer, “Not easily.”
Stephen E Arnold, March 9, 2023
Junkee Asks a Good Question. Pause, Please.
March 3, 2023
I had never before heard of the Web site junkee.com. I spotted a link with the title “Why Are People Talking About The Millennial Pause?” and wanted to know the answer to the question.
The article addresses the topic of millennials growing up or maturing. In the article’s lingo, this idea was stated this way about millennial behavior:
Specifically, mannerisms displayed by millennials on TikTok that Gen Z TikTokers make fun of. These tics include random zoom-ins to emphasize talking points, a way of talking termed the “BuzzFeed accent,” using random filters, using phrases popularized on Twitter and Instagram like “doggo” and “I can’t even” and “adulting” and the latest crime… the millennial pause.
I think the reasoning is that one should not or no longer displays “tics.” I am not sure what a “random zoom-in” is, but it sounds dreadful. The Buzzfeed accent is a mystery to me. And, “adulting”? I love this word because many of those younger than I act as if there were high school students at a chaotic science club meeting when the teacher supervisory stepped out of the room. The millennial pause is similar to my using a fax machine. The pause indicates an oldie habit design to deal with ancient video technology. [Pause] Sigh.
The write up added:
University of Sydney Associate Professor of Online and Convergent Media Discipline, Fiona Martin, says, “some millennials who use social media for comms work will follow cultural trends, and those that don’t won’t. Mocking them for being dated is a social differentiation tactic”.
I like being mocked. I try to be mockable. I engage in mocking certain actions of large Sillycon Valley outfits. I am into mocking.
I know I am out of step. The article offered:
As an example of how different ethnic groups within the same generation use social media, Martin pointed to the research in Bronwyn Carlson and Ryan Frazer’s book, Indigenous Digital Life. “Many Indigenous Australians are aware of being surveilled online, and so tend to circulate positive inspiring content in response,” she explains.
Yep, that’s me. inspiring content.
Who knew a pause conveyed so much. [Pause] Sigh.
Stephen E Arnold, March 3, 2023
What Happens When Misinformation Is Sucked Up by Smart Software? Maybe Nothing?
February 22, 2023
I noted an article called “New Research Finds Rampant Misinformation Spreading on WhatsApp within Diasporic Communities.” The source is the Daily Targum. I mention this because the news source is the Rutgers University Campus news service. The article provides some information about a study of misinformation on that lovable Facebook property WhatsApp.
Several points in the article caught my attention:
- Misinformation on WhatsApp caused people to be killed; Twitter did its part too
- There is an absence of fact checking
- There are no controls to stop the spread of misinformation
What is interesting about studies conducted by prestigious universities is that often the findings are neither novel nor surprising. In fact, nothing about social media companies reluctance to spend money or launch ethical methods is new.
What are the consequences? Nothing much: Abusive behavior, social disruption, and, oh, one more thing, deaths.
Stephen E Arnold, February 22, 2023
Social Media Scam-A-Rama
January 26, 2023
The Internet is a virtual playground for scam artists. While it is horrible that bad actors can get away with their crimes, it is also impressive the depth and creativity they go to for “easy money.” Fortune shares the soap opera-worthy saga of how: “Social Media Influencers Are Charged With Feeding Followers ‘A Steady Diet Of Misinformation’ In A Pump And Dump Stock Scheme That Netted $100 Million.”
The US Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) busted eight purported social media influencers who specialized in stock market trading advice. From 2020 to April 2022, they tricked their amateur investor audience of over 1.5 million Twitter users to invest funds in a “pump-and-dump” scheme. The scheme worked as follows:
“Seven of the social-media influencers promoted themselves as successful traders on Twitter and in Discord chat rooms and encouraged their followers to buy certain stocks, the SEC said. When prices or volumes of the promoted stocks would rise, the influencers ‘regularly sold their shares without ever having disclosed their plans to dump the securities while they were promoting them,’ the agency said. ‘The defendants used social media to amass a large following of novice investors and then took advantage of their followers by repeatedly feeding them a steady diet of misinformation,’ said the SEC’s Joseph Sansone, chief of the SEC Enforcement Division’s Market Abuse Unit.”
The ring’s eighth member hosted a podcast that promoted the co-conspirators as experts. The entire group posted about their luxury lifestyles to fool their audiences further about their stock market expertise.
All of the bad actors could face a max penalty of ten to twenty-five years in prison for fraud and/or unlawful monetary transactions. The SEC is cracking down on cryptocurrency schemes given the large number of celebrities who are hired to promote schemes. The celebrities claim to be innocent, because they were paid to promote a product and were not aware of the scam.
However, how innocent are these people when they use their status to make more money off their fans? They should follow Shaq’s example and research the products they are associated with before accepting a check…unless they are paid in cryptocurrency. That would be poetic justice!
Whitney Grace, January 26, 2023
Fixing Social Media: Sure Enough
January 25, 2023
It is not that social media platforms set out to do harm, exactly. They just regularly prioritize profits above the wellbeing of society. Brookings‘ Tech Stream hopes to help mitigate one such ill in, “How Social Media Platforms Can Reduce Polarization.” The advice is just a bit late, though, by about 15 years. If we had known then what we know now, perhaps we could have kept tech companies from getting addicted to stirring the pot in the first place.
Nevertheless, journalists Christian Staal Bruun Overgaard and Samuel Woolley do a good job describing the dangers of today’s high polarization, how we got here, and what might be done about it. See the article for that discussion complete with many informative links. Regarding where to go from here, the authors note that (perhaps ironically) social media platforms are in a good position to help reverse the trend, should they choose to do so. They tell us:
“Our review of the scientific literature on how to bridge societal divides points to two key ideas for how to reduce polarization. First, decades of research show that when people interact with someone from their social ‘outgroup,’ they often come to view that outgroup in a more favorable light. Significantly, individuals do not need to take part in these interactions themselves. Exposure to accounts of outgroup contact in the media, from news articles to online videos, can also have an impact. Both positive intergroup contact and stories about such contact have been shown to dampen prejudice toward various minority groups.
The second key finding of our review concerns how people perceive the problem of polarization. Even as polarization has increased in recent years, survey research has consistently shown that many Americans think the nation is more divided than it truly is. Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans think they dislike each other more than they actually do. These misconceptions can, ironically, drive the two sides further apart. Any effort to reduce polarization thus also needs to correct perceptions about how bad polarization really is. For social media platforms, the literature on bridging societal divides has important implications.”
The piece discusses five specific recommendations for platforms: surface more positive interparty contact, prioritize content that’s popular among disparate user groups, correct misconceptions, design better user interfaces, and collaborate with researchers. Will social media companies take the researchers’ advice to actively promote civil discourse over knee-jerk negativity? Only if accountability legislation and PR headaches can ever outweigh the profit motive.
The UK has a different idea: Send the executives of US social media companies to prison.
Cynthia Murrell, January 25, 2023
Discord Resources
January 19, 2023
Among Facebook’s waning prestige, TikTok’s connections to a surveillance-loving regime, and whatever the heck is happening at Musk’s Twitter, one might be in the market for an alternative social media platform. LifeHacker suggests an option gamers have been using for years in, “How to Find Discord Servers You’ll Actually Like.” Writer Khamosh Pathak recommends checking with friends, some of whom might already be on Discord. One can also check communities or pages found on other platforms, especially Reddit. Many of them have their own Discord servers. Message them if they don’t display a public link, Pathak advises. Or simply check Discord directories. We learn:
“You can try Discord’s own discovery tool. Click the Compass icon at the bottom of the sidebar. Their Featured collection isn’t that great, but the Search tool is. Search for something that you’re interested in, or something you want to explore. Searching for ‘mechanical keyboards’ brings up 79 different servers, for example. If you want to discover something entirely different, you can use a third-party Discord server directory like Disboard, which does a great job at categorizing and tagging communities. This will help you discover up-and-coming communities in different sections like gaming, music, and more. And, of course, there’s the search function that will help you narrow down to servers with specific interests, like woodworking or ceramics. For fans of gaming and anime, Discord.Me is an even better option. While they do have a varied collection of servers, their focus is really on gaming and anime (something that will become apparent after spending more than five seconds on the page). You can read the detailed descriptions if you want, or you can click the Join Now button to directly open the community in the Discord app.”
Discord offers the familiar ability to engage in text- and meme-based conversations, but one might also enjoy talking to other humans in real time over voice channels. Check it out for a different social media experience.
Cynthia Murrell, January 21, 2023
Seattle: Awareness Flickering… Maybe?
January 17, 2023
Generation Z is the first age of humans completely raised with social media. They are also growing up during a historic mental health crisis. Educators and medical professionals believe there is a link between the rising mental health crisis and social media. While studies are not 100% conclusive, there is a correlation between the two. The Seattle Times shares a story about how Seattle public schools think the same: “Seattle Schools Sues Social Media Firms Over Youth Mental Health Crisis.”
Seattle schools files a ninety-page lawsuit that asserts social media companies purposely designed, marketed, and operate their platforms for optimum engagement with kids so they can earn profits. The lawsuit claims that the companies cause mental and health disorders, such as depression, eating disorders, anxiety, and cyber bullying. Seattle Public Schools’ (SPS) lawsuit states the company violated the Washington public nuisance law and should be penalized.
SPS argues that due to the increased mental and physical health disorders, they have been forced to divert resources and spend funds on counselors, teacher training in mental health issues, and educating kids on dangers related to social media. SPS wants the tech companies to be held responsible and help treat the crisis:
“ ‘Our students — and young people everywhere — face unprecedented learning and life struggles that are amplified by the negative impacts of increased screen time, unfiltered content, and potentially addictive properties of social media,’ said SPS Superintendent Brent Jones in the release. ‘We are confident and hopeful that this lawsuit is the first step toward reversing this trend for our students, children throughout Washington state, and the entire country.’”
Tech insiders have reported that social media companies are aware of the dangers their platforms pose to kids, but are not too concerned. The tech companies argue they have tools to help adults limit kids’ screen time. Who is usually savvier with tech though, kids or adults?
The rising mental health crisis is also caused by two additional factors:
- Social media induces mass hysteria in kids, because it is literally a digital crowd. Humans are like sheep they follow crowds.
- Mental health diagnoses are more accurate, because the science has improved. More kids are being diagnosed because the experts know more.
Social media is only part of the problem. Tech companies, however, should be held accountable because they are knowingly contributing to the problem. And Seattle? Flicker, flicker candle of awareness.
Whitney Grace, January 17, 2023
Social Media: Great for Surveillance, Not So Great for Democracy
January 13, 2023
Duh? Friday the 13th.
Respected polling organization the Pew Research Center studied the impact and views that social media has on democratic nations. According to the recent study: “Social Media Seen As Mostly Good For Democracy Across Many Nations, Except US Is A Major Outlier” the US does not like social media meddling with its politics.
The majority of the polled countries believed social media affected democracy positively and negatively. The US is a large outlier, however, because only 34% of its citizens viewed social media as beneficial while a whopping 64% believed the opposite. The US is not the only one that considered social media to cause division in politics:
“Even in countries where assessments of social media’s impact are largely positive, most believe it has had some pernicious effects – in particular, it has led to manipulation and division within societies. A median of 84% across the 19 countries surveyed believe access to the internet and social media have made people easier to manipulate with false information and rumors. A recent analysis of the same survey shows that a median of 70% across the 19 nations consider the spread of false information online to be a major threat, second only to climate change on a list of global threats.
Additionally, a median of 65% think it has made people more divided in their political opinions. More than four-in-ten say it has made people less civil in how they talk about politics (only about a quarter say it has made people more civil).”
Despite the US being an outlier, other nations used social media as a tool to be informed about news, helped raise public awareness, and allowed citizens to express themselves.
The majority of Americans who negatively viewed social media were affiliated with the Republican Party or were Independents. Democrats and their leaners were less likely to think social media is a bad influence. Younger people also believe social media is more beneficial than older generations.
Social media is another tool created by humans that can be good and bad. Metaphorically it is like a gun.
Whitney Grace, January 13, 2023
Surprise: TikTok Reveals Its Employees Can View European User Data
December 28, 2022
What a surprise. The Tech Times reports, “TikTok Says Chinese Employees Can Access Data from European Users.” This includes workers not just within China, but also in Brazil, Canada, Israel, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States. According to The Guardian, TikTok revealed the detail in an update to its privacy policy. We are to believe it is all in the interest of improving the users’ experience. Writer Joseph Henry states:
“According to ByteDance, TikTok’s parent firm, accessing the user data can help in improving the algorithm performance on the platform. This would mean that it could help the app to detect bots and malicious accounts. Additionally, this could also give recommendations for content that users want to consume online. Back in July, Shou Zi Chew, a TikTok chief executive clarified via a letter that the data being accessed by foreign staff is a ‘narrow set of non-sensitive’ user data. In short, if the TikTok security team in the US gives a green light for data access, then there’s no problem viewing the data coming from American users. Chew added that the Chinese government officials do not have access to these data so it won’t be a big deal to every consumer.”
Sure they don’t. Despite assurances, some are skeptical. For example, we learn:
“US FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr told Reuters that TikTok should be immediately banned in the US. He added that he was suspicious as to how ByteDance handles all of the US-based data on the app.”
Now just why might he doubt ByteDance’s sincerity? What about consequences? As some Sillycon Valley experts say, “No big deal. Move on.” Dismissive naïveté is helpful, even charming.
Cynthia Murrell, December 28, 2022
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