The dark side of new technologies

A reflection on the message conveyed by the documentary "The dilemma of social networks".

The documentary "The dilemma of social networks" (Netflix) reveals an alarming picture of the consequences of the misuse of new communication technologies..

Screen addiction, generalized depressive symptoms and behavioral manipulation for commercial purposes. To what extent have certain advances for humanity become detrimental to our coexistence and quality of life?

The opinion of the creators

"The dilemma of social networks" is created, produced and directed by those who, occupying high positions in companies such as Twitter, Google, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube, helped build the "computer monster" that today is part of the daily lives of millions of people.

The documentary starts from a concern: perhaps we have been naïve about the consequences of the tools we ourselves have created.. This is true to the point that many of those who created these sites and social networks now recognize themselves as "addicted" to these tools.

They feel regret and fear for having been part of this process, and to these feelings is added the dreaded suspicion that certain things are getting out of hand, and that in a certain sense we are conducting ourselves on a social level according to the old parable of the "monkey with a razor".

An interesting aspect of the documentary is that it avoids any "conspiratorial" temptation by revealing that ultimately "there is no bad guy". What, then, is the problem?

The birth of "Frankenstein

The Internet industry has created the most subtle, complex and effective marketing mechanisms in the history of mankind. in the history of mankind. Billion dollar markets are handled through the Internet.

If you are an entrepreneur, you will know that never before has it been possible to predict with such accuracy the public to which you want to direct a product or service you offer, the moment in which you do it, as well as to mold the behaviors of your potential consumers.

Now, how is this achieved? Very simple: great predictions can only be made from having a lot of data. The more information you have about users, the more certain you are that your advertising will work..

Many people think that Google is simply a search engine. What they often overlook is that the business model of these companies is based on finding out as much as possible about our tastes, behaviors, and trends, all of which is registered in each of our actions on the web..

To put it in a nutshell, what tools like Facebook Ads do (in the same way that, for example, Youtube's recommended videos work) is to segment audiences in an ultra-specialized way, considering age, gender, geographic location, interests and other variables. What is the purpose of this? Very simple: in order to capture potential customers for certain products offered by advertisers who are the ones who, ultimately, hire their services.

And this brings us to the "dark side of the business", i.e. to questions regarding the ethical limits involved in this process.

Manipulation is at the Heart of the matter

If we live in a big city, we are probably not unfamiliar with the following image: when entering a public place (such as a means of transportation or a bar) we see 90% of the people engrossed in the screen of their cell phones. Possibly on a smaller scale, in the heart of a family group, something similar happens on a daily basis.

As the documentary puts it, "it seems that the world has gone mad or has fallen under some kind of spell". What is happening, among other things, is that those who designed the system did so with the aim of capturing the user's attention at the highest possible level..

The system is programmed to perfect itself in this way and give us pleasure. It is as if we were pointing these artificial intelligence engines at us to relearn better and better what would provoke a "successful" response from the user.

In other words, you give the computer a command: "I want this result". And then the computer learns to do it (that's where the term "machine learning" comes from). So, every day the system gets better at choosing the right advertisements, every day the system gets better at picking the right advertisements in the right order so that you spend more time interested in this content.

What the documentary reveals is that Internet users (and nowadays, who isn't?) have become, without realizing it, more interested in the content. have unwittingly become the consumer good itself.. To put it simply: "If you don't pay for the product, you are the product".

What is an algorithm?

As explained in the documentary, "algorithms are opinions in code". They are not objective, they do not correspond to any reality but are configured according to a certain definition of success, and this definition of success is not the same as that of a product.and this definition of success is none other than profit.

An example of this is seen in how search engines "populate" information about certain topics depending on where on the planet you are searching from, or depending on what Google knows about your interests and tastes.

For example, if you Google "climate change is..." depending on various factors, you will find that it is a threat, that it is inevitable, that it is a hoax, and so on... Another example is the famous "fake news" which, according to studies, multiplies six times faster than real news. We know this from certain substances that were supposed to magically be able to cure COVID-19.

In other words: if you have a tendency to believe in conspiracy theories, the system will encourage you to find content that supports these theories.. If you have an affinity for a certain political party or have shown hatred towards certain minorities, what the algorithm will do is not to show you any truth but to "stir up your ghosts" in order to capture your attention more and more.

Hence it is said in the documentary that these processes are eating away at the social fabric at an accelerated rate.. For if everyone is shown the truth that shapes him, is linked to people who think alike and is given arguments to justify their beliefs (reaching absurd extremes such as terraplanism), this explains why there are more and more crises in democratic systems.

Author: Guillermo Miatello, director of Academia de Psicoanálisis Madrid SL.