More on the sociopathy of social media

I want to pass on to MindBlog readers some material from Michael Kaplan, who recently pointed me to his YouTube channel OneHandClap, and in particular his video "How Facebook Makes You Depressed." It notes a December 2016 Facebook article published on their official blog, "Hard Questions: Is Spending Time on Social Media Bad for Us?," and summarizes an assortment of recent research that links social media use to depression.  It also explores how social media sites like Facebook make use of addictive neurochemical mechanisms.



If you really want the details on how we are being screwed by the social media, particularly Google and Facebook,  read Jaron Lanier's "Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now."  I downloaded the Kindle version several days ago, and am finding it incredibly sobering reading, given that the platform for mindblog.dericbownds.net  is provided by Google (Blogger),  posts like this one are automatically sent on from Blogger to my Facebook and Twitter feeds, my piano performances are on Google's YouTube, my email, my calendar, etc., etc......  A few clips from Lanier:

We’re being tracked and measured constantly, and receiving engineered feedback all the time. We’re being hypnotized little by little by technicians we can’t see, for purposes we don’t know. We’re all lab animals now.

Now everyone who is on social media is getting individualized, continuously adjusted stimuli, without a break, so long as they use their smartphones. What might once have been called advertising must now be understood as continuous behavior modification on a titanic scale.

This book argues in ten ways that what has become suddenly normal— pervasive surveillance and constant, subtle manipulation— is unethical, cruel, dangerous, and inhumane. Dangerous? Oh, yes, because who knows who’s going to use that power, and for what?

The core process that allows social media to make money and that also does the damage to society is behavior modification. Behavior modification entails methodical techniques that change behavioral patterns in animals and people. It can be used to treat addictions, but it can also be used to create them.

(Lanier, Jaron. Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now. Henry Holt and Co. Kindle Edition.)

Finally, check out "Hands off my data! 15 default privacy settings you should change right now"