Does the interaction of social and emotional data with the power of social and emotional data translate into positive results?

Recently I was given a Meta Survey via Facebook and I replied with this…

What is your biggest concern about Meta?

I work with ML/AI and I know it is possible to steer people with it to get a given outcome in very subtle ways. My concern is that companies like Meta are steering people towards content that produces a psychological reaction that then produces addictive behavior in order to keep them engaged with the goal of gathering personal data for the purposes of sale of such data and targeting people with advertising that encourages them to consume more than they would under normal circumstances. Generally with social media the corporations running it are extracting a resource, as in data, time and attention from people in a way that tilts the scales in favor the social media platform providers. To improve this would require more transparency with regards to the data that is collected and an ‘open book’ policy where individuals must give consent to all elements of data harvesting and are allowed to access the records that are kept on their personal data. Also, to have tools built into the platforms that allow people to block things as simple as using keywords to black/whitelist content and optimize the user experience in a way that allows them to override algorithmic control of the content that they are presented with, including advertising. AI/ML works best when it is collaborating with the user and not in the role of an invisible hand that exercises control over their experience from beyond their control.

What do you value most about Meta?

The fact that there has been some open source release of code such as PyTorch which I use on a regular basis.

Extremism and Mental Illness and Social Media

There is something that is pushing extremes and actually it is in both directions. This seems to have happened ever so slowly, it has crept in. Someone I heard on a podcast said once “Almost everyone is in Wokeistan or Trumpistan and there are like 7 people left on Earth that are like WTF???” It is an exaggeration but makes a point. There are disturbing things in the realm of mental illness, one of the worst is the fact that there is now a catagory for suicide in pre teens. There was no such category at one point as it was too rare of an outlier to keep track of, since 2007 there is. What happened around that time? Smartphones with social media apps, correlation is not always causation but, it does make you wonder. If anything the issue pushing extremes can be found in the media, both traditional as it grapples with loss of market and pushes more extreme ‘bait’ to keep viewers. And, lastly you guessed it, social media in which the invisible hand of algorithms feed us content determined by large corporate interests. I think that it will, and this is the hope, that it will selfcorrect, the pendulum when it gets to an extreme will eventually go in the other direction. This is the blessing of free, democratic countries, change is possible. Democracies are a mess but, they are the best we have as of now,considering the alternatives have generally turned out worse for people.