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Facebook is a social media site that is relatively new. Because of the novelty of the site, psychologists are only beginning to understand the ways in which the site affects the way that people think and act. The novelty of the site also makes this an exciting new terrain that professionals can explore, and possibly even deepen their understanding of human behavior.
People join Facebook to connect with other people, although recent research has suggested that this isn’t the effect that the social networking site might have on individuals throughout the world.
The research suggests that Facebook could actually be making people feel lonelier than ever. Facebook can be somewhat alienating, and studies have even shown that the more people used this and other sites like it, the more their levels of social connectedness and happiness decreased. As Maria Konnikova explains; “The more people used Facebook in the time between the two texts, the less happy they felt-and the more their overall satisfaction declined from the beginning of the study until its end.”
Another study conducted on individuals who used Facebook suggested that the site was actually able to increase emotions of jealousy in individuals, regardless of whether they were prone to this feeling beforehand or not. It is said that individuals who tend to spend more time on the site browsing through postings made by other people, instead of creating content, the more envious they were likely to be.
There is a social phenomenon called social comparison that was defined by researcher Hanna Krasnova and her colleagues.
This phenomenon occurs when individuals view the accomplishments of their peers through Facebook and other social networking sites and feel resentment towards them. It is believed that this feeling is particularly strong when the individuals succeeding belong to the same peer group as the individual.
One of the little known effect of Facebook is that the social networking site can actually become quite addictive, particularly because people want to learn about what is going on in the lives of the people they know, and then others to know about their goings on. This becomes problematic when people feel they have an image that they need to uphold on these sites.
Facebook doesn’t simply have negative effects on people’s psychology; it can also have very positive effects. Political parties quickly realized that by utilizing Facebook correctly, they could actively increase political participation. It is quite common to see voting campaigns appear online in the months leading up to an election, but it is also just as common to see people encourage others to vote.
These sorts of campaigns provide individuals with the information they need to go out and vote, including information about how to complete the process and where it can be done.
It has recently been found that just by opting to share something on Facebook, the reward-processing centers within our brain are activated. This happens before we’ve actually shared anything.
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One of the biggest benefits of utilizing social media is that it is actually able to act as a sort of buffer against the effects of pain and stress. A study conducted back in 2009 showed that the physical effects of pain were dulled just by having someone look at a picture of someone they loved.
It is believed that those who actively involve themselves in posting, commenting and liking on Facebook actually benefit from a spike in happiness while participating.
This is something that isn’t present in those who are simply browsing, however, so it means that individuals will need to get involved in order to feel involved, in a sense.
When people have nothing to do, their brains should be able to come up with imaginings that keep them entertained, whatever these might be. In the past, this was quite common, but these days, people simply turn to social networking sites when they are bored. This often leads them to become just as bored, but since they are somewhat stimulated, this turns into a habit. Over time, they don’t use their thoughts to stimulate them, and so it becomes harder and harder to turn to this resource.
A fascinating study conducted by the University of Birmingham has shown that people who share their pictures on social media sites often have a lower degree of intimacy in their own relationships. The experts at MPH Programs List have the following to say on the matter;
“Clinical researchers noted that people who share pictures on Facebook have less intimacy in their personal relationships.
Researchers think that when the users try to advertise how attractive they are, they can end up alienating some friends who envy them.”
When people see their friends living lives that make them envious, many individuals tend to hold grudges that could end up causing them to stop being friendly altogether. This sort of behavior is contrary to the purpose of the pictures and comments often posted, which are usually intended to make people see someone in a particularly pleasant light. Internet Psychologist Graham Jones states; “As a society as a whole we haven’t really learnt the rules that make us work well with Facebook.”
People often turn to Facebook as a way to avoid dealing with their real problems. This social media site becomes a sort of crutch that they can lean on when things get tough. What is more, social networking sites are often used by people as a method of avoiding real social interactions, and this could end up causing someone to become even more isolated.
Altogether, when used for the wrong purposes, social networking sites can have a very negative effect on the way that people interact with each other, as well as how they choose to deal with their own issues. The field of social media and its effects on our psychology is still very new, so many more studies will need to be conducted in order for the professionals to understand these effects a bit better.
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As technology continues to evolve, individuals will evolve along with it. This means that the field of social media psychology is a dynamic one that might give individuals a much more thorough view into the human mind and how it functions across a broader field of mediums.
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co.uk/news/technology-23709009About the Author: Ann Steele
This website is co-authored by Ann Steele, a Marriage and Family Therapist in San Diego with extensive experience with children and adolescents. Ann Steele attended American School Of Psychology & Argosy University Online. She especially enjoys using music therapy for mental and emotional well-being.View all posts by Ann Steele
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If Facebook and I had a relationship status last year, it would have been, “It’s complicated.” The social media platform, with its confetti of “like,” “love,” and “wow” buttons and arcadelike red notifications, put me through a roller coaster of emotions every day — I’d go from feeling loved and admired to fighting off a clawing sense of jealousy or self-reproach.
But severing ties was hard. The first time I tried to break up with Facebook, I asked my brother to change my password. That hiatus lasted a month before I begged him to let me back on. The next time, I tried deactivating my account for seven days. I lasted three.
It’s not what I would have called a healthy relationship. But I’m not the only one who has felt like Facebook’s siren call may be taking a toll on her life: In the last few years, researchers have come up with a growing pile of evidence to suggest that Facebook use may be linked to unhappiness. In the most recent study, published earlier this year in the Journal of Epidemiology, researchers analyzed Facebook activity from more than 5,000 people who had responded to the Gallup Panel Social Network Study survey in 2013, 2014, and 2015. The study authors then compared respondents’ accounts of their social media use with each person’s self-reported level of well-being.
The result: Facebook use was significantly correlated with declines in overall well-being over the years, as well as the more specific categories of physical health, mental health, and life satisfaction.
While this isn’t the first study to suggest that Facebook may be making us unhappier, it is one of the largest studies yet to reach that conclusion, and one of the first to look at the effects of Facebook use over several years. “It’s very consistent with the emerging body of evidence,” says Ethan Kross, a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan. “And it’s another piece of a very complicated puzzle.”
In 2013, Kross published a widely cited paper that looked at how Facebook use affects the well-being of young adults, using a novel method in which researchers texted participants regularly to find out how they were feeling, how much they had recently used Facebook, and how much they had interacted with people in person since the last text.
The hope was that collecting data in real time would minimize inaccuracies in how people remembered their mood and well-being after the fact, Kross explains. His study, while small (only 82 participants), found that the more people used Facebook over a period of time, the worse they felt during their the next check-in with the researchers. In addition, the more frequently the subjects used Facebook over the course of two weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time.
Kross’s study was more proof of what many social scientists were already beginning to suspect: The internet, for all the ways it was making our lives easier and more connected, might also be taking a negative toll on our emotional health. In 1998, Robert Kraut, a psychologist who studies human and computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University, helped kick off this line of research with a study that examined the social and psychological impact of the internet on 169 people during their first couple of years online.
The study found that more time spent on the internet was associated with a decrease in communication with people in real life, fewer friends in real-life networks, and increases in depression and loneliness.
Since then, researchers have found similar trends in people who use Facebook in particular. In 2015, a team of Danish researchers asked participants in a study of 1,095 people to stop using Facebook for an entire week; those who did experienced a significant increase in concentration, happiness, and satisfaction with their social lives. Along the same lines, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh surveyed 1,787 young adults in the United States in 2016 and found that social media use in young adults was strongly correlated with depression. Compared with those who checked social media networks the least frequently, more active social-media users in the study were 2.
7 times more likely to have depression, even when controlling for other factors that might contribute to depression risk, including living situation, household income, and education level.
Still, it’s premature to draw any conclusions. Many researchers are unsure whether the results they’re seeing can be explained by the fact that depressed and lonely people simply tend to use Facebook more — after all, correlation doesn’t equal causation. And although some studies, like Kross’s, seem to address this issue by documenting how individuals’ moods change after using Facebook, they are still too small to be conclusive.
To make matters even more complicated, there are just as many studies that suggest that Facebook may be good for well-being.
In 2007, researchers from Michigan State University found that Facebook use increased students’ “social capital,” a term developed by sociologists in the 1970s to refer to the benefits a person gains from their social network, like information, support, and connections (research shows that people with more social capital tend to have better self-esteem and more satisfaction with life). Two years later, researchers from the University of Texas corroborated those findings when they reported that Facebook didn’t just increase students’ life satisfaction and trust — it was also linked to higher rates of civic engagement and political participation within communities.
In 2013, meanwhile, researchers tackled the claim that socializing on Facebook affects real-life relationships. Two small studies found that the quality and number of connections in a person’s Facebook network had little correlation with the quality and number of connections in that person’s real-life networks.
They also found that feeling connected to friends on Facebook was associated with lower levels of depression and anxiety. Those findings were substantiated in 2014, when researchers at Michigan State asked 339 adults how they felt immediately after a supportive interaction on a social network, and found that supportive interactions increased feelings of social support, sense of community, and life satisfaction.
Other research has shown that Facebook can also foster nostalgia, an emotion that has been linked to increased feelings of belonging and acceptance. In 2013, researchers from the U.K. reported that reminiscing by looking back on Facebook posts and photos provided a self-soothing effect, especially for people who reported a history of mental-health issues.
So, given all that conflicting evidence, can we say whether Facebook is good or bad for us? A closer look at the research suggests that the question itself is too broad — that the answer depends more on how people use these social networks than whether they use them at all.
Over the years, researchers have identified a variety of factors — how well you know your online “friends,” how you present yourself on Facebook, whether you use Facebook actively or browse it passively — that can affect how the website influences your mood.
Unsurprisingly, Facebook — which puts each person’s number of friends, “likes,” and enhanced photos on display — invites social comparison. In a small study published in 2014, researchers found that participants who used Facebook more often were more likely to compare themselves to people who seemed “better” than they were. On the other hand, this phenomenon may depend on the type of friends you have in your network: Another study, this one from 2012, found that the more “friends” a person had in their Facebook network that they didn’t know personally, the more likely they were to believe that their friends were happier and leading better lives.
This tendency reflects a phenomenon called “correspondence bias,” in which we draw broad assumptions about other people’s lives and personalities based on the limited information we have about their actions and words — or, in Facebook-land, their status updates and photos. We’re particularly prone to correspondence bias for people we don’t know well.
Interestingly enough, those same friends who are painting a rosy picture of their lives on Facebook may be less happy than the friends who write about the times they’re feeling down. Researchers from Kent State University found that the people who presented themselves more honestly online —who felt free to share negative emotions and bad things that happened to them — were more likely to experience a boost in well-being and to feel like they had support from their Facebook friends.
Finally, several studies have suggested that the way people engage with their Facebook feeds may be one of the most important factors. Researchers from Michigan State University asked students to keep a diary of their social media use and how supported they felt by their friends. Those who were more active on Facebook (giving advice, showing empathy, or inviting people to a new group) showed significant increases in well-being and feelings of social support compared to more passive users. On the other end of the spectrum, when Kross and his colleagues asked 80 college students to use Facebook actively or passively for ten minutes in a lab-controlled environment, they found that those who simply scrolled through, rather than sharing or doing anything, reported feeling significantly worse at the end of the day. The same was true for students who used Facebook in their day-to-day lives.
However, Kross explains that while there’s robust evidence to suggest that passive Facebook use negatively impacts people, the jury’s still out on the effects of active use: “On the whole, the results haven’t been consistent and we need more research in the area,” he says.
While studying Facebook use may feel as trivial as going on Facebook itself, Kross says that it’s important for parents, educators, and consumers to understand how this form of communication affects the way we relate to one another. “We’d been hugging [and] kissing people for hundreds and thousands of years, and all of sudden we had this new technology that changed the way we were interacting with each other,” he says. “Some people spend more time online now than they do offline. Does this have any implications for how people navigate their lives and how happy they are?”
Since the last time I tried to quit Facebook, my own relationship with the site has actually improved, for many of the reasons the researchers discovered above: When I do log on, I interact with friends instead of passively scrolling through my feed to kill time, and I try to be a lot more honest about my life in my posts. Above all, I’ve stopped chastising myself for checking Facebook — it’s something researchers haven’t yet explored, but it was making me feel even worse about myself for “wasting time.” While I still wouldn’t venture to claim that I “love” the social media platform, at least I feel okay now about giving it a thumbs-up “like.”
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Reviewer BBC Future reflects on how you can discreetly change the minds of users of the most popular social network and the largest search engine, showing carefully selected news.
Today it is difficult to imagine life without information technology. But the fact that someone else's computer programs are influencing our decisions is a growing concern.
And just recently, on top of everything else, something from a seemingly long-gone past: some people whom we do not know select events for us, deciding for us what is worthy of our attention and what is not .
As it turns out, Facebook uses a team of editors to select the news that users will or won't see.
The most controversial accusation is that the selections of the most current topics on the site are anti-conservative, while conservative news and opinions are not given enough attention.
However, the company itself vehemently denies such accusations.
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The tech news outlet Gizmodo first brought up the subject in March, citing two reasons why it could be compromising for Facebook, even if we don't find any political overtones.
First, the presence of hired editors hurts "the illusion of an unbiased ranking of news stories."
Secondly, the treatment of "news section curators" is not much better than that of software.
They do not receive clear instructions and must be guided by the vague concept of "popular news", while complying with rigid quantitative norms.
However, it's not so much manual selection of news and ideological bias that matters here, but the fact that the most influential information-sharing platform can freely choose what users see.
Facebook and similar resources are able to filter news and information using general headlines like "popular news" or criteria like "relevant", and most often users have no idea how the selection process works.
And this is very important, because even a slight change in the way information is displayed can affect our behavior.
Image copyright, iStock
Image caption,Facebook editors have been found to have control over how news is displayed in users' feeds
To understand how this is possible, consider the invention of behaviorists (psychologists who study human behavior) "nudge" technology, which is widely used by governments and organizations around the world.
It consists in imperceptibly suggesting to a person how he should behave.
A good example is the presumption of consent to organ donation. It means that the removal of organs requires not the consent of the person, but the absence of a written refusal.
This presumption alone is sufficient to significantly increase the number of donors.
What's wrong with that? Well, for example, critics of this technology note that it deprives people of the possibility of an informed choice.
In an article for the Institute of Art and Ideas, journalist Nick Harkaway argued that the purpose of "nudge" is not to explain an issue and adjust politics to the will of the people, but to bring the will of the people into compliance with the desired policy.
"Choice is a skill, a habit, even a slight change in the architecture of the brain. And it takes practice to hone it," he says.
How is this technology applied in the digital world?
Exploring the online space, we are constantly faced with a choice - from what to buy to what to believe.
And information technology professionals can influence the decisions we make.
It is worth recognizing that it is not only Facebook that sins by filtering information. The craze for artificial intelligence, all kinds of gadgets and the Internet of things arose largely thanks to smart recommendation systems.
Neither Google, nor Apple, nor Amazon neglect the technologies of personalized presentation of information.
But all of the above is not so much a matter of confrontation between man and machine, as of informed choice and pushing towards the "right" choice.
Having the most relevant information, we make the best decisions - this is one of the fundamental principles of information technology and at the same time one of its most important advantages.
The Italian philosopher of technology Luciano Floridi, author of The Fourth Revolution, describes this process with the term "ethical construction" ( pro-ethical design ).
By this, Floridi means providing balanced and clear information that encourages the person to consciously make an important decision and take responsibility for it.
Floridi is sure that information systems should not counteract, but encourage people to think about the ethical side of a particular issue. To do this, it is necessary to avoid excessive "pushing".
There should be no presumption of organ donation: let people make their choice consciously. You should not impose ready-made answers on what is relevant to anyone: let users think for themselves, ask questions, and thereby improve the system.
Image copyright, iStock
Image caption,We have no idea how effectively we are being influenced by technology
There are fundamental tensions here: between convenience and consideration; between what users themselves want and what is best for them; between transparency and commercial advantage.
The more asymmetric the information on both sides of the screen (what the system knows about you and what you know about it), the greater the risk that your decisions will become just a set of responses to hidden stimuli.
At the same time, the ratio of what is happening in the world and what we can know is shifting daily towards our ignorance.
There is no easy solution to this problem. But at the same time, there is no grand conspiracy behind it.
In fact, a clever combination of software power and editorial control becomes the only way to filter the incredible amount of information accumulating around the world.
However, it is worth remembering that the goals of the technology developers we use are different from our own.
It doesn't matter whether the intermediary is a human or an algorithm: in order to successfully navigate the flow of information, one must come to terms with the fact that human bias cannot be overcome.
I recently read an article that made an indelible impression on me. Much of what is described below was not a surprise, but I learned about something for the first time. The first desire was to urgently delete my Facebook profile, the second was to translate and share what I read with as many people as possible. Below you can read my translation of this article, where the author reasonably explains how Mark Zuckerberg practically became the most powerful person on Earth.
Facebook is the sixth largest company in the world by market capitalization. The number of registered users is approaching two billion and the growth of the user base remains stable. Facebook collects an unprecedented amount of data on billions of users.
Mark Zuckerberg may soon become the largest company in the world, and he himself the richest person, since Facebook's share structure is built in such a way that the founder has exclusively unique voting and control rights.
As Facebook grows, so will its ownership of our social graph and our digital selves. As you know, systemic risk is the highest in centralized systems. Extrapolating from trends, I believe that Facebook will become a center of risk for a free society. The following are my arguments:
Facebook already knows more about its users than they know about themselves, and the rate of data collection is accelerating.
Facebook's comprehensive volumes of personal data are its current product and underpin its future ambitions.
Facebook receives very valuable personal data that is voluntarily transferred during registration. Users willingly reveal:
All this forms the core of a personal Facebook profile.
The prevalence of Facebook allows it to collect an unrivaled amount of behavioral data to complete a personal profile. It tracks, or theoretically could track:
Every site visited .
The "like" button on Facebook is on almost every page. Even this one. If you are logged into Facebook, like most users, your data will be collected.
Every purchase you make. Facebook works with third party data providers to understand your purchase history. And comparing the data set with real names is no longer a problem. Facebook also tracks sales made through its own platform and purchases that are selected but not purchased. You may also have noticed that the "Share Your Purchases with Friends" widget is becoming more common on order confirmation pages - this can also be tracked.
Places you visit. In addition to the locations you tag yourself, Facebook expands and adds to the data by using location tracking in various mobile apps.
Facebook collects data about you all the time, even if you do not maintain a profile or do not have one. But if you actively interact in the system, it collects even more data than you can imagine, and in places you cannot even imagine.
Shadow profiles . Facebook creates shadow profiles for users who are not logged in, storing their names, addresses, contact information, etc. This is done by existing users searching for these people through the Find My Friends system and can be supplemented by internet scanning.
Your image. Facebook scans the billions of image uploads it receives to create facial and body profiles for all users, suggesting that they tag their friends or acquaintances in the photo. It also uses this data to expand "shadow" profiles. Thus, Facebook knows personal information and biometric templates for users who even not registered . Facebook can track photos of public places, such as tourists, and identify users and shadow users in the background. The photos contain geolocation information, so the location of these individuals is tracked by without their consent . Neural networks (such as Google's powerful image recognition software) can also determine the location of a photo, even if there is no location metadata.
Your emotions. Natural language processing allows Facebook to understand your emotions. It does this by analyzing how and what you type in statuses as well as messages via Messenger ( author's note : Whatsapp is coded). It also knows the mood of your opponent with whom you interact, using the same algorithms as when determining the emotions in your statuses and messages. Therefore, Facebook knows whether you are engaging in more positive or negative dialogue, as well as how each type of content makes you feel based on your response. The "Like" button has been redesigned as "reactions". By giving you more ways to express your emotions, Facebook has created more resources to track them. The same neural networks that identify your face in every photo can determine your emotional state at the time of the photo.
More. I don't want to overwhelm and scare you, but it's important to understand how much data Facebook receives. An important point is that Facebook has access to such large amounts of data about people that it is beyond human understanding and concepts of personal space.
As artificial intelligence technology improves, the ability to extract this information will only increase.
With access to such a large data set, Facebook has the unique ability to manipulate its users and their reality, increasing its power and influence over real life. You remember that the Facebook feed is not chronological. Facebook decides which posts you see and who sees your posts .
I would like you to seriously consider the idea that Facebook has a greater ability to understand human psychology than every psychologist, philosopher, cognitive scientist and behavioral economist in the history of mankind combined. If this shocks you, let me explain.
For academic and practical work in human psychology, samples of hundreds of respondents are commonly used. I have read a lot of studies and seen units of work that had samples of several thousand; unique in terms of volume of work - a maximum of ten thousand.
Additionally, the problem is the choice of a sample - the respondent, the subject of the study. As a rule, these are two categories - either students attracted by universities, or people participating for money. Most ordinary people are not the subject of study and never will be.
Facebook has the data of various people around the world, including the rich and powerful. And the size of 2 billion is literally an order of magnitude larger than any other psychological study ever done.
Facebook knows this, which is why it has Facebook Research. This unit is the most powerful center of psychological experiments in the history of mankind. He has 2 billion research subjects and more data to understand them. Most researchers and scientists can only dream of this.
Facebook does everything to ensure that users interact with the news feed (News Feed), selling advertising for billions of dollars. He manipulates the psyche of his users to keep them engaged while making a profit.
Here's how it works: Newsfeed is designed to be addictive, just like slot machines. Facebook (and other social media platforms) use Machine Zone.
What is a machine zone? This is rhythm. It is a response to a finely tuned feedback loop. This is a powerful space-time distortion. You press a button. Something is happening. You press again. Something similar but not quite the same is happening again. Maybe you win, maybe you don't. Repetition. Repetition. Repetition. Repetition. Repetition. It's the pleasure of repetition, the safety of the cycle.
Scrolling through the newsfeed, you experience the same feelings as an avid gamer constantly pressing the handle of a slot machine in search of pleasure: what's next, what's next, etc. Facebook does this through manipulation.
Take hypothetical Facebook user Jimmy. Jimmy usually scrolls through Facebook on his phone for 5 minutes, then closes the app. Facebook knows that Jimmy loves posts from his friend Steve because he usually leaves positive comments on them.
The next time Jimmy reaches the 5-minute mark, Facebook will show him a post from Steve. Jimmy leaves a comment, scrolling a little longer, and then exits the app at the 8-minute mark. Facebook also knows that Jimmy is interested in Jenny - he lingers whenever she posts a new Instagram post, even if he doesn't know her or comment on her photos. The next time Jimmy reaches the 8 minute mark, Facebook will show him a post from Jenny. This pattern continues and Jimmy's Facebook usage grows from 5 minutes a day to 15.
Facebook research has shown that you can't keep people in the Machine Zone with positive content for long. Thus, from time to time the algorithm starts to use negative content as well. Jimmy hates Chad, and Facebook knows this because Jimmy wrote about it in conversations with other users on Messenger. So now when Jimmy hits the 15 minute mark, Facebook shows him a picture of Chad doing something fun. The rage causes Jimmy to keep scrolling until his dopamine levels reach the levels from seeing Steve's or Jenny's posts.
Now Facebook is increasing Jimmy's time every day, and his advertising dollars are growing along with him. This is how Jimmy's mental manipulation works.
Manipulation in Facebook exists not only to increase the time in the system and profit. The study showed that Facebook is also able to manipulate people, namely, to control the news feed of users in order to influence the emotional states of these users. Researchers found:
When positive news posts were cut, people produced less positive news and more negative news. When negative posts were reduced, the reverse was true. These results show that the emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, providing experimental evidence for mass infection through social media.
Just a reminder that Facebook chooses what to show you. It knows the emotional content of the posts in your feed, and how your emotions react to them.
It can and does manipulate users accordingly.
How can Facebook manipulate you for research? Let's look at our hypothetical Facebook users: Jimmy, his friend Steve, and Jimmy's secret interest Jenny. Is there anything Facebook can show Jimmy and Steve that will cause a rift between them? Maybe the feed will stop showing Jimmy and Steve's posts to each other. Or display only negative ones. Can Facebook do anything to get Jimmy and Jenny in a relationship? Perhaps the tape will only show positive images of Jimmy for Jenny, certain social signs and statuses.
Even if Facebook doesn't intervene directly to bring about these results, they have all the data they need to look for patterns in other friends that actually converge, disagree, end up in a relationship. You'll quickly find connections with 2 billion people to watch.
Facebook can not only manipulate your emotions, but also your actions.
I'm not saying they use it (yet), but the possibility and possibility exists.
We are social animals and need the approval and love of others. Every “like” and comment causes the production of the hormone dopamine in the cerebral cortex. Social media interactions form a feedback mechanism in our neurological connections: we are more likely to continue posting content that helps us actively participate in social life and less likely to post content that does not.
Facebook chooses who sees your posts. If you post something that someone doesn't like, they can hide it from other users. If you post something that someone likes, they will spread it across many channels and you will get more likes and retweets than before. By choosing who sees what you post, Facebook chooses what you will post in the long run .
For example, let's say if Facebook wants you to drink more alcohol, it can post your bar photos to a larger audience to get more positive reactions, like likes.
Your brain will subconsciously push you to go to bars more often in the long run.
By controlling how you feel, what you consider socially acceptable, and how you act, Facebook can manipulate your reality. I don't know if they do it or plan to, but the possibility exists and they have shown that they are ready to use it in certain circumstances.
The combination of a large amount of personal data and experimental capabilities gives Facebook the ability to create an almost complete model of your psyche . Facebook knows more about you than you do about yourself, and it can predict your reactions to anything. Once tested on you, it can combine the results with those of other people, grouping the respondents into the required demographics to see how larger target populations react to certain things.
For example, Facebook might know the following:
All of this data and research helps understand how Facebook can use the information to build a psychological profile of you and predict how you will respond to various stimuli.
These stimuli can then be used at will, pushing you towards your chosen emotions, actions, and outcomes.
You have to understand that Facebook has all the tools you need for human simulation more than anyone ever has. Aral Balkan claims that this is their current business model and strategy:
Facebook is not a social network; it is a scanner that digitizes people. It is, for all intents and purposes, a camera that captures your soul. Facebook's business is to control your simulation through which it will control you .
The user manipulation detailed above is both ethically unacceptable and questionable, and terrible PR for Facebook. What if you could get the same results without actually testing on users?
Let's take a look at the Facebook AI Research (FAIR) department. Their mission statement says: "the main goal is to understand intelligence and build intelligent machines" by "extracting knowledge from data.
"
Below are some quotes from this insightful and/or terrifying article about FAIR:
They recreate a virtual memory of reality and group it in the context of other places and events. They can even "actually represent the person" based on their previous likes, interests, and digital experience . It's somewhat experimental, but it's a big deal for the Facebook News Feed...
"If we have a working idea, within a month it can be implemented by 1.5 billion people," said LeCun (Jan LeCun is an AI pioneer). and director of FAIR.)
Facebook is openly building its capacity to model the human psyche and is proud to announce it . When their technology becomes powerful and advanced enough, there will be no need for testing on real users. These users can only be used to check simulation results.
In 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus, a leading consumer virtual reality brand, for $2 billion.
In his acquisition post, Zuckerberg stated:
The most incredible thing about this technology is that you feel like you are really in a different place with other people… We believe that one day such immersive augmented reality will become part of everyday life for billions of people.
Zuckerberg wants billions of people to use his virtual reality technology every day.
It is not difficult to see the growing link between artificial intelligence and human simulation. Modeled people, created from a huge array of data, will immediately connect to the virtual realities of Oculus.
The use of virtual reality will create even more opportunities for Facebook to stimulate, manipulate and track users. Here are some options:
Eye and pupil tracking . Eye and pupil tracking is a necessary component of successful VR adoption and will solve many of the problems users currently face. Facebook and Oculus are currently working on introducing eye tracking.
Now imagine: the movement of your eyes and pupil shows how you think, and they can be manipulated to influence how you think (source). By the movement of your eyes and pupil, you can understand how confident you are in your decisions, regardless of whether you are lying or not, whether you are thinking more or less about your desires. There is evidence that manipulating what your eyes focus on affects your moral judgment. Facebook is able to manipulate what users see and capture their reactions. Using pupil-tracking technology, Oculus is able to control what users experience and read their thoughts.
Biometric tracking . There are already virtual reality games that measure and use biometric data, including electroencephalogram - EEG (brain waves), galvanic skin response - GSR (stress levels), heart rate and respiration.
While there is no evidence that Oculus is currently developing applications to track these variables, I believe it is only a matter of time before biometric data collection may be included in future versions of controllers or headsets.
Completing the overall picture of responses to external stimuli, biometric tracking will allow Facebook to collect data about the stimuli-responses of your physical body. Behavioral data volumes and eye tracking will model and track your mind, while biometrics will model and track your physical body.
Summary: Facebook has all the tools you need to not only model your psyche, but the ability to manipulate and model your entire being as their platform merges with Oculus VR.
We have already discussed above that Zuckerberg has exclusive control over Facebook through his share of the shares. In fact, he single-handedly runs Facebook without any checks and balances.
What are Zuckerberg's motives? Can we trust him with the power he will have? Can we trust anyone alone with such power?
In February, Mark Zuckerberg published the Building a Global Community manifesto.
I won't criticize Zuckerberg's politics, but I can't help but point out that he takes his own political preferences as obvious targets for the entire planet.
Whether or not Zuckerberg plans to run for president of the United States, it's clear enough that he has political ambitions. He recently spoke with Angela Merkel at the UN. He is touring all 50 US states in 2017 to understand why there is "more division than I feel in my life".
These are the actions of a man who is not going to sit on the sidelines earning his billions. Zuckerberg is making a concerted effort to become the political center of the United States.
Imagine a politician who has:
Now imagine that this is the same person - the richest person in the world.
Whether it's money, beliefs, "fake news" or anything else, Zuckerberg will have access to it all.
Having the power to influence politicians creates the power to influence politics in one way or another.
Are we ready to trust a person with:
Zuckerberg is just a man. As the saying goes, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” I remind you that this is the same person who wrote the words that have already become a meme:
Zuck: Yes, if you ever need information about someone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
{Edited friend's name} What? How did you deal with it?
Zuck: People just introduced him to .
Zuck: I don't know why .
Zuk: They "trust me"
Zuck: Assholes (original: Dumb fucks)
Let's take a step back and take Zuckerberg out of the equation. As we have seen, Facebook is the biggest personal data collector in history. He openly works on modeling human behavior for research. He has all the tools needed to manipulate people's realities, emotions, thoughts, and political preferences. And he continues to create these possibilities, especially in virtual reality.
This in itself is already a risk center for the freedoms of our society. This centralization of private data, power and influence is dangerous.
Now add Zuckerberg. He has political ambitions and a controversial track record.
Is it reasonable to leave sole control in the hands of one person? Personally, I don't trust Tsuk. But this is my opinion and intuition, so.
