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Who is in Control?

2018-04-13 · letter vlog · Hank · 3:57 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube · mode: News analysis · tags: timely hook, self promotion

Starting from Hugo Gernsback's 1911 prediction of personalized news, Hank argues that today's feeds are chosen by self-built programs serving platforms, that social media sells their power over us (Cambridge Analytica, AI inference from little data), that users are the product, and that if you don't control the feed, the feed controls you.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Gernsback's 1911 personalized news versus today's feeds chosen by self-built programs

  • ★★ In 1911, in a very early science fiction novel, Hugo Gernsback became the first to predict personalized news: newspapers wired to sleeping subscribers with only the news each asked for. — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ More than 100 years later that future is now: personalized news has become information and entertainment feeds, from your cousin's baby to the President's unfiltered thoughts. — 00:00:21 · Donald Trump
  • ★★★ In Gernsback's future you chose your news; now neither you nor any person decides your feed, but a program, increasingly self-built, serving the platform's needs rather than yours. — 00:00:43 · recommender system
  • ★★ These machines are given desired outcomes, but how they reach them is up to them, and their goals are tightly held industry secrets. — 00:01:00 · recommender system

00:01:08 — Feeds shape us and are sold for profit: Cambridge Analytica, AI inference, you are the product, the feed controls you

  • ★★★ Two things are clear: what is in your feed and how it is served can lastingly affect who you are and how you feel, and social media's business model relies on selling that power for profit. — 00:01:08 · attention economy
  • ★★★ Through a failing in Facebook policy and enforcement, Cambridge Analytica built psychological profiles of tens of millions of Facebook users. — 00:01:24 · Facebook
  • ★★ Hank plays a quoted voice claiming to have somewhere close to four or five thousand data points on every adult in the United States. — 00:01:30 · United States
  • ★★★ Cambridge Analytica could then create not just ads but news stories and entire news outlets to amplify and exploit voters' fears and anxieties. — 00:01:37
  • ★★★ This broke Facebook's rules but no laws, because the US has so few laws regulating these companies. — 00:01:47 · Facebook, United States
  • ★★ Facebook doesn't want anyone else to have your data, because your data is its most valuable asset. — 00:01:53 · Facebook
  • ★★★ As artificial intelligence improves, even small amounts of data will likely be enough: smaller and smaller signals are becoming clearer. (hedged) — 00:02:02
  • ★★★ Machines can now tell a man's sexual orientation from profile photos with 91% accuracy. — 00:02:08
  • ★★★ Facebook is worth half a trillion dollars because it can capture your attention and because of what it knows about you. — 00:02:16 · Facebook, attention economy
  • ★★★ Fed enough data, machines infer shocking detail from tiny input and will use your worldview and emotional state to help paying others manipulate you; not a conspiracy, but their business model. — 00:02:27 · online advertising
  • ★★★ Facebook isn't the product being sold, since it is free: you are not the customer but the product, and on the social internet your attention is their dollars. — 00:02:43 · Facebook, online advertising, attention economy
  • ★★★ For the platforms anything that gains attention is good, and whether they regard truth, social stability or their users' health is, for now, entirely up to them. — 00:02:54
  • ★★★ Some will dig into these issues, but most people won't have time; and we need Facebook, which is socially expected, necessary and useful, so we're trapped. — 00:03:08 · Facebook

  • ★★★ The only thing to do is to remember and help others learn: if you don't control the feed, the feed is controlling you. — 00:03:24

    “if you don't control the feed, the feed is controlling you”

00:03:35 — Sign-off; the new Crash Course media literacy series with Jay Smooth

  • ★★ Hank tells John the new Crash Course media literacy series with Jay Smooth is good and fascinating and will change how viewers see the world: less cut and dried, but more accurate. — 00:03:37 · Crash Course

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says Facebook is in crisis now, but platforms' control over us has been at crisis levels for some time; Hank's biggest concern is that this is only the beginning. — video description · Facebook
  • ★★★ Hank is deeply worried about computers getting good not just at serving content but at creating it; advertisers already work on this, and if it gets good at selling ideas, not just detergent, a new era of human history begins. — video description · online advertising
  • ★★ Hank doubts whether Congress will be savvy enough to regulate this, or Mark Zuckerberg good or powerful enough to control it. (hedged) — video description · United States Congress
  • ★★ Hank thanks John and Taha Khan for advising him and helping him get things right, and Grant of 3Blue1Brown for the neural network image. — video description · John Green
  • ★★ Hank recommends Grant's 3Blue1Brown series on how neural network AI works as really good. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: attention economy · Facebook · recommender system

Also: People: Donald Trump · Hugo Gernsback

Projects: Crash Course

Organizations: Cambridge Analytica

Concepts: artificial intelligence · media literacy · misinformation · online advertising · regulation · science fiction · sexual orientation

Places: United States

Only in the description or credits: 3Blue1Brown · Grant Sanderson · Jay Smooth · Mark Zuckerberg · Taha Khan · United States Congress

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