Technology

Have we collectively forgotten that Facebook tested manipulating users emotional states all the way back in 2014?

Where they tested to see if people with depression can be even more depressed if their social media feeds are manipulated to take away positive interaction.

Cave men said the same thing about the horse. They gutted our communal caves and made human scale subordinate to a domesticated animal. #fuckmounts

Don't forget the cycle of buying up all patents and shelving them if they are a threat to their goals. What a future we've wasted.

Reminds me of a part I've recently read on The Dawn of Everything, comparing the Great Lakes natives' freedoms to our corporate owned "freedoms": while we're busy with the "possibility of freedom", they cared about the exercise of their freedoms.

Before the colonization, they were free to visit other places because they almost always had someone that belonged to their clan living there and who would receive them with open arms. They didn't have to pay anything for the travel proper, but obviously needed to take some supplies to spend the days on the wilderness. For us, if we don't have money, we don't have freedoms: gotta pay for the car+gas (or plane or ship ticket), food, housing.

Great callback. I haven't thought of Thank You For Smoking in ages.

That is a prescient little film from my teenage years back in earlly 00's. The film was a nice stab at the culture of "spin" and how lobbying was gonna dig us into the hell we are now.

Hmmm, Thank You For Posting would be an actual relevant sequel in the time of endless sequels. Backdropping it with the lobbying for the Turd Reich and the ascension of Fascism and you got something there...

Thank you for reminding me of Thank You For Smoking.

it's an analogy; the author is drawing parallels between them. Obviously Tobacco companies were not "defeated" but they were regulated to hell, and I'm sure the author would say that's what we need to do with social media too.

Muted in the English world. I argue junk food commercials draw a lot of parallels with cigarette commercials of the past. For some reason obesity isn't worth prevention so the advertisements are pretty gross.

Soft drinks. Coca Cola especially really loves to tie emotions and sports/holidays to sugar water.

They were never defeated.

When you say "defeated", what exactly do you mean? You mean that they should cease to exist to be considered as such? If that's the case then I would say it's an unrealistic expectation.

I would say that they've been largely contained. If I remember correctly, back in the '50s almost half of the American population used to smoke. The percentage of people smoking has been consistently decreasing over the years thanks to regulation and increased taxation. Tobacco companies are definetly not as influential as they once were.

i'm curious, what exactly is the advantage of getting a dumbphone vs just uninstalling social media apps from your existing phone, or just disabling internet access all together? doesn't that achieve pretty much the same thing while still being able to keep things like navigation and being able to see when public transport is delayed

I got an e-ink e-reader in the pocketable form factor of a phone (Bigme Hibreak Color). Instead of doomscrolling social media, I read a couple paragraphs of the Oppenheimer biography. Next I’ll reread Neuromancer. It’s life-changing. 10/10 highly recommended.

ok but like if I don't have music and noise cancelling earbuds I will explode

It's not very wild when you realize you're talking to addicts. The whole world is addicted.