Social Dilemma Essay

The social dilemma deals with the moral and ethical dilemmas that big technology company employees face when creating new products. Some of these dilemmas are the effect these products have on their users' mental health, the propagation of misinformation, and the lack of connection people have these days due to isolating themselves from society. One such problem is the creation of echo chambers that cause people to think less critically, allow misinformation to propagate with little to no resistance, and cause extreme political polarization. Many former workers and executives interviewed felt a certain degree of remorse about what they had created; they said that the products caused adverse side effects that they did not anticipate. Tristian Harris, a former design ethicist at Google, believes that everyone on this planet has the right to know how technology affects their well-being. He has called for more ethical designs for products to be less addictive. He explains that social media and technology companies compete against each other for users' attention. It is in their best interest to keep users as long as they can on their platforms, so they can monetize it by selling customers' data to advertisers; that is why these platforms are free. Technological platforms have computer models and algorithms that can predict human behavior before it happens. Doctor Shoshana Zuboff, a business professor at the Harvard Business School, states that these companies try to make sure that every ad shown to customers becomes the revenue for advertisers. She alleges that companies can be precise with their advertisements because they collect vast amounts of user data, sometimes without their knowledge and consent. She coined it "surveillance capitalism," like a futures market for human behavior. Jeff Seibert, a former Twitter executive, adds that these companies track engagement at all times and know more about users than ever before; companies know when users are happy, sad, in love, hungry, and their personality type. Psychological manipulation is vital for these companies to make more revenue and use psychological nudging to change consumers' behavior and thoughts, even unconsciously. These algorithms change our behaviors; since we do not notice this invisible surveillance, we cannot realize how it violates our privacy and changes who we are; we become the test subject to a giant social experiment. One of these techniques is "intermittent positive reinforcement," which acts similarly to a slot machine at a casino; this reinforces impulsive behavior and glues our eyes onto our screens. Chamath Palihapitiya, a former vice president of user growth at Facebook, said its goal was to get a user to seven of their friends in ten days. This concept ties back to the algorithm that powers this develops a mind of its own, and builds upon itself. Even the tech company employees fall prey to their creations; they know what is happening behind the curtain but cannot stop their impulsive behaviors psychologically. Tying back to the concept of "ethical design," Utilitarianism reminds us that the goal of our decisions is to maximize good for us and society as a whole. Technology companies justify what they do by saying that their products have brought more benefits than harm to people worldwide. They say they connected people more than ever before and allowed small and large businesses, individuals, and families to connect or reconnect with others. Another benefit of mass data collection is the technological advancements it helps innovate medicine, engineering, and science. Critics argue that these benefits do not outweigh the mental toll they have inflicted on society. These products have caused people to become depressed, even to the point that people would harm themselves. One of the harms that Chamath explained was the withdrawal effect of social media approval when a user loses followers. According to the documentary, mental hospital admission for teenage girls who tried to harm themselves rose 62 percent from 2009 until 2015. It rose 189 percent for pre-teenage girls during that same period. Also, suicide rates for teenage girls rose about 70 percent and 151 percent for pre-teenage girls; this is since social media apps became available on mobile devices. Deontological ethics would agree with critics because it states that companies and individuals must judge acts according to their intentions, motives, and means. Although tech companies helped people connect and business expanded, their reasons were profit-driven, and they employed very manipulative and morally questionable methods to achieve their aims. They have made young adults and children compare their lives to unrealistic beauty, wealth, and social statuses, making their self-esteem crumble. Governments have not been able to nor willing to regulate the business practices of technological platforms because of fears that they are perceived to be stifling innovation and censoring protected speech. When advertisers advertise their products on television, governments regulate what they can. Advertisers can not promote them to kids of a particular age group, but those protections don't exist on the internet. When companies start to manipulate their users and destroy families and societal cohesion, these companies should be held accountable. A great example is when the government cracked down on tobacco companies responsible for the damage they caused due to false advertising and society's costs due to tobacco use. One of these similar practices is when social media targets users based on psychological profiles; for example, the documentary explained that Facebook would nudge people into conspiracy theory groups based on their profile and personality. An MIT study concluded that fake news spreads six times faster than real news; this is one of the leading causes of civil unrest, political division, and disinformation regarding the pandemic. The government should regulate this practice by making these companies disclose the damages their algorithms have on users, holding them as public utilities, and banning any future M&A activity. Although technology companies are held by private owners and thus are free to decide how they conduct their businesses, their consolidation has made them indispensable for humanity. Users can't live without using their products, which puts tech platforms in a dominant position over small businesses and consumers alike. Consolidation has also stifled innovation and pushed smaller tech companies out of business and the market. If these technology companies are banned from acquiring small competitors, they would compete more and let smaller companies have a piece of the consumer market pie. Another proposal is to tax these companies by the amount of data they collect and have collected, which would give them an incentive not to hoard all the world's data. If these companies' abuses are not stopped, humanity will have a big problem in its hands.