Further reading on our shared social dilemma:
READ
Our Brains Are No Match for Our Technology
Tristan Harris
New York Times
READ
The Dark Psychology of Social Networks
Jonathan Haidt
The Atlantic
listen
Shoshana Zuboff
Harvard Business Review
WATCH
Cathy O’Neill
RSA
WATCH
Want to Work for Google? You Already Do.
Joe Toscano
TEDx Talks
READ
Free Speech Is Not The Same As Free Reach
Renée DiResta
Wired
The problem beneath all other problems
Technology’s promise to keep us connected has given rise to a host of unintended consequences that are catching up with us. If we can’t address our broken information ecosystem, we’ll never be able to address the challenges that plague humanity.
A 5,000 person study found that higher social media use correlated with self-reported declines in mental and physical health and life satisfaction.
American Journal of Epidemiology, 2017
Persuasive design techniques like push notifications and the endless scroll of your newsfeed have created a feedback loop that keeps us glued to our devices.
The # of countries with political disinformation campaigns on social media doubled in the past 2 years.
New York Times
Social media advertising gives anyone the opportunity to reach huge numbers of people with phenomenal ease, giving bad actors the tools to sow unrest and fuel political divisions.
64% of the people who joined extremist groups on Facebook did so because the algorithms steered them there.
Internal Facebook report, 2018
Algorithms promote content that sparks outrage, hate, and amplifies biases within the data that we feed them.
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