for: annotate, annotate - social media, progress trap - social media

source: connectathon 2023 09 23

• session on social media

• The big tech companies, left to their own devices , have already had a net negative effect on societies worldwide.
• At the moment, the three big threats these companies pose
  • aggressive surveillance,
  • arbitrary suppression of content,
    • the censorship problem, and
  • the subtle manipulation of
    • thoughts,
    • behaviors,
    • votes,
    • purchases,
    • attitudes and
    • beliefs
  • are unchecked worldwide

• senior research psychologist at American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology

• Epstein's organization is building two technologies that assist in combating these problems:
  • passively monitor what big tech companies are showing people online,
  • smart algorithms that will ultimately be able to identify online manipulations in realtime:
    • biased search results,
    • biased search suggestions,
    • biased newsfeeds,
    • platform-generated targeted messages,
    • platform-engineered virality,
    • shadow-banning,
    • email suppression, etc.
• Tech evolves too quickly to be managed by laws and regulations,
  • but monitoring systems are tech, and they can and will be used to curtail the destructive and dangerous powers of companies like Google and Facebook on an ongoing basis.

• seminar paper on monitoring systems, ‘Taming Big Tech -: https://is.gd/K4caTW.