"Influence your behavior" seems like an over dramatic description of "show me ads".
From 2014:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-...
> now Facebook, the world's biggest social networking site, is facing a storm of protest after it revealed it had discovered how to make users feel happier or sadder with a few computer key strokes.
> It has published details of a vast experiment in which it manipulated information posted on 689,000 users' home pages and found it could make people feel more positive or negative through a process of "emotional contagion".
It's overly dramatic in the way that I could say "Axe weilding man splits homeowners door uninvited" and "Fireman had to break down a door" and both are technically true, but only one is apt.
Facebook's product is influencing my behavior, technically, maybe, but it's a clumsy description made for the sake of drama. It's more accurate to say their product is targeted advertisements.
The researchers found out that Facebook's news does influence sentiments in a contagious manner. Which implies it does result in behaviors change on the platform, otherwise they don't have a way to measure the effect in the first place...
And don't forget to check the Acknowledgement section:
> We thank the Facebook News Feed team, especially Daniel Schafer, for encouragement and support; the Facebook Core Data Science team, especially Cameron Marlow, Moira Burke, and Eytan Bakshy; plus Michael Macy and Mathew Aldridge for their feedback.
It's not like they hide it, that's exactly why advertisers and political parties partner with Facebook in the first place.
I personally don’t see my goal, the goal of projects I work on, the goal of companies I work for, or anything else I contribute to, to be about manipulating people behaviors without their knowledge and/or consent.
Facebook has been doing completely unethical experiments since forever (are you aware of their role in Rohingya’s genocide in Myanmar?). They have been open about a lot of them, bragging how good they are at manipulating crowds.
And yes, they are crazy effective. And they have the scale. They have unethical behaviors, that are effective, applied at humanity scale.
Was there more to it than that?
Existing in a filter bubble has a strong effect on your perception. Perception has a direct influence on your actions. Couple this with interfaces which are purposefully addicting ("high user engagement" is a euphemism), and you can very directly influence behavior.
The pervasiveness of smartphones means that these apps are only a few clicks away for virtually the entire world population. And worse, once these apps are installed on your phone, they relentlessly pull you back in with and endless stream of notifications.
It is not only Facebook. Applications like Reddit, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok all follow the same basic patterns.
It is not an overly dramatic description. If anything the public has been frightfully unaware of the influence that these companies can exert on the world. I am glad that this film has brought these issues into the spotlight.
The biggest danger in my opinion is how this time it's not just the ads that are changing your behavior but the platform itself.
> the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your behavior and perception that is the product
It is not hard to argue that an ad fits such a description. Ads change behavior. We don't just have ads to buy things, but we also have political ads. We have ads for charity. We have ads for religion. We have ads for mental health. We have ads for public awareness. There's this common argument that ads are just about selling you things but such an argument doesn't reflect reality and is often strange to find coming from people living in a country that is going through a major political election where they are being accosted by ads encouraging people to vote. Considering we've been doing this for a few hundred years, I'm pretty sure someone would have picked up on it being wasted money if ads didn't influence behavior.
The answer of course is somewhere in between depending on context. People don't have zero agency, but they also don't have 100% agency.
A short version of this would be any product information media output that doesn't detail a products principle flaws is manipulation intended to sidestep your agency.
When did you last see a fizzy drinks (pop, soda) advert that said "tap water is better for you and cheaper but our brand advertising is supposed to associate drinking our drinks with being cool, so choose to avail yourself of our continued widescale brainwashing of your society to help you feel socially superior" or "we make sure our batteries mtbf is 2.5 years, with a narrow sd so that it needs replacing just after the warranty period expires; the battery though, it's glued in - clever eh!".
The central tenet of market capitalisms optimisation relies on consumers having perfect information and operating on that information. Advertising, the ads I've ever seen, are a direct effort at circumvention of that.
Yes, people still have some agency, otherwise ads wouldn't be needed. But ads purpose is to erode that agency.
Your post sounds like the attempted justification of someone who uses advertising?
If you are looking for a camera, going to a review site will give you a fair chance to find the product that fits your needs (most likely a lens module for your phone). Looking at Canon ads is not that.
Facebook’s manipulation is arguably much harder to spot.
Sure they’re both forms of advertising, but at some point a new technology is so much more effective that it should be treated like a new thing.
I think that’s what people are arguing here.