TikTok's new feature will track your emotions to sell ads
edri.org
edri.org
These platforms run teams of content moderators to tag posts within seconds of their upload... Despite faster than ever mobile networks and ultra-compressed video files, content often takes longer than normal to upload for this very reason. With a quick manual review and (taxonomy) tagging solution, content can be grouped in any number of ways for tailored playback by partially scripted (not necessarily algorithmic) methods. Money generated from content on the platform is carefully engineered to make certain sounds (which are used to track royalties) most popular on TikTok. The process of selecting a popular sound for most videos means that a huge amount of the royalty payments go to only a few owners of the most popular sounds on the platform (This also explains why certain sounds repeat constantly even though you choose not to hear them any more or block them in controls).
There is little intelligence in what TikTok plays for people from what I observe, the reason why TikTok looks intelligent is that they heavily gaslight content creators on their potential for success on the platform, and frequently make posting competitive and challenging to dictate what creators post. The end result is a vast stream of daily (relatively high quality and topical) free content generated by legions of young (and even old people) who are desperate to be seen, in hopes that it will earn them income. The platform also creates a competition between rich and poor, in which trust fund kids (and drug dealers) can pay vast sums of money to dominate the for-you feed and to gain tons of followers, while middle and lower class participants are encouraged to think that content is viral and liked for fair reasons or because the posters know secrets that no one else does.
Many people are dropping from using the most dominant platforms now because they've spent time chasing the schemes and found that there is no reward after long periods of hard work. These sites are run like the lottery now, and manipulated like casinos, where only a few people are permitted to win, primarily to encourage others to play, and where the super rich, connected and influential people, and platform owners are usually the only potential big winners..
Children are the worst victims of this social media culture now, because in the process of creating content and being encouraged to participate, they waste time out of their lives not doing more rewarding things, they can get exploited by others in the process, they also suffer the mental stress of being manipulated and viewing things they're not ready for, and they often resort to oversharing and being sexualized in the competitive environment in hopes of popularity that, more often than not, is not rewarded or that returns little long-term career value.
It's the fentanyl to Facebook's heroin. The crack to Instagram's cocaine.
More of the same idea, with an unimaginably more destructive and addictive quality emergent from its' purity, quantity, and availability.
So that's interesting. What are advertisers going to do to lure me into watching ads for longer than 6 seconds? Tiktok makes it extremely easy to flip through videos instantly and I'll often (not always) judge I don't like a video in under two seconds.
> With this pay-if-they-engage feature, TikTok is making bold claims that are either dubious and unscientific or selling an invasion of privacy – or both. In claiming that ads will be delivered to “emotionally” and “tangibly” engaged users, TikTok is suggesting it could read people’s emotions. However, it fails to provide details on how the feature would actually work. To date the only technologies that purport to gather such precise, highly sensitive data are what are called “emotion recognition” technologies.
> Experts have repeatedly criticized “emotion recognition” as unverified pseudo-science that, even if it were possible, would result in highly intrusive forms of surveillance. Yet, TikTok has commissioned various projects on emotion recognition, even delving into contentious neurotechnology / neuromarketing approaches. For instance, TikTok conducted a study in partnership with MediaScience which creepily resembles what Focused View claims to be able to do.
I have fun with Tiktok but it will never get camera, microphone, or contacts access on my iPhone.
Could it be measuring the gesture used to swipe? Angry swipes might be different than non-angry swipes, for example.
TikTok will push ads that grab people attention. That will cause ads to become more extreme, what will create a race to the bottom on grab attention ads.
If you though that ads have gotten more obnoxious during the years wait until they are hyper-optimized by the second.
I'll admit the K-Mart "ship my pants" ad got me to stick around a while longer. It'll probably be more of that.
I've never actually used TikTok and I never will. I get a lot of videos sent through by people stamped with their logo and they're always of the 'stupid time-wasting joke' kind of thing. The things people used to send as animated gifs. And I'm very much drawn to written content over video anyway when it comes to learning. But it's worrying from a population manipulation point of view. The same way Facebook did with Cambridge Analytica.
Though none of this stuff really has to be directly tied to emotions. As long as they can link up user behavior to which ads are working, that's all that matters. If they're really calling it "emotion tracking" it's probably just a cute sales pitch to sell to advertisers.
I suppose some people could argue that this is for the user's benefit, to show them content they're interested in. But I find it very sneaky. I personally don't want to see any suggested content, only the people I subscribe to.
I assume that isn’t too hard for a company which has a big and well labeled dataset? I’m pretty confident that Spotify knows exactly when I’m sad, because at those times I like to listen to very certain music. I’m also sure that Google has the same capabilities (and is probably implicitly using them already, as their ad model automatically tests the ad’s performance across different groups?)
No. Users, when will you finally learn?
I don't see regulation doing much except making the world a more twisted place than before. If we're going to legislate, it should be in the way of working with the culture and not so much the tech. What is regulation but adding more tech to the problem? More tech often isn't better.
For example, scroll for any period of time and you will find multiple ads for bean bag chairs, all for much lower prices than you can find at Amazon, and all originating from the exact same "company," with the exact same set of Judge.me ratings on each of their hastily assembled websites (which all have non-working links to the same social media properties).
If you search for "bean bag scam," you will find hundreds of users complaining that they were scammed out of money by this company. Tiktok does nothing and gleefully allows these scammers to continue suckering people out of their money.
The part about "emotions" is how the advertiser is supposed to generated more focused views: by creating ads that are emotionally appealing, the users chooses to watch longer, not TikTok.
Adolescents who don't have Tourette's are displaying severe tics from TikTok use [0], for just a start.
[0] https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2022/06/03/tiktok-tics
Arguably, the great part about TikTok isn't the content itself but the recommendation algorithm. It's really good at showing you new things that you wouldn't have looked at on your own, but that are still interesting to you.
Youtube shorts is getting closer though, TikTok can't keep their edge forever.
The emotions would be like ... if a person watches the entire ad? If they interact with it?
On TikTok, if I see the same ad a few times, I'll flag it as "not interested" or "saw it too many times already" etc.
Human attention is a commodity. TikTok is an exploitative drug.