Discussing the Social Dilemma

Yes, we’ve seen it. And some in our business community is worried. So we’re going to talk about it. The social dilemma documentary on today’s straight shot marketing podcast.

So Netflix came out with a new documentary on their streaming service, and everyone is talking about it. People are saying how horrible social media is and how they are threatening to quote, unplug as business owners. This is a real concern. Now Zachary was planning on the next straight shot marketing podcast series on social media marketing.

And I think this is a great time way to open up that series. Now, I’ve already talked about it on marketing with the misses, but Zachary, you wanted to dive deeper. Well, how could we not, I mean, you and I talked a lot more about it than what you could put in your social media show. So I thought we should kind of dive into all of the conversations about it right here on the podcast.

Well, it is definitely timely. Yes, it is. So let’s just get right into it first. Okay. For those that may not have seen it, why don’t you give us a synopsis of the film? Hey, we’ll do better than that. I’ll give you, Netflix is a synopsis of the film. Okay. So here we go. The social dilemma. This documentary drama hybrid explores the dangerous human impact of social networking with tech experts sounding the alarm on their own creations.

Okay. So that’s really broad. So here’s what it is. The filmmakers got together. Tristan Harris, who seems to be leading the charge. Now he’s formerly with Google, uh, Jeff Siebert, formerly an executive at Twitter, Tim Kendall. A former executive at Facebook and Pinterest Bailey Richardson who helped develop Instagram, uh, Joe Tuscano, uh, formerly with Google, uh, Sandy para keyless, formally, uh, former operations manager at Facebook.

Uh, Jaron linear. Jaron Lanier is a computer philosophers scientist, all-around the interesting individual with great dreadlocks, quite interesting. And many, many other people. Jaron is the only one that did not work at one of these places, but still had something to say. He is a computer philosopher. Did you know, there was such a thing.

I think this man carved that little niche out for itself. Now, these are some of the people that made these programs, Google Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, except for Jaron, except for Jerry. He made his own thing. He made an opinion and now they don’t even let their own children on these platforms.

They are scared of their own creations. That sounds like a good drama. Doesn’t it. Kind of like the Titans in Greek mythology or Skynet in the Terminator series, they spend a lot of time talking about how they built these systems to capitalize on human psychology. Well, that’s actually what we do here. At the marketing agency, you know, we use our experience in education in psychology to figure out how to motivate our client’s target audiences to choose their products or services.

In the marketplace. Yes. But they are actually using the study of addictive behaviors. We don’t. Okay. Let me slow us down a little bit. I was playing a little bit of devil’s advocate there before, but indeed we do use our understanding of psychology in marketing, but the difference is they have a platform that has become mainstream that is using conditioning to become addictive.

We don’t do that. And honestly, I do not think that they had evil intentions when they built it. Excellent. No, no. The very people that built it are the ones in this documentary, some of them. Yeah. But I think the film through the business community, under the bus unfairly,

you do, and if you felt that way, I wanted to talk to you about it. Cause I don’t want you to feel that way. I’ll listen to you. You’re so caring again. I think that you know, this movie could come across as scary to business owners, or at least what it could mean to their audience could seem scary. To their business owner.

And that’s what I want to talk about because I don’t want you to feel that way. Okay. The business community at large did not build the platform. Now we use it because it’s good business. Okay. No, wait, let’s explain that. Why is it good for business? Well, advertising is not new. Firstly companies have been engaged in advertising for a really long time.

And advertising started to lose its shine in its effectiveness in the early years because it was generally strictly informative. And once you know, something, it becomes boring. Real fast. So then the larger companies, marketing agencies, and other professionals developed what’s called branding and branding fixed that problem by adding psychology into the mix.

Reformation productions. Our marketing agency is centered around brand marketing because it works and the principles are sound strategic thinking in brand marketing, we build out the persona of a company and determine what would make it attractive to its target audience. We’ll do another episode.

That’s focused on the details of branding, but that’s what we do. In a nutshell right now, after developing that company brand, we then target the audience of consumers that are most likely to be great customers. For that client, right? We don’t want to target the ones that aren’t going to be great customers.

We want the cream of the crop. So we take that brand and we target those customers based on their demographics, their lifestyle choices, their, uh, intellectual leanings, and all of that good psychological stuff. All of which we’ve studied to develop a targeted consumer. The profile then we seek to put our message customized specifically to be attractive to our target audience in the marketplace.

And for years we did that using advertising. Now there are several other methods as well, but for today, we’ll explore the advertising side, advertising. It is. So back in the day, who did we have to advertise with? Well, we had print, you know, newspapers directories, yellow pages, and we had magazines, right.

We also had broadcast that was radio and television, but there are tons of these types of media out there used to be less, but by the time I got into the industry, There were tons. So how did you decide which ones to advertise in? Yeah, we took that information from our targeted consumer profile in lined up that data with whatever the media could offer.

Okay. Data, that’s all sounding very familiar. Yes. But what the media could offer was very limited, but we used it to the best of our abilities, right. We use filled-in stream magazines to reach hunting and fishing advocates and all that. That means, you know, we use sports illustrated to reach sports enthusiasts or jocks.

Uh, and we use local media. Like radio stations, for example, to reach, say, fans of RNB music that worked from nine to five by advertising to them during drive time, when they would be in their cars, commuting to work. And we still make those same recommendations today when it’s appropriate.

But social media has completely changed the game. These traditional media that I just mentioned, were very limited in theirs. Readership viewership or listenership data that they could provide us. But social media is highly targetable. Very, very targetable. Did I mention it’s targetable, and that is great?

And it’s very efficient for business because social media is used daily. And on a computer and its very nature, captures more data so that the user’s experience is better. And then we can use that data to find the right people, the newspaper couldn’t do that radio. Can’t do that. They’re all subject to.

You know, we play R and B music. Well, what type of people listen to R and B music? You know, we have hunted. What types of people like hunting? It’s not as concrete targetable data as social media is. Okay. Well, I’m going to play devil’s advocate just myself here for a second. What if people don’t want you to use that data?

It comes with using the platform. That’s well, that’s how the platforms are monetized. Uh, they strive to get better data because it’s better for their advertisers and the business community, but it is a choice. You don’t have to use Facebook, but since it’s free, you have to allow them to make money.

Or else it’s going to go away. It’s going to go out of business. But honestly, I don’t think that is a concern or shouldn’t be, which was Mark Zuckerberg’s exact argument. When he stood before Congress, can you turn off your tracking? Yes, but it will make your advertising less attractive to you. And why would you want that?

Why wouldn’t you want to be served messages for things that you don’t actually care about? Anything about? Right. Targeted advertising is good for both business and the consumer you hear about things you might actually be interested in, and it’s much more efficient for the business because we are serving our message to people that might actually be interested in it.

It’s a much more efficient way of doing things. Yeah. I actually completely agree with you. I don’t want a bunch of junk clogging up my social media, you know, like with things that I don’t care about, why, why would you Zuckerberg makes a very solid point. Ah, but. That isn’t why he was in trouble. And it’s not the real concern in this film, but the good news here, this is this owner.

You aren’t the bad guys. So, uh, honestly the platforms really aren’t either. Well, at least not. Okay. You’re going to need to explain that to us. Okay. When they built it, it was simply smart business. You know, sympathize with me here, guys. I know Zuckerberg has a lot more money than most of the world trying to understand, right.

When they built it, it was simply because it was smart. It was smart business. Right. If we add the tag feature, it will cause people to view posts out of curiosity when they’re tagged in it. Right. If we add the light feature, it will help spread love and admiration for people, and it will increase.

Engagement on the platform. If we add notifications, it will help people stay in the know about what their friends are doing in increasing engagement on the platform. And it all works. People love it. Yes. They love it. The problem is that it became addictive. Now people started to crave the likes as if it was a drug or anything substantial, and they started to feel depressed if they didn’t get enough likes.

Now, notifications were great for staying in the know, but people became forever curious and nosy. About what was going on. These became negative side effects of a non-emotional platform. Human nature was the problem. Yeah. But you don’t, they have some sort of like responsibility to police that I don’t know.

Do you think that they do? I mean, I come from the mindset of don’t tell me what I can and can’t do. Right. I believe in less government, fewer rules, more self-governing as a life philosophy. So to me, no. Now, when it comes to children, that’s different, but children are the responsibility of their parents.

So I think enabling more parental controls so parents can make the decision and better police. Their kids make sense to me, but don’t you try to police me, Mr. Zuckerberg. I don’t. And I’m responsible for myself. Wow. Well, honestly, that question is hard for me to answer. So the best way for me to think about it would be, of course, to use an analogy.

Cause that’s how my brain works. So social media is a tool black and Decker also makes tools. I think they still do. They do they, do they make leaf blowers and then all kinds of stuff. Drills or belts. Okay. Now black and Decker sends safety guidelines with all of their products, right? So maybe the social media platforms could do something like that.

They could, but black and Decker really do that to decrease their liability in lawsuits. You know, most people take that piece of paper, Chuck is right. Trash. Yes. But it is the effort. I mean, the other thing that I think of with this analogy is that black and Decker. As a manufacturer, um, as a business has operation guidelines that they have to follow, you know, won’t give out their customers, uh, like credit card information and addresses and stuff like that.

Right. But maybe social media companies should have the same type of thing. You know, like saying that they won’t share the data that they collect for their operations and that they will, you know, keep it safe. Um, I think they likely have that internally. Um, as a matter of fact, I believe Zuckerberg probably talked about these policies when he was on trial.

With, uh, Congress saying that there was a mistake or a leak or something with a company, uh, taking data that they shouldn’t have because it was against this policy. I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know. I think that there should be some sort of. Controls on usage. I like you can’t post photos of under-aged minors in certain scenarios or, you know, battered women or something like that.

Well, most of them do have policies against porn and violence. I think Facebook puts up some sort of warning that you have to click to actually. Yeah, but I mean, that’s just, what does that do that just makes people want to click on it? The issue here really becomes the ability to police it. Yeah. If you can post photos and their AI doesn’t catch what the photo is of.

It’s kind of hard for them to enforce what you’re posting. Uh, and you can’t keep people from breaking the law. You just, you can’t, you could try to give them consequences for doing so. Um, we’ve all heard about Facebook jail, right? A lot of us have been there. I’m not pointing fingers at myself or anything, but that’s what our judicial system is based on.

Right. You do something wrong, you get consequences for it. The entire us court system is based on that whole, um, philosophy, but you can’t hold the manufacturer accountable for what others do. With their products. And I’ll give you an analogy. You like analogies, for example, gun control, you can’t or shouldn’t we haven’t so far outlaw the manufacturer and ownership of guns because someone might use it to commit a crime.

That’s like not selling someone a car because they might get a DUI or rote over someone’s dog or, you know, plow through someone’s storefront. Now, I know I sound very pro-social media companies right now, but I don’t think we’ve touched upon the actual issue yet. And certainly what’s in the film is more precise than that.

Well, yes, we go on rabbit trails at times in our conversations, but that’s what humans do in the film. They brought up the fact that it was. Addictive. So to me that puts this in more of a category of alcohol, tobacco, drugs, gambling. The issue here is that in and of itself, it’s harmless even positive in several ways.

Yeah. They talked about how it’s been used to, you know, unite family members and old friends, and even like find donors for hearts and kidneys and stuff. And that’s all good stuff. So. Here lies the dilemma, the social dilemma, right? Um, there isn’t anything actually dangerous about social media. It’s what humans are doing with it.

And because of it, just a tool, everyone we’ve gotten way off the path with talking about business topics now, but, well, I guess it’s related since it’s a platform frequently used for business, but the issue that I see comes from the idea that well, and the idea that was promoted in the movie, true or not. Um, that tobacco companies are putting extra nicotine in the cigarettes to make them more addictive.

That’s kind of the kinship that I kind of see to this. Okay. So that’s like lacing marijuana so that you become addicted to drugs in general since technically marijuana has no addictive properties and it’s in and of itself. Well, if they are indeed weaponizing their platforms for addiction, I would say that’s wrong.

So would I, but where is the line between personal responsibility and addiction or promoting engagement or exploiting addiction? It’s the dilemma we named film? I’d say, well, let’s take a break to hear from our sponsor, but when we get back more discussion on the Netflix documentary, the social dilemma.

. We are discussing Jeff Orlowski his new film written by him with Davis QUM and Vicki Curtis. We wanted to give, you know, proper credit. Netflix only bought it for distribution. So where are we? Where are we? Well, we discussed the dilemma, right, but there is one other area of operations that I do think should be monitored.

And controlled regulated to protect the users and that’s going to be how the platforms use their data. Okay. I don’t mind them using anything I’ve provided them. Right. My issue comes when they use things that I. Provide them some video that she says, somebody knows she’s alive, but what do you mean life optic nerves, this camera, mic activation, activation laptops off, or what?

She just forgot to close it. And this has been a topic of many discussions before, but I have seen it in action. Your devices have a camera. And the microphone on them and companies with big money like social media giants and electronics manufacturers, or a partnership between them can turn them on to collect data, without your knowledge in that is not okay with me.

That is just. Okay. I have a story. I always want to do that. Anyway. I have a story. Oh, one time I’m sitting in my cubicle at the office here, and, um, there are a couple of people in a couple of offices next to me. We’re talking. And they happened to be talking about, uh, Dave Chappelle, you know, funny guy, I guess Dave Chappelle, this was a couple of years ago, Dave Chappelle was in town and one of the girls wanted to go see him in concert.

This was when he came back from his long hiatus, I believe. Yeah. Yeah. It was about a couple of years ago. And uh, the one woman really wanted to go see him in concert talking about how expensive tickets are and everything. And. It’s just women chatting in the office. Well, I wasn’t, I wasn’t talking, I was just a little overhearing what they were talking about with Dave Chappelle.

Yeah. And then I guess they wanted to involve me at some point because one of the girls said asked me, do you, do you like Dave bell? And I was like, I love Dave Chappelle. And I said, I, you know, I, I don’t know what it would be like to go to a concert of his and, but yeah, I mean, Dave Chappelle sounds like he’d be pretty cool to go to or whatever.

I said, like three sentences, maybe total about Dave Chappelle. Um, the truth is, is I’m not spending money to go see Dave Chappelle. He’s great. I don’t have that kind of money. Cause it was like $5,000 a ticket regardless. So have things said that, so then the girls proceeded to go talk amongst themselves.

I open YouTube, um, went back to work, right? Well, yes. I opened YouTube for some possible client work I’m sure. But on the homepage of YouTube, you know how YouTube will have recommended videos or things that they want me to see? Sure. All Dave Chappelle standup. Yep. Now as much as I do like Dave Chappelle, I have never proactively, uh, YouTube searched, Dave Chappelle standup clips.

So it’s not like something that was in my history. It was literally just magically there. I mean, within minutes after having a pseudo conversation, well, there was a whistleblower case with. Uh, Edward Snowden, where the NSA was doing it and it was not okay. And it’s not okay for social media, either 15-year-old daughter at the international school.

Uh, Facebook, is that possible? Facebook’s my bitch. Yeah. And with the popularity of even more devices, you know, like echo and Alexa coming online, I mean, there’s more than just, you know, Hey, Siri. I got to say it quietly. Cause she’ll start talking back to me now so far, they haven’t admitted that they’re doing it, but I’m pretty sure there were directions at one point where you could find the recordings that Google had gathered on you and delete them.

I haven’t seen that in a few years. No, I think the biggest issue is that people don’t really care. I mean, that’s a lot of effort. It’s not, at least they don’t care enough to change their behaviors. I mean, just look at the track record. This is not new news either. You’re right. You’re right. But if we’re going to talk about it, Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. But what about the fact that Facebook has been used politically to start War riots and other acts of insurgence? Again, I’m going to pull the not business community-related card here. Yes. Politicians have used advertising and marketing methods, uh, as a way to promote their propaganda for quite some time.

The Nazis did it, the truth campaign, did it black lives matter? Did it, Trump did it. Biden is doing it. Ah, we talked about it in our immersive experience episode with Fortnite billboards. Yeah, it’s an issue, but I am not responsible for that. I advise and help the business community in ways to reach success for their companies.

Not. Politicians in Lord knows, you know, the election is days away. I am. If I see another job outs off ad office is stocking you. So with that, the good news for our audience is number one. You are not the bad guy. Okay. Number two, people will not stop using social media. Number three, you should not stop using social media for social media itself.

That isn’t the issue either. And then five human nature, human weakness. And politicians are at fault. I think we need to file this under people. Suck. If you give us an inch, we take a mile. We’re just regrown sometimes. Anyway, I hear a straight shot coming on. As a business use social media because it works.

It’s where people’s attention is. And because it is the most efficient advertising that we have ever had. If someone blames you for supporting social media. Tell them what we’ve discussed here. This documentary will die down as quickly as cuties or tiger King controversies. All of that. Um, she killed her husband, Carol Baskin, Carol basket killed her husband, but still, these platforms should do something to address.

The dilemma, but keep the business community, you’re being a little protective there, aren’t you? Yes. Responsibility to our audience and the business community at large, you know, I live by serving them kind of a big deal to me here. Right? Wow. That was a short show today, too much to expand upon, but I wanted to address any concerns that might be coming out of this documentary.

Well, and we thank you for that. And as always guys, please like, and subscribe to us, it helps us out with all those algorithms we keep talking about, let us know if you have a question or a topic you’d like us to look into for you, and maybe make a show about it. You can email us@infoatstraightshot.net.

Call us on the phone at (678) 825–8086. Extension 300 or message us on our social media channels. Just search for a straight shot marketing podcast, follow and like us while you’re there. Please. We want to hear from you now. This was our first episode in our new social media series, but they won’t be numbered like the previous series that we’ve done.

So they’re not going to necessarily be chronological. No in this series, because several episodes are going to be in it. It Will not be released or written chronologically, because if you already know all that, there is to know about social media. I wouldn’t want you checking out until the series is over, but I think it’s a very important topic for businesses today.

I’ll tell you what I’ll do for those of you that have made it to the end of the episode here without turning it off. How to give you the layout of what I’m planning to do in this series. Here are the episodes that I have planned, but again, they won’t be an order, but I’m going to start with a general understanding of this necessary, and then I’m going to move into.

Specifics today was a reaction to the social dilemma. All right, then we’re going to do why social media matters followed by influencers. I’m excited about that one. Foundational participation, strategic engagement. Advertising. These are all high-level general things that you should be aware of in general stuff.

Right? And then we’re going to go into the individual platforms of the day. So Tik TOK will have an episode. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, anybody remembers Pinterest and Snapchat. So there are the plan folks. Well, We hope you found value in today’s show as well as these future episodes. But until we meet again, folks,