Simon Wozniak

5/5 (2)

While the connected world has shifted towards an attention-based economy, where every additional second spent staring at your phone on a social network makes big tech companies earn more bucks, little consideration is given to the ethics behind this mechanism. A very efficient tool that makes masses tied up to their screen is recommendation-based content. YouTube for instance (owned by Google) has mastered the art of recommendation through very sophisticated algorithms. To ensure that consumers are staying on the website, YouTube recommends video based not only on your interests but also on similar behaviors from other users. This results in an escalation of extreme videos for every new recommendation to keep you staring at your screen.

The straw that broke the camel’s back
Numerous examples illustrate the way algorithm locks users into an infinite loop. It is not a surprise that the suicide rate skyrocketed since 2012, with a 98.5% increase in the UK when users are shown more and more extreme videos online with biased algorithms and little to no ethical consideration. Molly Russell, a British teenager, took her life after searching for suicide and self-harm images online. Attention-based algorithms kept on showing her content related to these images in order to keep her online. But what would have happened if in between such horrible content she saw inspiring posts, smiling people or suicide prevention ads? Ironically, algorithms intended to capture her attention, instead it led to no attention at all anymore.

It just needs a little push
In his book “Civilisation du Poisson Rouge”, Bruno Patino wonders what steps could be taken to prevent such catastrophe from happening. Re-writing algorithms to ensure bias-free AI might be an option. Providing a switch off button of notification from all social media might be another too. Setting a reminder from Facebook and other apps that you spent too much time on the screen, and it might be good to take a break from it is also another solution. In fact, plenty of solutions exist. But none of the big tech companies would shift towards a human technology and reinvent itself from a necessity to a simple tool.

Reference:

Walsh, M., 2019. When Algorithms Make Managers Worse. [online] Harvard Business Review. Available at: <https://hbr.org/2019/05/when-algorithms-make-managers-worse>

Gerrard, Y. and Gillespie, T., 2019. When Algorithms Think You Want To Die. [online] Wired. Available at: <https://www.wired.com/story/when-algorithms-think-you-want-to-die/>

Samaritans. 2020. Suicide Facts And Figures. [online] Available at: <https://www.samaritans.org/about-samaritans/research-policy/suicide-facts-and-figures/>

Patino, B., 2019. La Civilisation Du Poisson Rouge. 1st ed. Grasset.

5/5 (1)

In the wake of data processing by multinational social media companies, more and more users are concerned by the way data is collected, gathered and processed. Many scandals regarding user data have emerged in the past years. Cambridge Analytica involvement in the US elections (The Guardian, 2018) and later in the Brexit campaign (Liberation, 2018) allowed for an awakening of the majority of users. There, data was collected to profile users in terms of their political engagement, and target those who were still indecisive regarding their voting decision (Isaak & Hanna, 2018). It has then launched marketing campaign against Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, labeled “Crooked Hillary” to those indecisive profiles. As our data is being turned against us, the need to take ownership over our own data is urgent. The European Union has already established rules and policies on organizations about data usage from those big tech companies through the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Council of European Union, 2015) which was later reinforced in 2018.
Why Helios?
Helios is an EU-backed social network that aims at keeping the privacy of users, data protection while offering the same features as current social media do. Through Blockchain technology, Helios decentralizes its data storage points across multiple blocks and Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) (Redrup, 2016). This allows for a reduction of the need of intermediaries and therefore more control over your own data. The platform will also integrate its own development hub which allows you to create your own app, connect with users, institutions or even sensors. App developers can therefore enjoy the plug-in and open sources provided by this platform to create their own app (Helios, 2020).
Whether this social media will take-off and manage to compete with those giant tech companies is still a mystery that time will only tell us. Nonetheless, regardless of future potential success, Helios already brought the question of humanity in technology back to the center.

References:
Hern, A., 2018. Cambridge Analytica: How Did It Turn Clicks Into Votes?. the Guardian.

Delesalle-Stolper, S., 2018. «Sans Cambridge Analytica, Il N’y Aurait Pas Eu De Brexit». Libération.

European Commission – European Commission. 2020. Data Protection

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