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< | Spies and Spooks have a new lethal weapon: Short Video Platforms | >
> | The Rise of Short Video Platforms & How Consumers Can Push Back | | | -- By PushkarChaubal - 23 Feb 2024
How incensed would we be if our parents, friends, or lovers divulged our deepest and most intimate secrets? | |
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< | Millions of Americans voluntarily use platforms from Bytedance, Meta, and Alphabet. According to Meta, it's raison d'etre is to help people connect, find communities, and grow businesses. In doing so, these companies harvest our preferences and emotions, the very essence of our unique beings, and sells them to the highest-paying bidder. | | | It is no secret that tech companies have been abusing our data and rendering 4th Amendment protections virtually useless. However, motivated parties, such as marketers and governments, have even more reason to rejoice. The advent of short-form video platforms have made consumers even more attached to their mobile devices. While 50-second dances seem cute and unassuming, they are Bigtech's newest, and most insidious, tool to learn our inner preferences more deeply and keep consumers glued to their platforms. | |
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> | However, we do not need to fall prey to BigTech? and its parasitic tentacles. With a little foresight, we have the agency to make full use of the net on our own terms. | | | | |
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< | Short Video Platforms are the Insidious New Offspring Birthed by the Attention Economy
The Attention Economy Gives Rise to Perverse Incentives
Gone are oil and gold as the most sought-after commodity in the world.With endless amounts of content available, technology and media companies are competing to grab our attention. The more viewers a platform can collect, the more attention is sold. This translates into substantial revenue from advertisers and data brokers.Tech platforms like Instagram and Tiktok can sell data elements such as which photos we like, how much time we spend on a website, what we search, and what files we download. 89% of marketers say that Instagram is strategically important to their influencer marketing strategy.
With so much money to be made and to meet Wall Street’s insatiable demand for higher returns, tech companies are pushed to make their cocaine-like digital drugs even more addictive. Just as PepsiCo spends $700 million annually on R&D to make Cheetos more enticing, Bigtech companies aggressively update their platforms with features that increase the amount of time users spend on their app. To increase revenue, it would seem that the perfect elixir for tech companies would be a product that maximizes the amount of time its users’ eyeballs are stuck to the screen, combined with a mechanism that scrapes their deepest consumer preferences, political ideologies, and fundamental desires. That perfect elixir is short-form video platforms such as Bytedance’s Tiktok, Meta’s “Instagram Reels,” and Alphabet’s “YouTube Shorts.” | | | | |
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> | Short Video Platforms are the Insidious New Offspring Birthed by the Attention Economy | | | Increased Time Spent on the App
Short video platforms feed on our inherent urge for newness. The platforms target our reward systems by featuring 15-60 second snippets of content with bright colors, catchy music, and other eye candy. The constant flow of content creates a dopamine-driven feedback loop, making it hard to stop. The platforms are designed to be endlessly scrollable, with no “tracker” or “progress bar” to tell you how many videos the user has viewed, not unlike casinos lacking windows and clocks. The app “trains users to constantly look for new stimulation.”
Learning Intimate Details about Users | |
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< | The secret sauce, however, are the platforms’ dynamic algorithms that quickly understand which content that users are most likely to engage with. In a WSJ investigation, over 100 bot accounts watched 100,000 videos on Tiktok. Within just 2 hours of “normal” use, the app had accurately learned the “personality traits” the investigators secretly assigned the bots. The study demonstrated how Tiktok learns our most hidden interests and emotions and drives users into the radicals of content making it hard to escape. The algorithm learned the bots’ vulnerabilities much faster than other platforms. By gaining a deep understanding of their users, the app pushes people to more extreme content that reinforces their worldview, thus keeping viewers engaged for longer amounts of time than other types of social media. One can only imagine how valuable this deep understanding of users could be to advertisers and foreign governments. | >
> | The secret sauce, however, are the platforms’ dynamic algorithms that quickly understand which content that users are most likely to engage with. In a WSJ investigation, over 100 bot accounts watched 100,000 videos on Tiktok. Within just 2 hours of “normal” use, the app had accurately learned the “personality traits” the investigators secretly assigned the bots. The study demonstrated how Tiktok learns our most hidden interests and emotions and drives users into the radicals of content making it hard to escape. The algorithm learned the bots’ vulnerabilities much faster than other platforms. One can only imagine how valuable this deep understanding of users could be to advertisers and foreign governments.
Consumers Can Take Back Control
With tech platforms harvesting vast amounts of deeply accurate personal data derived through short-form video platforms, it is natural to wonder how our data is processed. Data elements “traditionally” collected include contact information, call logs, photos, videos, and documents. However, the stakes are even higher now with Tiktok and Meta harvesting deeply intimate psychographic data. This data can be shared with commercial 3rd parties and even foreign governments. | | | | |
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< | Even before short-form video platforms, a 2015 study revealed how algorithms can predict more about a person's personality than their loved ones can. It only takes data on 70 “likes”, 150 “likes”, and 300 “likes” for an algorithm to out-predict a user’s friends, family, and spouse, respectively. With exponential advances in machine learning since then, it follows that algorithms can likely predict human personality with far fewer data inputs. | >
> | Short video platforms that take advantage of sophisticated machine learning should be the straw the breaks the camel’s back for us all. It should be our wake-up call that we have allowed our conception of the Net to be dictated by Silicon Valley’s “best and brightest.” | | | | |
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< | Compounding the issue, Meta’s “Ads on Reels” program encourages content creators to make videos as eye-catching as possible, with creator revenue directly tied to user engagement with content – as measured by likes, comments, and views. | | | | |
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> | Starting Simple: Web Browsing and Email | | | | |
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< | Our Intimate Details are Sold, Stolen, and Seized Like Commodities | >
> | The vast majority of desktop users access the Net through a browser created by Apple or Google. Unsurprisingly, Google Chrome was built to be as advertiser-friendly in mind, allowing tracking software to follow users to the far ends of online activity. For consumers looking to dip their toes into online freedom from spies, a simple alternative is to utilize a web browser that is unfriendly to malicious governmental or commercial tracking mechanisms.A powerful way to do this is using a strong browser with AdBlock protection. I personally have been using the Brave browser on my desktop, tablet, and phone for the last 4 months, and I have been impressed with the performance and security that the browser enables. Brave, supplemented with AdBlock? , ensures that ads and trackers are kept at bay. | | | | |
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> | Email solutions include installing a GPG plugin to your current email client, or else using an email service that supports end-to-end encryption. Installing the plugin is as easy as first downloading the GPG Suite and installing a GPG plugin to your current email client using the GPG Keychain to create a new key. Once the public key is uploaded to the key server, the user is empowered to send end-to-end encrypted emails to other users with a public key. Sending encrypted messages will prevent unwanted parties, like spy agencies, from being able to access the emails. | | | | |
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< | Data Elements are Collected and Shared | >
> | An alternative to the GPG plugin is to use an email service provider that supports end-to-end encryption as its default. Proton Mail is one such provider. It enables end-to-end encryption between Proton Mail users. It also has built-in standard PGP encryption to send encrypted messages to people on other email providers, as long as you have their public key. | | | | |
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< | With tech platforms harvesting vast amounts of deeply accurate personal data derived through short-form video platforms, it is natural to wonder how our data is processed. Data elements “traditionally” collected include contact information, call logs, photos, videos, and documents. However, the stakes are even higher now with Tiktok and Meta harvesting deeply intimate psychographic data. | | | | |
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< | A study in 2018 found Facebook gave 61 3rd party companies the ability to access wide-ranging details about users' friends. A close look at the platforms' terms reveals that these platforms can track location through IP address even when users specifically restrict access to GPS. App data is also shared between affiliates which can include other apps the platform is associated with. Additionally, when firms like Amazon and Apple share user data with third parties, users are bound by the terms of those third parties. When such detailed information is collected from the likes of Tiktok and Instagram Reels, these lax data sharing policies need to be all the more scrutinized. | >
> | Employing the Use of a FreedomBox? | | | | |
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> | A FreedomBox is essentially a private server system that plugs into one’s internet router. This allows individuals to host their own internet services like file sharing, messengers, and micro-blogs without relying on BigTech? providers. This enables us to make use of the Net without having to worry about our data being bought and sold to marketers or governmental actors. The FreedomBox? is easy to set up and quite affordable at $60 for the hardware. Once the FreedomBox? is installed, users will have replacements for the services that BigTech had until this point made us dependent upon. Examples of services include Dropbox-like file sharing, Whatsapp-like messaging, and Twitter-like micro-blogging. The FreedomBox? is easy to set up and cleanses the users endpoint, ensuring privacy. | | | | |
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< | Tech Companies Routinely Comply with Subpoena Requests | | | | |
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< | Most of the data collected by Bigtech companies are available for use by law enforcement. The most common and basic request is a subpoena, which can grant the government access to meta data, email addresses, billing location and IP address. Apple and Microsoft routinely comply with subpoenas – in the first half of 2020, Apple complied with 44% of ~6,000 government requests by turning over actual content data. | >
> | Conclusion | | | | |
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< | With Bigtech's storied history of sharing data to both commercial third parties and the US government, it begs the question of the extent to which our psychographic data, harvested from the learnings of short-video platforms, is being reviewed by unfriendly actors. The future looks dire. | >
> | The insidious and pervasive gathering of our psychographic data by the likes of Alphabet, Bytedance, and Meta through short-video platforms should serve as a stark wake-up call to all of us. The call really is coming from inside the house. | | | | |
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> | Hope is not lost, however. Fortunately, for an immaterial expense, there are alternatives that will allow us to reap the benefits of being in the digital information age, without compromising our data. It does take intentionality to withdraw from the Parasite’s grasp, but minor changes like the use of a secure browser with Adblock, email encryption, and private server management, can pay dividends when it comes to securing our online life. | | | | |
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It wouldn't be so dire if the draft didn't pretty much ignore the fact that platforms provide services to which there are alternatives, so if we want not individually to inhabit the Parasite's form of the future, we can substantially avoid it. Services that are easily federated (email, video-conferencing, messaging, micro-blogging, web hosting, shared document editing, pickup/dropoff through browsers, etc.) can all be offered by us to one another, using hardware so cheap and software so free that 8th graders can learn how to set up families/small businesses, and they can make real money in high school helping people to live very much on the net and absolutely not at all in the Parasite-infected paltforms. With a little browser security, removing ads on the way in and trackers on the way out, such as could be provided by switching to Brave plus AdBlockPlus and NoScript or by using a FreedomBox as a wifi or plugin router at home or work, the human being's endpoint is pretty clean. (It can be made more clean by rebooting into Tails, if the hardware isn't pre-corrupted by the King of the Undead, Now Dead). The services the human being needs are being provided by non-platform non-invasive servers, either her own or operated by people she actually knows and can trust. Some bright young person is able to look after the technical support, and grownups can learn how if they want to. It's all so cheap that anyone can afford it. | | | | |
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< | So maybe the next draft should leave behind many words we both don't need repeated about the nature of the problem, and a little more analysis of the points at which the technical and social control system of the Parasite could be interfered with and (how surprisingly!) there appears to exist lots of software that can do everything we need in use all over the Net by people who know how and distributions like FreedomBox that make it actually useable by those who don't.
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