Behind The Timeline

Social media, nearly 4 billion people on this earth use it, you will too, even if it’s only to send text messages. The internet was invented in the 60’s and the term social media was coined in the 90’s. That means over 50 years of growing one of the most influential and lucrative businesses, platforms and technology.

When you think of social media what do you think of? Is it sharing meme after meme? Is it following your favourite celebrities for the latest gossip? Is it posting pictures of your cute baby or pet? Or even for catching up on politics and news? But do you ever think about what you are seeing, reading, spending hours on and contributing to? I wanted to delve behind the scenes of what the social media companies are doing to make our timelines the way they are and why what we are seeing is all being controlled for us, like our own little Truman show. After the release of ‘The Social Dilemma’, a 2020 Netflix docudrama/documentary, a small part of the world has started realising more goes on than meets the eye and they didn’t realise its effect until put into perspective.

“Never before in history have 50 designers, 20- to 35-year-old white guys in California made decisions that would have impact on two billion people. Two billion people will have at tyhought that they didn’t intend to have” – Tristan Harris.

Let’s look at some of the positives and negatives of social media:

Positives:

« Connect friends, family and even strangers all around the world.

« Having a mass wealth of education at your fingertips mostly for free.

« Great for starting your own business or promoting your business/ work.

« Great for spreading awareness and raising money for charities.

« Has helped find missing people and animals etc.

« Massive contributor to social movements and petitions.

« Now the biggest circulator of news and journalism meaning a whole new wave of fresh and creative journalism.

Negatives:

« Breeding ground for hate, cyberbullying, stalkers and catfishes.

« Spreads fake news and disinformation like wildfire.

« Causes addiction and people lose half their life to living on their phones.

« Promotes unrealistic social, societal and beauty standards causing both mental health and physical issues.

« Is littered with hackers, scams and fraud.

« Easier to ruin relationships, easier to get upset over silly things and cheat.

Let’s start by looking as if we were looking down one of your timelines such as Instagram.

When you are scrolling down your timeline you the reader are probably thinking, naturally, that this is what my friends, family and other platform users are seeing the same things you are seeing daily, if not very similar things. Even if you don't most people do think this, which is not the case, in fact this is something called Timeline Uniqueness. Timeline uniqueness basically means your timeline is unique and made for you. Yes, you might see similar things to your friends because you follow the same people and like the same pages and live-in similar geo locations. But they don’t look at, click on and search for everything you do. The most obvious reasons you have your timeline tailored for you is because of ‘cookies’. Cookies are a very small file created by a website that stores your computer info to make you recognisable to keep track of your preferences. For example, do you ever notice that you are looking at dresses on a clothing website then you go onto your timelines and find ads pop up for that clothing website, or similar ones, recommending things you have previously looked at? This is because they want to entice you into going back to that website, to buy something which means the clothing brand paid for that ad to work and the brand get a sale from it. A win win for both the clothing brand and social media company.

Another thing that is used to customize your timeline is ‘Timed Viewing’. Timed Viewing is what social media companies do to users whilst they are on their platforms. They monitor not only your screen time, but more specifically how long you spend looking at every single post you see, down to the microsecond. The more time you spend on something, the more they will pump out that kind of content or from that user you watch/ look at the most. Why? Because they can get you to spend more time on the platform, which also means you will come across more advertising and sponsored content. For example, I found on my Facebook timeline that once when I spent time watching one or two American tattoo competition shows I started getting more of those videos pop up onto my timeline and on my ‘Watch’ section on Facebook was littered with tattoo show clips and episodes. This is because they know I would stop to watch those clips and stay on their platform longer.

Another way companies attract you to spend more time on their apps and platforms is by using ‘Push Notifications’. Push Notifications are pop up alerts on your phone or tablet that is meant to attract the user to click onto the notification to go onto the app. Examples of this could be message notifications, live stream notifications, shopping deals, someone has posted to their story for the first time in a while etc.

When I scrolled through my Instagram timeline, I noticed that I got an advert every 4-5 posts. Which if you think about it, it is surprisingly often bearing in mind you don’t pay attention to every post. So, when I scroll down my timeline, I will probably pay attention to adverts more than most posts. If you see that Advert, decide to click onto it to go to the site, that then also tracks that click using cookies and you will then get those timeline adverts more from that website and similar.

Adverts on timelines rely heavily on AI aka Artificial intelligence. This is because AI tries to predict and show you content and advertising it has observed and calculated you will interact with more. Meaning better content and adverts tailored to you, and also the companies make more money.

The adverts are in advertising slots, which are paid slots. These paid slots are like a massive market behind the scenes. The best paying companies usually get the most slots because they can provide more money per slot, per audience.

“A marketplace that has never existed before”- Shoshana Zuboff, Professor and Author.

A new problem in today’s world is an addiction to social media, phones, computers and so on.

“The average person spends nearly 2 hours a day using social media, which amounts to 5 years and 4 months of his/her lifetime. In that time a person could run more than 10,000 marathons or travel to the moon and back on 32 separate occasions. For teens, social media time spent could be up to 9 hours every day.”- Media Kix

It is estimated that approximately 210 million people suffer from social media and internet addiction, as they grow dependent on technology social media could be seen as a digital pacifier for many.

Overuse of social media and the internet often leads to depressive symptoms especially in teens. In a 2018 study it was found that teens who spent 5 hours on their phones per day were twice as likely to have depressive symptoms and that young females are more addicted compared to other groups.

Now when looking down your timeline, especially in 2020, have you noticed how many times you’ve come across conspiracy theories. This could be news/ journalism about them, memes about them, genuine posts and shares believing it and so on. 2020 has had its share of new conspiracy’s, for example theories about; 5G, Covid-19, Lockdown, US elections, Global warming, BLM, Wayfair Human trafficking and so on.

Similar to conspiracy theories is often fake news, because not everything said is factually true or one solid theory, even if the theory was true all versions shared aren’t.

The problems with conspiracy theories and fake news are that they spread like wildfire and 6 times faster on twitter compared to true news and journalism. Because they spread faster this makes the system bias towards the false content, meaning it will naturally get spread to more people.

“It is not just fake news, its fake news with consequences”- Unknown, Source The social dilemma.

There is such a thing called the Disinformation-for-profit business model. Disinformation for profit means that there are companies that purposely used fake news to make money. One way of the companies doing that is by using advertising for profit. For example, a fake news website will get many clicks from people searching up on the fake news or conspiracy and then the website will use google ads and get money from the online traffic to the website.

A problem with all of this is how it will affect journalism and the future of journalism. It has already become an issue of having journalists and content creators start to produce click bait, fake news and mock content just because they want the reaction, the clicks and shares to gain momentum, notoriety and more importantly money. How far will this go and how many news articles will end up being fake? How do readers know who to trust, or which sources are reliable? Will dirty money out way ethics, truth and good journalism?

An observation from my own Facebook timeline is similar to my Instagram observation. I found that I was getting an advertisement exactly every 4 posts. Most of the adverts were scrolling thumbnails for products, so one advert scrolled horizontally to accommodate for more space for products and a shop now link. Again every 4 posts are way too frequent to be healthy. The social media companies such as Facebook are constantly bombarding you with advertising and trying to get you to spend your money so that they in turn can make money.

Another behind the scenes trick is ‘Growth Hacking’. Growth hacking is one of the experiments tried on customers aka you and I, to see how they can creatively help their business grow, obtain and retain customers. They will analyse and test their strategies to see what would work and is all aimed towards growing their business. They try to hack the psychology of the user and the user experience to gain user sign ups and engagements. The other goal would be to find a low cost way for them to accomplish it.

The 3 main growth hacking strategies include Advertising, content marketing and product marketing.

“There are only 2 industries that call their customers ‘users’, illegal drugs and software” – Edward Tufte

On google when you search, your results are bias. This is because your results are based on your geo location. Geo location means the location of the user using the device. Using the GPS and IP addresses they can track and identify the locations of the user.

For example, when you type in “climate change”, I get results such as this:

Now these are quite middle ground. These sound educational and wanting facts and information. Whereas others would get such results as:

Credit-http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com 1

Credit-http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com 1

As you can see the latter results are much more cynical and are leaning towards the hard end of the scale. These show that the searcher wants to know more about their point of view and not an oposite set of questions such as my google search auto recommendations results.

Have you ever heard or said, ‘and before I knew it, I found myself down a big rabbit hole’? Rabbit holes usually signify that you’ve found yourself lost and you don’t realise until you're too far in. Have you ever started watching a video on Facebook or YouTube then 2 hours later you realise that they’ve been sat in the same spot and you have been oblivious to the whole world around you when you didn’t intend to?

On Facebook I observed that this links to a previous section in which I talked about Facebook Watch. To keep me spending as much time on the app as possible they will provide me with content that I want and have been consuming. For me currently, it’s an American hospital drama and random Asian drama clips. Strange combination, I am aware. Facebook Watch and the videos on the platforms all have a new feature where they have now added 'no skip' advertisements either before, during, or at the end of the video, or a mixture of the above. This means Facebook can now use this as a marketplace for companies’ advertisers and make even more money from your views and subliminally show you even more adverts, as it is now normal for all online videos to have adverts just like on television.

In fact, in 2018 the 1^st popular advertising network out there was Google Ads, and the 2^nd was Facebook Ads. But since 2018 both Google and Facebook have continued to skyrocket so Google ads alone are now worth nearly 40 billion in the U.S. alone. “eMarketer estimates that Google’s net U.S. digital ad revenue to be $39.58 billion in 2020”- Forbes.

Now a big issue I wanted to share with you is weaponizing social media and how journalism can use social media as a tool to push these narratives.

The internet is a catalyst for pushing narratives and political agender.

“It’s like remote control warfare, one country can manipulate another one without actually invading its physical borders.” – Tristan Harris.

One of the biggest tools of the century is the internet and more specifically Social media. It is used by elections, government, politicians, society and the military as platforms to spread propaganda, opinions, news both true and largely fake, conspiracies, beliefs and values. Now when I talk about weaponizing social media for war, I don’t mean just country against country. I also mean civil war and civil unrest. Culture against culture, Left wing against right wing, Pro against Pro and so on.

“If you want to control the populations of your country, there has never been a tool as effective as Facebook” – Roger McNamee

Elections, if you think about the latest ones from 2019-2020, we had the one in the USA to Elect Joe Biden for the Democratic party. The UK general election to elect Boris Johnson for the Conservative Party and the UK had the Brexit Vote and how those two elections were heavily persuaded by social media. Everyone has timelines covered with anything to do with the elections. A positive for social media being a big part of politics in today’s society is that it has brought it to the younger generations.

Even those who couldn’t vote still were aware of what is happening around them and even shared content.

A big issue about the internet being a big persuader, point of communication and source of information for most is having fake news circulated purposely to cause an argument and a split between society. It is known the journalists, the general public, politicians, big companies and the powerful are involved in creating and spreading fake news articles to damage the reputation and the publics' outlook on a certain political party or person. Think of it as the worse the opposition look, the better it looks for your side. Why would you want your oppostion to look or be the better option for the voters and society? On top of this is the money is where the power is kept. But with so many false news articles being shared, many people don’t realise this, but once people do they then don’t know who to trust or which source is reliable or what is true and what is fake. Why should they, it is totally understandable. Since fake news spreads considerably faster than truthful news A.I. will pick up on this and this means it would be recommended to more and more people. But A.I. cant solve our fake news problems as it isn’t that advanced yet, also if humans don’t know what is true then how can the machines we program? As Tristan Harris once said 'how are going to wake up from the matrix if you didn’t know you were in the matrix? It often seems like everything a big illusion and we are waiting for the grand reveal.'

This can also be argued to include tv as tv and social media are the main and sometimes only access to information for millions of people, and tv can also be a source of fake and set up information.

Most countries that are affected are ones that have democratic elections. This could affect journalism as journalists will have a hard time being believed and if they stick to the journalist code and morals then they are surrounded by an industry where lies get more reaction than truth most of the time.

“Algorithms and manipulative Politicians are becoming so expert at learning how to trigger us, getting so good at creating fake news that we absorb it as if it were reality and confusing us into believing those lies, it's as if we have less and less control over who we are and what we really believe” – Justin Rosentien

When it comes to politics, just like in the UK, there are usually two opposite ends of the political spectrum known as Left wing and Right wing. Obviously, anyone can sit anywhere on the political spectrum however usually once someone has their political stance they stick to it like tribalism. Our problem as a society and even globally and the human race is we no longer want to listen to each other, we only want to watch and listen to things that tell us we are right and confirm our beliefs.

This could affect journalism as journalists might start to have no option but to write for a bias audience to reach and get more interactions from audiences with those views.

Have you ever found yourself not liking another person or immediately judge another person based on their political standpoint even before you get to know them or have a chance to say why?

The platforms know this so this is why you often find that your timeline is nearly all articles you agree with or it is your friends sharing that kind of content. This is because the platforms know you only want to see what you are interested in and agree with to then read, react, click and share that content and ultimately spend longer on the site.

Figure 1https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/17/how-britain-voted-2019-general-election

Figure 1https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/17/how-britain-voted-2019-general-election

To round this up, look into timelines and behind the scenes of social media and journalism. If you want to learn some more about these topics check out ‘The Social Dilemma’ on Netflix and if you now feel that you want to control your timelines and phone time more, here are a few things you could try do:

« Check your screen time and even set time limits for yourself. Check here for a guide on how to check on a variety of devices: https://www.guidingtech.com/check-screen-time-different-devices/#:~:text=Check%20Screen%20Time%20on%20Mac&text=Step%201%3A%20Click%20Apple%20Menu,to%20Turn%20On%20screen%20time.

« Stop accepting so many cookies. You can also do this by going onto manage preferences on the cookie pop up and reject all options to use the websites but still be able to use everything like normal.

« Follow a variety of news outlets and sources to get a view from many sides.

« Read content properly before pressing send or share, and fact check if you want to see if something is true and check the source of the information and try to weight up in your head if you think the site is trust worthing and reliable.