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Are we becoming like the rats pulling levers?


Remember Skinner’s experiments with rats?


That’s what came to mind when I read How Facebook Programmed Our Relatives by Brett Frischmann & Katherine Haenschen on the Scientific American website.

Social media platforms encode a range of social behaviors: Facebook notifies us when it is time to wish our friends a happy birthday; LinkedIn prompts us to congratulate contacts on their work anniversaries; Twitter breaks its own chronology to show us tweets that many of our friends have liked. As a result, social interactions are often reduced to the click of a button.

Now more than ever, society needs ethical social science at the intersection of technology and humanity. Digital platforms are shaping what it means to be human, and we can't rely on the platforms to police or research themselves. In the meantime, when your birthday rolls around, enjoy the warm feelings from friends sending their regards— but remember that they don't know when your birthday really is any more than you do theirs.

Don't forget we -- the users -- are the products social media corporations are selling, not serving. Think of those “prompts” that keep popping up on your screen as “levers” that are being used to encode a range of social behaviors in your brain -- and the brains of your children. The more often you pull do what they are prompting you to do, the more valuable you become to whoever is selling your information. 

Visit the TOV Center’s Lives 1st Realities Transformations and learn how to explore the your reality. Shouldn't you know as much about yourself as everyone that is selling your profile?

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