Being a software engineer and getting to know the part of the technology on what it is happening behind all this ‘Social Dilemma’ makes be responsible on telling people the ways they can get out of it.
I once had a course in the university called ‘Digital Innovation’, and as assignment we had we had to choose one of the social medias and analyze their monetization, governance, architecture and the reasons that lead them do their business in a certain way. To my surprise, I found out things I had not payed attention in the past. Out of curiosity, on the next semester I took the course on ‘’Recommendation Systems’, and there got to be introduced to all the technology behind it, and it all made sense for me at that time. Even thought, my developing area of focus was not on AI or Data Science, it was enough to connect the dots in the digital ecosystems that we are being presented nowadays. On the movies or documentaries, developers are shown as people out of this world, AI is shown like fiction, but actually its way more touchable than that.
I used to use the term ‘personalized content’ instead of all the other terms like giant tech monsters stealing our data. Lets be honest, we all feel good when we search on google about ‘pizza’ for instance, and get recommended on the all pizza places we can go closest to our location. That is awesome, I would not be interested on a pizza restaurant that is 500 km away from me. I have been looking for an apartment to rent in the city that I recently live. I felt very nice when Facebook was giving me recommendations on nice places to rent based on my interests. That was what I wanted, and at that moment Facebook was approaching to my purpose. What I mean is, try to use the technology on your own benefit and make those recommendation systems work for you. If you totally disagree on the recommendation system, there is the option to click ‘I do not want to see something like this’ and it will be gone.
In order to feel the control of the data we are presented on the internet, I will show a list on how can you make social media work in your favor:
- AdBlock extension
This extension blocks the ads and pop-ups on YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, and your favorite websites. It was more than 10 mil users already. If you haven't had it by now, it is time to get it.
2. Remove recommendation extension
There exists extensions many extensions online like removing recommendation videos for Youtube or Facebook . I do not personally use them, because as I said, I like to manage the recommendation algorithms work in my favor but the opportunities of extensions to remove them are there.
3. Turn off ‘Off-Facebook Activity’
Have you ever been in a situation where you searched something online, and later you find an advertisement on Facebook about that exact same thing. Been there, me too.
Off-Facebook activity includes information that businesses and organizations and 3rd parties share with Facebook our website visits and interactions with them.
It would be smart to turn it off or manage it in the websites you want.
4. Ads personalization on google
Additionally, you can check the personalized ads that Google offers you in your Ads Settings. Even though, this option is ‘on’ by default, you have the opportunity to ‘turn off ’the ad personalization on Google.
After doing these steps, hopefully you will feel more detoxed from social medias.
