s06e01 Behaviour manipulation (or: Why Ditch Facebook?) – The Good Robot Andys

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Facebook and other social media companies have been shown to be irresponsible with politics, with private information and with their social responsibilities. If we’re not the customer, maybe we’re the product. Andy B explains how powerful these companies have become, and what influence they can have on our behaviour, our politics and our society. Concludes with suggestions of ways we can give them less power, and switch to other platforms designed to prevent the kind of behaviour manipulation we might not prefer.

Links:

• Facebook promoted violence
• Facebook use correlated with violence
• Facebook use increases tolerance of racism
• British MPs accuse Facebook choosing profit over users’ interests
• Companies store highly personal data on Facebook’s platform
• Facebook experimented with modifying people’s moods
• Facebook paid teens for total access to their phone activity
• Facebook’s income comes from advertising

Alternatives not controlled by a single advertising company:

• Mastodon – alternative to Twitter and Facebook and Instagram
• Friendica – alternative to Facebook
• Diaspora – alternative to Facebook
• pixelfed – alternative to Instagram
• PeerTube – alternative to YouTube
• Signal – alternative to WhatsApp
• Keybase.io – alternative to WhatsApp
• GetTogether – alternative to MeetUp or Facebook events
• switching.social – lots of other choices!

The Good Robot Andys podcasts and web site by Andy Balaam and Andy Cockerill are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Music: I dunno by grapes (c) copyright 2008 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (3.0) license. Ft: J Lang, Morusque