Happy Friday and welcome back to This Week in Retail!
One of the biggest topic in the news this week; Twitter & censorship.
If you haven’t heard yet, Twitter in concert with Facebook, banned anyone from posting about a controversial story about Hunter & Joe Biden.
This is obviously a highly politicized event, and that’s not something I want to dive into here. But, I do think this should be a wake-up call for all consumers. It’s clear that the content we consume on social media is not objective, it is engineered.
The movie The Social Dilemma on Netflix could not have come at a better time. If you haven’t watched it, stop what you’re doing right now and go watch it.
What Is The Truth?
What if I told you that your world view has been engineered by algorithms? Your perception of reality isn’t the truth, but some constructed version of the truth, designed to keep you scrolling for longer.
It sounds like an amazing script for a fictional sci-fi movie. Only, it’s not actually fiction.
The Social Dilemma exposes this as our current reality. Tech platforms; Google, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, etc. position themselves as just that; an unbiased platform.
But one cannot be unbiased when the primary objective is to generate profit. These companies are biased towards profit, not disseminating objective information.
Believe it or not, this orientation towards profit is underpinning our entire virtual world. Every news story, every post you see, every like, comment, message, etc. are all there for one reason; to drive profit.
Let’s unpack it.
Variable Rewards
In the early days of Facebook’s success, the big question was how do they monetize?
The social media’s monetization strategy centered around advertising dollars. But, in order to generate advertising revenue, they needed engagement. And lots of it.
Enter The Slot Machine Effect.
The pull-to-refresh and infinite scrolling feature we see on our news feeds today is actually modeled after slot-machines. The prize? The ultimate reward of social approval on a global scale.
The concept of variable rewards follows the logic that humans are evolutionarily prone to seeking out patterns in the world. So much so that we will even try to create patterns where they don’t exist.
The unpredictability of our “newsfeed” keeps us coming back for more. Will I have another red heart? Has someone commented? Who watched my story?
It’s impossible to look away when you don’t know what to expect next.
Humans’ insatiable need for social approval coupled with this variable reward system explains why social media has become the most widely used drug in our society.
“People who are addicted to drugs are called users and people who are on social media are also called users. There is something in there, algorithmically, that is creating this obsession.”
– Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex
Why Does This Matter?
Our country is now more divided than we’ve been in our lifetime. People are angry, frustrated, sad, depressed, and anxious. Much of this stems from social media.
Content that elicits emotion; whether positive or negative, is more profitable. When we’re emotional, we’re engaged. And remember it’s the promise of our engagement that is sold to advertisers for billions of dollars.
This constructed world view centered around keeping us glued to our screens for longer is tearing us apart.
I hope to see more accountability from these companies in the near future.
Best Podcasts of the Week:
News This Week:
Amazon says third-party sellers made more than $3.5 billion from Prime Day
-
Amazon stands to have generated at least $7 billion in sales during this year’s Prime Day.
-
Amazon said third-party sellers on its marketplace earned more than $3.5 billion during this year’s Prime Day shopping event, an increase of nearly 60% compared with last year and a record for the small and midsize businesses that make up the marketplace.
Zoom Video adds online events, apps to service
-
The stock had jumped as much as 6.0% to an intraday high of $536.85
-
At their conference Zoomtopia they announced a marketplace for new apps and paid events.
-
Analyst believe Zoom is in the “very early innings” of monetizing the largest Global 2,000 companies, and is making “significant progress” on its Zoom Phone offering.
-
“We believe Zoom’s increasing relevance and continued good execution translate into both near-term and long-term upside ,” Beliov wrote in a note to clients. “Furthermore, new product releases and enhanced capabilities signal Zoom’s ambition to become a more holistic collaboration and workflow platform, vs a video and [unified communications as a service] solution,” Beliov added.
Other News This Week:
Follow me on Social!
-Jackie
Recent Comments