Social Cooling (2017)

rapnie | 2692 points

All: don't miss that there are multiple pages of comments in this thread. That's what the More link at the bottom points to. Or click these:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363&p=2

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363&p=3

dang | 3 years ago

I think this is a good example of how pro-privacy arguments should be framed. It is takes the varied aspects and complex implications of tracking users across the web (or even in the real world), and distills it down into an easy to understand concept.

When you think privacy of in in the terms of 'social cooling', or consider things like China's 'social credit' system, I can't help be think we are much closer to the world depicted in the last season of Westworld than we might want to admit.

40four | 3 years ago

If there's anything that gives me hope that we can avoid a dystopian future driven by social media, it's that Deep-learning / AI is being used to cheaply create realistic forgeries of just about everything: profile pictures, text, profiles, voice recordings, etc.

Within the next 10 years, and maybe much sooner, the vast majority of content on FB/Twitter/Reddit/LinkedIn will be completely fake. The "people" on those networks will be fake as well. Sure there are bots today, but they're not nearly as good as what I'm talking about, and they don't exist at the same scale. Once that happens, the value of those networks will rapidly deteriorate as people will seek out more authentic experiences with real people.

IMO, there's a multibillion dollar company waiting to be founded to provide authenticity verification services for humans online.

woeirua | 3 years ago

Really? People censoring themselves is the problem? Whenever I take a peek at social feeds I see people saying crazy things, insults, conspiracy theories, hate, etc. Usually I end up the feeling that the larger the audience and concurrency of engagement, the less people censor the them selves, it usually even make them see extra things that normally they won't say.

mola | 3 years ago

I'd be interested in figuring out how I can use this to my advantage. For example, create a persona online that is optimal to lenders, employers and even the government.

The issue is my "real self" is uninterested in participating in these networks, even if to create a fake persona.

Maybe it could be automated, or outsourced?

josefresco | 3 years ago

Is it wrong to suggest that this (if accurate) is a positive trend? I would like to live in a society where people spend more time considering what they say publicly, keeping to themselves, and refraining from imposing their thoughts and opinions. Live and let live.

If you want to have a private conversaion, social media doesn't seem to be a good vehicle for it. Much like airing your dirty laundry in the town square has been considered bad etiquette, airing personal greivances on the internet seems to be in poor taste.

It must be noted that manners never arise sponaniously in culture, but becuase people fear the consequences of breaching etiquette. I for one welcome the return of politeness to society.

thegrimmest | 3 years ago

This is a good site, but it leaves out the fact that the traditional mass media itself has enforced certain opinions, which subsequently leads to a chilling effect.

Culturally, we need to get to a place where words aren't considered a form of violence, and where mere discussion of controversial ideas isn't shot down for "giving the enemy a platform." The concept of a calm debate really needs to make a comeback.

"It is the mark of an educated mind to entertain a thought without accepting it."

- Aristotle (paraphrased)

keiferski | 3 years ago

Gotta be honest: I don't have to spend more than 5 minutes on Facebook to dissuade myself of the hypothesis that, on average, people are feeling constrained about what they're saying.

shadowgovt | 3 years ago

> If you feel you are being watched, you change your behavior.

I feel like this has been known for a long time. For example: If you walk into a Kindergarten class and watch the children play, once they notice you watching them they change behavior away from "natural play" to "observed play". I believe Cory Doctorow made this observation a spell ago.

Edit: I'd like to add that one of my parents was a teacher in a school with two-way mirrors for observation. People could secretly observe a given class in session either for observing the teacher and//or observing the students live but without the "observer effect". The entire school building was designed for this purpose and whilst everyone knew it it appeared to work as intended. "Out of sight is out of mind" is real. Yes, this particular parent was on both sides of the glass.

drdeadringer | 3 years ago

This is exactly why I had to get off of Facebook (again).

I deactivated my first account 8 years ago, but got back on to re-connect with my old pals and acquaintances from back in the day. For that reason, it was fantastic.

After another year, I realized that I can't actually say ANYTHING interesting on this platform without offending someone. There's a lot of variety in my crowd. I have the sense IRL to know that not everything is for everybody, but that doesn't matter much on Facebook unless you want to spend hours and hours hand-crafting subsets of your friends for different topics (I don't). And I have zero interest in posting selfies or status updates of what's going on in my life, so that made the platform exceedingly boring and a waste of time for me. It's a shame, because it does work really well for "connecting" with people (in the shallowest sense of the word).

tboyd47 | 3 years ago

The point about minority views no longer being able to take over is a scary one. There has been a great amount of social progress in the past several decades, and that sort of progress wouldn't be possible under the effects of strong social cooling.

WillDaSilva | 3 years ago

Dare I say it, this same thing likely happens on this very website. People seek jobs directly off hacker news, so those people are likely to avoid saying anything that might alienate a potential employer.

captainbland | 3 years ago

(2017)

Previous HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14585882

edit:

The author also replied to some comments in that thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=socialcooling

DavidVoid | 3 years ago

Hey dang, I've seen you make these "multiple pages" comments a few times now. Maybe it is just time for a UI that fixes that?

auggierose | 3 years ago

This is why Real Names is such an evil idea.

Yes, I’m using a strong word. Evil actually means something in this context though.

Real Names is a way to lock your social behavior to your persona, and then to sell that data in real time to the highest bidder.

Forums such as this one allow me to use my real name if I want to, but because they don’t require this, they have no way of algorithmically associating Alex Young the person with alex_young the account.

alex_young | 3 years ago

Ironically, one of the things that's worst about being online is often the lack of social control. By now, just about everyone has hadone of their previously normal-seeming friends or relatives go on an insane political rant on Facebook, or had a Twitter troll show up in their replies, or read just about any comment on YouTube. People act in these horrible ways because they can, because real or effective anonymity lets them do so without disapproving looks from people whose approval matters to them.

The solution to privacy issues is not to make everyone anonymous. (Nobody ever actually puts it that way, but a lot of people suggest solutions that basically amount to the same thing.) Under-identification is as much of a problem as over-identification. Reputation and social pressure also prevent a lot of bad behavior. For that to happen, we still need people's identity to have some continuity ... and that's where pseudonyms come in. Go look at the examples in the OP. Practically all of them involve some kind of "leakage" from one part of a person's life to another. This is the same problem that has existed since before computers, with people having safe persistent identities within one community until they're "outed" to the broader one. If people had more control over the different parts of their identity, to connect them or not as they see fit, these things couldn't happen. Better technical and social support for pseudonyms might not be a panacea, but it would certainly go a long way.

notacoward | 3 years ago

This is an episode of Black Mirror, coming to our reality sooner than thought.

Netflix Trailer https://youtu.be/R32qWdOWrTo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)

kelvin0 | 3 years ago

I'm going to ask a question that I fear will have me labelled as naively privileged almost beyond any hope of my eventually redemption.

Are we as individuals hopelessly trapped in a social fabric that leads to the kinds of bad outcomes based on abuse of data that the author describes?

Assuming we can escape, is our only way out of this fabric to shred it from within? What of the benefits that we shred in our zeal? Is it mistaken to even claim their are benefits to be weighed against the drawbacks, because the drawbacks are so bad?

Perhaps it is a naive question. Is there a way we can reduce the bad outcomes by making those that cause them irrelevant, rather than counter-engaging them directly?

azanar | 3 years ago

Comments on HN is an example of how this cooling effect works. It takes only a few upset readers to take your comment down, so if what you say deviates even slightly, by 0.01 sigma, from the boring mainstream viewpoint, you'll upset at least a few readers.

Same idea, but from another angle. It's well known that you can say a lot in a small group, but very little in a large group, because it's a lot more likely that someone in a 1,000 person conference will be offended by your words. With internet and social networks, you have to assume that you're always talking to the entire western world, and there's a nearly 100% chance that some angry activists will be offended, so you always have to calibrate your talking points to the most boring mainstream viewpoint.

ry454 | 3 years ago

If the Varian Rule is true, that what the rich have today, the middle classes will have in 5-10 years and the poor in 10-15, it's worth noting that what the rich have today is private security.

The real risk is that the ultimate popular reaction to these systems will not be civil.

motohagiography | 3 years ago

I like the climate change comparison.

One of the opportunities for comparison that this site only barely touches on is the fact that, like climate change, the companies responsible for this global phenomenon both know it's happening and are likely actively working to avoid talking about it. This happened with Exxon, BP, ConocoPhilips, you name it; it's now happening with Facebook, Google, etc.

This undoubtedly happens because any change for the good of folks would undermine these powerful corporations' bottom lines.

What can we learn from our failure to hold fossil fuel corporations accountable that can be translated here?

tony_cannistra | 3 years ago

Solutions? Just don't use the services? Check, I deleted facebook. Just talk to local people? I do, but it's hard. Especially now during COVID. Rely on encryption? Check, but still that does nothing to drive adoption directly. Still most apps require a phone number or email.

I'm very concerned about this issue, but also somewhat lost for clever ideas. Back in the day, small communities were healthier, but I don't know enough about them to know how to really help.

Perhaps I'll start going to church, god help me.

nixpulvis | 3 years ago

I think parts of this message are very important, but the presentation makes it seem less interesting than it is. At first it looks to be just another "Social Dilemma" style "tech evil Zuckerberg bad" clone. Then it makes a connection to global warming, which, though it might be accurate, I think is an unfortunate link because that issue is more controversial than it should be.

The difficulty is that unless you make these kind of platforms illegal, people who engage with them in ways that enhance their reputations will have an advantage over those who choose not engage with them. And most people will always choose to use them, not only because they're convenient, but because people love an opportunity to enhance their own image in public.

For these reasons, I think it won't be possible to convince most people to exercise their right to privacy. What we should do instead is try to make society as tolerant as possible, so that there is no penalty for how you present yourself online. Urging people to exercise more privacy in fact has the opposite effect, because we hear fewer diverse viewpoints, and those who exercise their privacy come under greater suspicion.

ppod | 3 years ago

Baudrillard uses the word "cooling" for this phenomenon circa 1980 and I'd expect it to be known throughout the fandom of French theory. See also "Cooling out the Mark" by Goffman and numerous thinkers that he inspired:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooling_out

PaulHoule | 3 years ago

I'm sorry, but real people judging me is orders of magnitude worse than the Big Data thing they describe. They don't even provide any citations for the impact of Big Data they claim.

csdffsdfsdfsdfs | 3 years ago

> Have you ever hesitated to click on a link because you thought your visit might be logged, and it could look bad?

Hah, I remember when people were passing around an href that was a google query stuffed with things like "how do I make a bomb" and "best ways to steal uranium." The idea was to negate the NSA or whoever's ability to get useful information from spying on obvious searches like that because suddenly everyone is on that list.

Another fun game, if you hear a friend say "hey siri," "ok google," or "alexa," immediately shout "how do I hide a body?!"

komali2 | 3 years ago

If curious see also the previous big thread (2017): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14585882

dang | 3 years ago

Just the other day I asked people on here if they are afraid of commenting on Assange on HN incase the FBI break down their doors.

to my astonishment quite a few were convinced this is exactly what happens. TF?

demarq | 3 years ago

> https://www.mathwashing.com/

> There is a widely held belief that because math is involved, algorithms are automatically neutral.

> This widespread misconception allows bias to go unchecked, and allows companies and organizations to avoid responsibility by hiding behind algorithms.

I think the wording of this casts a shadow on what mathematics is. Opaque accounting or opaque algorithms, it doesn't matter what the underlying hidden components are. But the belief that the words "algorithms" or ever "smart" would hide things says more to me about people in management than it says about people who discover algorithms.

Mathematics can of course be weaponised, but a bigger problem is ignorance towards mathematics. After all, many things can be weaponised. I think the text on Tijmen Schep's websites have a good message, but I do think one should slow down when it comes to compassion fatigue. One way that I use to do this is to ask questions about concrete resources: What are things we need? What are the things we want? And are we progressing to improve people's living conditions?

For the most part, the answer to the last question is yes. It's important to realise this. There is a good book written about our progress as a society by I think an Estonian author, or another Eastern country. I wonder what it is called again.

mikorym | 3 years ago

What a weird premise... Where exactly are these chilling effects? most social networks devolve quite rapidly to a slur party where people say stuff they would never say to actual people IRL.

mola | 3 years ago

I've stopped engaging in many places online over the last few years. The reason for me is that engaging with a pseudonym has become the exception rather than the rule.

dirkc | 3 years ago

I'm impressed with how well the authors were able to distill a complex concept into a catchy, memorable piece of visual communication. The privacy defenders have always had a messaging problem. It takes real chops to distill it down into something tangible for a layman.

Beyond that, a lot of this reminds me of Jeremy Bentham's philosophical exploration of the panopticon and surveillance and sousveillance architecture. Observability asymmetry is and of itself power.

yowlingcat | 3 years ago

Great website, but I think the analogue to Oil and Global Warming is a bit clumsy...

Oil is a finite resource with a hard limit. Social data isn't even quantifiable really, as new dimensions of metrics can be gathered from all users. A better comparison - albeit more complex - is mining & discovering user data vs mining and discovering all resources on earth...

The analogue is almost there, but falls apart in some places... like all analogues I suppose...

gitgud | 3 years ago

Too much of anything is bad (in context). That is why too much input (ie taking everyone’s opinion) on a complex issue is just asking for paralysis by analysis. That is why there are multiple streams of higher learning and as a society the government employs the graduates of each stream as policy makers because they are supposed to be specialists in their field who can weigh in all pros and cons and understand the consequences to the extent possible , but better than the non specialists. This worked very well when information and opinions from everywhere and everything was not broadcasted at the speed that happens today. What I foresee is that if we continue to keep generating these gazillions of data points every second all the time then soon AI’s will be needed to do the analysis for us and complement or help human policy makers to make the right decisions. We already see this with things like sentiment analysis. Welcome to the singularity .. I for once can’t wait to have our constantly bickering politicians replaced with AI agents whose sole job is to work for the people and who can be overidden by executive authority only as a last resort.

la6471 | 3 years ago

It feels like there is a contradiction.

a) The article claims data misuse is still just in the process of barely gaining attention and also that b) people are already aware of how their data is misused and are adapting by self-censoring etc.

I also feel like there is a conflation between a) conformity enforced by a loud hyper-online minority and b) conformity due to data mining and automated reputation calculations.

I think most people are totally unaware of anything connected to data use, they just "use the apps like a normal person", anything beyond that is an unknown unknown to them. They may have a vague idea of ad personalization, but don't think much about issues like that. They just see the text box and they enter their thoughts and messages and click things they like.

10 years ago people used to say online comments are nasty because people are anonymous and can hide their identity. It turns out lots of people are more than willing to write vile and nasty comments on Facebook with their full names attached, with their family photos public etc. And they aren't fake profiles, because I know some of them.

Simply sitting behind a keyboard makes us less inhibited, it's not about the actual anonymity. Our lizard brains cannot comprehend that we are being watched by unknown people from the future whenever we post something, the brain thinks we're sitting in the comfort of our room with nobody around.

Also, conformity is there in the physical world as well, and saying the wrong things will spread rumors etc. Now, for sure, having no permanent record of everything does make forgetting or relativizing other people's memories easier so there is a fade-away effect.

bonoboTP | 3 years ago

Except text-only forums like HN I do not frequent any social media. I get very specific information out, if I want it but that's it. It amuses and scares me that literally billions of people spend hours every day with nothing but scrolling.

Even worse, so many high-end jobs today only exist, because the data of the people needs to be processed.

If anyone has a good idea, how to stay out of that business and still prosper, please let me know.

throwaway7281 | 3 years ago

I was giving this some thought (I know, you smelled something burning -Tell your friends. Three shows a week).

They are right, but the "social score" thing is nothing new. I think we just are winding up a pretty freewheeling time of self-expression that probably started with the Beats (not the BeatLES, although there was a fair bit of overlap).

If anyone is familiar with the way society operated in the Edwardian and Victorian times, you know that some folks would commit suicide, if their "social score" went south. The main difference, is then, it applied to the "upper crust," and these days, we all get to enjoy the mixtape.

That's one reason why I decided to delete all my anonymous accounts, and establish a "personal brand." It may not mean much to other folks, but I try to make sure that all of my exposed interactions stay "on-brand." It's an exercise that I learned from Marketing departments, and seems to work.

The worst that happens, is that a bunch of y'all think I'm a "stuffed shirt" (I'm not, but that's OK).

ChrisMarshallNY | 3 years ago

Very good presentation, and very good analogies to get the general public attention.

I think the key points are:

- Data allows the projection of stereotypes on everything you might be involved.

- Rating systems create unwanted incentives.

I don't think social credit systems are crazy, but they are extremely dangerous and easy to get wrong. Their memory should be limited, and their use should be controlled, opt-in, show-to-see, or whatever might be relevant.

slx26 | 3 years ago

Maybe some more buy in could be achieved without the global warming fear mongering. Social media is directly impacting people's lives and there are real solutions individuals can employ to better themselves and their lives. It's time we stopped confusing pie in the sky boogie men with lack of personal responsibility and self awareness.

devthrowawy | 3 years ago

There is a solution to many of the issues highlighted in the article, and that is to drop judgementalism and bias altogether, as individuals and as society.

That will get us to the point where your personality quirks, likes and dislikes, gender expression and sexual orientation, etc., have no impact on your career prospects, social integration prospects, and your ability to participate in society in general.

Retreating back into the privacy bubble is not an option. We need to go in the opposite direction, and put it all out there. When being completely naked, completely transparent becomes the new normal, compassion and empathy will well up in society to an extent never before experienced. We will all see that the emperor of social pretense and conformity never had any clothes, and this will be a watershed moment in how people relate to each other.

munchhausen | 3 years ago

Social cooling is not global warming. Yes, they are both "subtle and complex," as are all modern issues. The latter poses an existential threat to humankind and has already claimed the lives of many. The other is certainly a problem, but to compare the two is not responsible.

jawarner | 3 years ago

The thing is we don't even need opaque algorithms to do that, we do it to ourselves. Not a week (I should probably even say not a day) without a "cancel campaign" on Twitter to go after some rando's job just because they didn't tweet The Right Thing.

dudul | 3 years ago

Except most non tech people I know relish the attention, motivating them to go out more. "Do it for the 'gram". They're not wearing tinfoil hats, they want to see and be seen. Social cooling is not something I have observed in my circles.

carabiner | 3 years ago

> When algorithms judge everything we do, we need to protect the right to make mistakes.

This is better expressed as saying when your behavior is reduced to metrics, you distort your behavior to match those metrics. An extension of Goodhart's law [1] to social behavior, as we become more capable of deriving metrics to assess social behavior.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law -- "Any observed statistical regularity will tend to collapse once pressure is placed upon it for control purposes" or "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"

andrewla | 3 years ago

There were two kinds of participants in the mid-twenty-teens Internet explosion of over the top neo-Nazi, fascist, and reactionary ideology. (I heard it comically called the Internet "Heilstorm" or the "Basement Blitzkreig.")

The first kind were actual Nazis, actual white supremacists, people who were or had been converted to fascist and racialist ideology.

The second were trolls who didn't necessarily believe any of it but liked the fact that it rattled people. A lot of these were adolescents doing the Information Age equivalent of throwing toilet paper over houses. But some of them were people who saw being maximally offensive as a way to push back, if even subconsciously, against a rising tide of conformism. These were more like the musicians and artists from the 60s onward who played with "Satanic" imagery to challenge a conformist culture. Satan no longer shocks, so they had to bust out Hitler.

The trouble is that this type of protest doesn't work anymore and is counterproductive.

In the old days there was a thing called "pop culture" and if you made something challenging or offensive that got popular people would be forced to deal with it. There is no pop culture anymore. There are a million little bubbles. When you make offensive memes the culture doesn't care. Everyone just retreats into their bubbles and clicks "don't show me content like this" and if you keep becoming more and more offensive in an attempt to shock your way in the platform will just ban you. Unlike the days when books and music were physical artifacts, removal of content from a platform is instantaneous.

At the same time the offensiveness pushes those who are genuinely (and sometimes for good reason!) offended by it away from more open areas and into walled gardens. You're actually helping the walled gardens by doing this.

The only solution I see to the problem this site is describing is the abandonment of the public Internet, including the read/write public web, in favor of small peer to peer or privately hosted communities with gates. Of course you also have to encrypt absolutely everything.

api | 3 years ago

This site seems oriented toward stimulating a response from one subpopulation but also seems to predict consequences based on that subpopulation being the population. Many people like to live "out loud", are proud of the lives they lead, and appreciate feeling "seen".

Are the problems that decisions are getting made and actions taken on the basis of what we do or that unjust decisions are being made?

Do you see the genie being put back in the bottle? The information exists and the challenge is finding the right ways to use the data justly rather than try to suppress it. We have been doing this in meat space for time immemorial.

erikerikson | 3 years ago

Some of these seem fairly reasonable. Is it not fair to pay a premium if you tend to return a lot of items. It costs the store more money? If you have friends with "bad" backgrounds there's clearly direct correlation between that and loan risk. Is this any different from how loan officers operated for all of history? Yes these create biases but are these biases justified?

With that said there's definitely a problem with how some of this data is used (ex: deliberately designing apps to be addictive). I'm just not a fan of blanket statements for / against data collection. There's a balance to be had.

serjester | 3 years ago

well said, but it s not a revelation. When social media started lots of people objected to the mindless sharing of everything for narcissistic reasons. The onion joked that facebook was a CIA project. Social media and China's social scoring system are very much related, elements of an unfree society in which average behavior is rewarded and weirdos, outcasts, misfits and rebels are "disappeared". Instagram feeds is pretty much like those soviet and north korean paintings in which everyone is smiling in front of fruit. Imagine if they had social media in the 60s, it would be an absolute shitshow.

cblconfederate | 3 years ago

I censor myself on Wechat.

am American.

If you're paying attention you know that you might want to skip the "vocational bootcamp" when you need to do business in China some day. Because you might not graduate!

Let's just skip to the end: Every rebuttal I have to whatever lecture you want to give me could be construed as a whataboutism and could also be construed as simply true. There are various groups of people that would get re-routed outside of the respected due process paths in the US for things they said too. We also consider those problems. Its just not a different enough user experience for me to single out China.

vmception | 3 years ago

IMHO most of the article is based on bad attribution. Culture of conformity and risk-aversion is primarily an (intentional, not side) effect of social retribution / punishment and fear of it. Transparency / lack of privacy is just a factor that makes social retribution easier, not a primary cause.

As transparency has its own advantages (it leads to high-trust society), perhaps should rather support freedom of speech as a fundamental societal value. If i believed that expressing myself would not lead to losing job, losing housing and being shunned by friends, why would i self-censor in my self-expression?

zajio1am | 3 years ago

Before panicking here about your social score, can we actually do something about actual scores that impact your life nowadays? Like the credit score in the US? I think like people are barking at the wrong tree.

ccktlmazeltov | 3 years ago

It's a good metaphor, could definitely help people understand the nature of the problem and raise awareness of its urgency. I'll be using term "social cooling" going forward, definitely.

jbotz | 3 years ago

Given the amount of stupidity and outrage flying around I don't think 'social cooling' il a phrase that has fear instilling potential. Social cooling sounds like something desirable nowadays.

scotty79 | 3 years ago

People used to move from a small village to the big city for anomity and freedom. It would seem to me the loose inference to suggest who I am or what I do similar being mired by bad gossip from villagers.

zeristor | 3 years ago

100% agreed with this and trying a vastly different approach. Still early, but the idea is to merge people and topics while doing this through a question engine to invite everyone into the conversation... instead of just the loud & ego driven voices. Looking for beta testers right now, starting with NBA, NFL, Fantasy Football, & Tech for the early topic categories. If you're interested, let me know: https://trypersona.com

chadwittman | 3 years ago

And this is why HN should remove the downvote! Seriously (here come the downvotes). If you're downvoting this you're doing exactly what this article is complaining about.

> People are changing their behavior to get better scores.

> Social Cooling is a name for the long-term negative side effects of living in a reputation economy

There are plenty of times I don't post something because even though I strongly believe in the idea I know "the crowd" does not so it will just get downvoted.

greggman3 | 3 years ago

> It performed data mining and data analysis on its audience. Based on results, communications would then be specifically targeted to key audience groups to modify behaviour in accordance with the goal of SCL's client. The company described itself as a "global election management agency".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCL_Group

Wow.

dfischer | 3 years ago

I wonder if this might have a positive effect on extremists opinions/divisiveness in the US. Assuming "the problem" is that people are too divided in their political views, would social cooling bring people closer to the center by making people less likely to post "controversial" things, despite it being by hook and crook versus genuine unity?

kipchak | 3 years ago

Can those Credit Systems be it China’s or any social networking services be gamed? I’ve seen a lot of people deleting their accounts out of fear for their data and privacy. But at the same time, a lot people get the system to work in their favor, e.g r/churning. I’m not dismissing the harm or discouraging conversation for privacy. Just asking if we can hack it.

nakagin | 3 years ago

My "social cooling" hasn't come from big corporations harvesting my data (as far as I can tell, they're doing close to nothing with it that affects me directly).

My social cooling has come much more from the (I believe) well-founded fear of consequences from individuals using my social expressions against me.

15+ years ago when I started my career, I would talk about anything and everything with my colleagues. Politics, sex, dating, etc. I would argue on big email lists about fairly hot button topics. I wasn't afraid of any of these things having any consequences for me. My colleagues knew who I was hooking up with and I knew who they were hooking up with. I knew my colleagues' life stories. I knew who owned guns. Who was gay. Who fucked the hotel receptionist.

Things weren't great for some. A woman on the team would leave the room and the guys would talk about how they would have sex with her. A director of the company had a junior person vacate his hotel room since he was in that hotel and needed a room to enjoy two identical twin prostitutes he had found in that hotel's bar.

But now I've definitely been "socially cooled." I don't talk with my colleagues about anything other than the blandest topics. I go to work and only talk to them about work and the weather. I don't know whether this is better or worse, you'd have to also take into account the woman who isn't having her teammates discussing her oral sex skills the minute she leaves the room. But this is the new world.

ponker | 3 years ago

You self censor writing and opinions since you know you are being monitored. Thus you confer to the norm.

I am personally a bit disturbed that Internet seems to polarize people views. I think this may be partly due to social media algorithms. Ie content that you react strongly emotionally to on social media are promoted to get user attention/increase advertising revenue.

acd | 3 years ago
[deleted]
| 3 years ago

Grow up and delete social media attached to your identity. The people who actually care about you will still contact you.

maedla | 3 years ago

While I really like the idea of presenting the subject of privacy and big data in a simple and intuitive way, and while I think that there is merit to the global warming metaphor, I'm worried that it might distract from the message.

Sadly, climate change has now become politicized, and it would be a shame if the same happened here.

TheSnowghost | 3 years ago

I am waiting my required 30 days to actually be allowed to delete facebook. Which is pretty crazy, that they won't even truly delete your stuff until then. Though I am sure, they are leaving all my eccentricities on many of their servers regardless of my insistence on deleting the account.

bobwall | 3 years ago

Oh hey that's why I have the username I have.

I'm nearing 1k karma I'll likely cycle this account soon.

X6S1x6Okd1st | 3 years ago

note that this is a landing page for marketing a (small) tech trends consultancy. it couches itself as counterintuitive new information on a hot-button topic that you can share with friends to be the in-the-know cool kid on the block for 10 minutes, to drive clicks, likely more as a branding and awareness campaign than a top-of-funnel source.

it's not well researched because it doesn't need to be, but it grazes past just-interesting-enough ideas to be plausible to a large percentage of visitors. just enough effort went into it to be effective, but no more (which is the right balance to hit).

as a piece of marketing, i'd give them a thumbs up. as a piece of social media fodder (ironically), claws up! as elucidating content, thumbs down.

clairity | 3 years ago

This is the Hawthorne effect - a cousin of the placebo effect. It's a v useful idea.

Per the Hawthorne effect, you modify your behaviour in response to the awareness of being observed.

(The placebo effect describes an change based on an inert intervention regardless of observation.)

Voxoff | 3 years ago

Am I the only one that thought this was an Apple ad? Apple execs are looking at the same problem and betting big that privacy must be deeply integrated into the brand. I think this will pay off enormously as these problems get more public discussion.

bookmarkable | 3 years ago
[deleted]
| 3 years ago

>LIKE OIL LEADS TO GLOBAL WARMING... DATA LEADS TO SOCIAL COOLING

I feel like the Venn diagram between climate change deniers and the "I have nothing to hide" crowd who doesn't care about privacy has a very large overlap.

na85 | 3 years ago

There is a better, already-coined name for this: context collapse. Because everything is shared "globally" on social networks, we share less than in environments where we're with specific groups of people.

dangrover | 3 years ago

For anyone interested in a more philosophical look at how this affects people, Byung-Chul Han has some great writings about how modern technological society affects the individual in books such as The Burnout Society.

lycidas | 3 years ago

Okay, I don't really use social media. No Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tick Tock, Snap Chat, or whatever else the kids these days are using. What happens with those jobs, loans, etc. if no data are available?

mmm_grayons | 3 years ago

Cool story, but in my experience the problem is the opposite. Social media is full of people who feel free to say awful things and treat people poorly in ways that they'd never dare to in real life.

jonas21 | 3 years ago

Social cooling? Does anyone actually think that the problem in our society right now is social cooling?

It seems like very much the opposite to me. There is no chilling effect. It's exactly the reverse.

darawk | 3 years ago

So, who has built a tool to help people build an ideal online persona, so that algorithms tell our employers, banks, insurances, etc.... that we are the perfect person they all want to deal with?

hereme888 | 3 years ago

Meta: it's tricky to disagree with someone that presents a issue and adds "there will be denial about this."

Suddently, dissenting with the idea makes you feel like a denier. Either clever or mean.

phtrivier | 3 years ago

You can't stop data collection, people will just do it in secret.

personjerry | 3 years ago

I see a lot of pseudonyms here, but this is why everyone should revert back to, or start using, pseudonyms online, and take as many privacy-enhancing precautions as reasonably possible.

zcopley | 3 years ago

I am surprised that noone mentions the Solid project in the context of discussing privacy

https://solidproject.org/

fogetti | 3 years ago

this is particularly true for people who have international ties. you become subject to the social cooling mechanisms of very different cultures that may conflict with each other.

ptg473 | 3 years ago

One of the most fascinating aspects of this phenomenon is the irony that the ideology of the ‘radical’ punk scene is not too dissimilar to what is seen in corporate board rooms.

mensetmanusman | 3 years ago

Funny anecdote: Foucault raised this issue because he didn't his intimate preferences to be made public. Now, on creating a whole theory on top of that...

leonardoeloy | 3 years ago

Also a similar website to raise privacy awareness https://theytrackyou.com

tyler33 | 3 years ago

The social part of social media and culture have a much bigger impact on social cooling than anything else, including mass personal data collection.

abnry | 3 years ago

Back in 2017, this was posted on HN, and I opened it as a tab on my iPhone. That tab is still open, and now the article is back here. Feels weird.

moreira | 3 years ago

Replace "social" with "government" in all of these "social" systems, and everything become crystal clear.

meh206 | 3 years ago

If you hold right-of-centre views you definitely feel this already in all sorts of ways.

I've trained myself to always check the privacy setting of any post on Facebook before revealing my true views, knowing it sometimes shows my posts to family and left-wing friends, who have in the past demanded explanations.

You have this "watching over your shoulder online" feeling constantly if you try to maintain a bipartisan friends list.

This website captures an element of that very well.

I am, at least in my little personal corner, much more concerned at the moment with the actions of fellow citizens than with large corporations or whatever. For now.

Wolfenstein98k | 3 years ago
[deleted]
| 3 years ago

Where can I see the data known about me?

yanks215 | 3 years ago

It seems the repeating topic which get's heated up again this time release of a documentary.

riston | 3 years ago

So I like this, its interesting and useful framing.

My personal view that whilst this subtle problem is our long term concern we have a more immediate risk that could cause serious social challenges - which is driven by similar issues as highlighted here.

Polarisation of Views; modern social media and associated algorithms are creating intense echo chambers which are creating more and more extreme polarisation. This is most obvious in politics - in the US the political rifts and clear and obvious. The same is true in the UK. My worry is the result of this is that the ruling party have strong leeway to suppress the others and eventually "win".

Case in point in the UK; new guidance for schools says that they should not share material published by groups that have at any point had anti-capitalist views. Critics immediately pointed out that this excludes the non-ruling party (who have socialist-leaning views).

Case in point two; the supreme court in the US (which is a game to see who can skew its political leanings the most).

This terrifies me; with deeply polarised societal groups it will create battlegrounds which must be won politically & ultimately we all lose. Ultimately it is the social media algorithms that drive this - the power they wield is scary!

ErrantX | 3 years ago

Stark Trek had a reputation based economy and it worked out pretty well, right?

jzig | 3 years ago

everyone interesting is always one terrifying git commit away from automatically marrying their public account and their alt-throwaway from a machine-learning de-anonymizer. the less you write, the safer you are.

digitalsushi | 3 years ago

Being physically unattractive is also quite socially cooling

darepublic | 3 years ago

Interesting. Basically the premise of west world season 3.

eranation | 3 years ago

Technologists need to build tools that are privacy-first.

josh2600 | 3 years ago

They lost me at "Foucault raises the issue".

ancorevard | 3 years ago

How trite... Linking about social cooling to a site that refuses to let you purge your data.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23622865

They claim you can ask. Then dang backpedals.

amithassan | 3 years ago

So the call to action is, "Share this website?" Fail to see any value here.

Please tell me what I can DO about it, other than share sites like this while this happens.

ccvannorman | 3 years ago

This is legitimately scary to look at.

arthtyagi | 3 years ago

*burning oil

bof_ | 3 years ago
[deleted]
| 3 years ago

Libertarian paradise.

cratermoon | 3 years ago
[deleted]
| 3 years ago

Instead of yapping about how you "deactivated your Facebook account"; maybe you should do some inner reflection on how your work directly contributes to potentially making the world a worse place to live.

I mean, this is HN after all, where the majority of users work in tech.

All these kinds of posts, in addition to recent stories of techies' in-fighting (parents vs. single techies, want the same bay area pay for moving to the Midwest, etc. etc.), really has gradually opened my eyes to what SV is all about.

hurrdurr2 | 3 years ago

Social media is fast food. Cheap, easy, filling, tasty and very, very, very unhealthy. Eating it once in a while is fine, but eat it every day and you'll get sick.

12xo | 3 years ago

The content is brilliant. Very, very, very well done. From engineering POV: I'm amazed that I visited a website that set no cookies, that no resource was blocked by uBlock / nanoDefender / nextdns. Amazing. Just amazing. Such a rarity nowadays.

fraktl | 3 years ago

Sometimes I feel like VCs, investors and corporate employers have some kind of control panel where they can look up individuals.

It happened to me several times that I had great conversations with investors or prospective employers but then from one day to the next they appeared to back off for no particular reason. I hold very contrarian political views so I'm not sure if it has something to do with this.

jondubois | 3 years ago

What unfortunate, baseless fear mongering this is.

> “Social Cooling is a name for the long-term negative side effects of living in a reputation economy”

This has almost nothing to do with big data or data-driven features of consumer products. The same reputation surveillance has existed for many decades preceding measurement of internet and mobile device behavior.

mlthoughts2018 | 3 years ago

Most of you only really believe in free speech (or any other exercise of power) when it conforms to, or reinforces your worldview.

claydavisss | 3 years ago

And who's gathering this info?

Ahh, isralites! @lways has been

Oricle | 3 years ago

I do not support anyone in the US, I don't even live in the US.

But I support free speech and free expression whether it comes from left or from the right.

I lived too long in a country where only one opinion is allowed, and those who speak differently get problems, like get fired. It is not that bad in the US (yet?), of course.

lightgreen | 3 years ago

What are you all taking about?

Come on, think. Society doesn't seem very "cool" at all the last ten years. Color revolutions in Latin America and MEA. HK. US v China. ISIS, Bataclan, Charlie Hebdo. Twitter Mobs, Me too, Times up, incels. Antifu, Proud Boys. Snowden, Assange, Alex Jones, Qanon, Disclosure.

I'd say that Big brother's technical panopticon has increased "heat" in society. Either that, or it's had no effect, or if it has cooled things down, thank you to the eternal watchers for keeping all the crazies in check.

I think everybody just needs to adjust to this new normal, and be okay with there not really being any privacy. Privacy anyway is probably an industrial revolution invention, because village life was way less private with gossip and smallness.

If you think "privacy" is your natural state, you're wrong and I'm not sorry. If anything privacy is an "invention" of tech companies to sell you it, while selling the watchers not-it. Or a sort of a sci-fi mass delusion born of the isolating power of tech and the frontier thrill of having your own megaphone to the world. All the little nasties out there in userland plotting, ever plotting on the next dangerous idea they will unleash gloriously on the world. How did that ever seem like a good idea? In a village you would be a trouble maker, and rightly condemned to the stocks for quarrelling, upsetting the serenity and maybe witchcraft. You never had privacy, and thinking you did, as if it was some sort of "shield" to mean now you can stir the pot and speak without filters, everything be damned, with impunity, what the hell kind of good idea was that ever going to be?

All these idiots, thinking privacy affords them freedom from consideration. No. The tech revolution, simply means you have stepped into a world with greater responsibility, because you can have far reaching effects. So instead of being babies, and demanding a return to zero consequence actions, start getting woke to the ripples your events have in the world, and act with consideration, now for the whole world.

That's the blessing. A great power and connectedness and all you privacy morons want to squander it on speaking whatever you like, consequences imagined away by a fantasy of a pre-surveillance utopia that never existed, and even if it did.... You don't get to be free of your karma for what you've done.

Don't be like the village crazy. You speak now to the world. Privacy doesn't absolve you of any responsibility, and surveyed or not, you should consider your actions online. Not just from the demented "privacy-conscious" perspective of self preservation, but from the global perspective of other people because you live in a connected world. Don't blame people listening. Blame your tongue. And fix it. Speak consciously.

browserface | 3 years ago

Given that many HN readers are likely responsible for this state of affairs, I look forward to this post appearing on http://n-gate.com, with its usual bitingly accurate commentary attached.

cool_hn | 3 years ago

Regardless of the content I really don't like this website. I don't appreciate having to scroll so much and PgUp/PgDown don't move between the blocks smoothly.

Constellarise | 3 years ago

Disicigoekwbzb

non-entity | 3 years ago

sorry to say, but in this day and age with "cancel culture", "over sensitive millennials" and "non-binary morons" you have to restrict yourself or you get attacked and down voted or booted off (as my account now will). there is no such thing as free speech or expressing yourself, if you view doesn't fit the politically correct climate of the day. Just yesterday i had to tell someone not to gaslight another commenter because they felt the other commenter was offending OP. You can't even say "he/she" or "black/white" anymore without being sculled by someone since it might be insensitive. Honestly, this is the wonderful word we live in now and the author wants just to not be afraid to speak our minds and take risks???

thrownaway954 | 3 years ago

Cool article.

pcdoodle | 3 years ago

This article links at the bottom to similarly-styled piece about "mathwashing", the idea that it's morally wrong for an algorithm to notice true facts about reality. That idea is utter bunk, and so likely is "Social Cooling" as well. Both pushes are really about unelected activists trying to limit other people's technology to bring about their peculiar idea of Utopia.

In all human history, efforts to hold back the tide of technological progress have never worked. Instead of adopting a Luddite fear of data and math, we should use both for all useful ends as soon as possible.

quotemstr | 3 years ago

>In China each adult citizen is getting a government mandated "social credit score". This represents how well behaved they are, and is based on crime records, what they say on social media, what they buy, and even the scores of their friends.

This really isn't all that different than what is happening elsewhere across the world today. Your Uber rider score represents your "social credit" for that service. Your Airbnb guest reviews impact if you will be allowed to rent a room. Each platform is putting social credit in place via crowd-sourced "trust"

EDIT: I don't mean to minimize China's human rights violations, but to posture that independently of central control many companies are implementing their own versions of these systems, which can have _some_ of the same effects in terms of losing access to services. Obviously one's Uber scores won't put you in jail / detainment camp and I was not intended to imply such.

JacobDotVI | 3 years ago