Episode 2 – The Social Media Dilemma – Not Another Digital Marketing Podcast
Rafie Edruce:
Ladies and gentlemen, boys, and girls. Welcome to the second episode of Not Another Digital Marketing Podcast brought to you by First Page Digital – Singapore and Hong Kong.
Rafie Edruce:
For this week’s podcast, the topic is social media right now. Aaron we put some time aside to catch this Netflix documentary that has been, let us say it went viral a few weeks ago, but then again with the news cycle right now with the US election, it kind of got buried, but, you know, I think it’s still something that’s worth talking about The Social Dilemma.
Aaron Radcliffe:
You know, the virality of it, it was, everyone was talking about it for a few days and, you know, with the way that things are in the world, now, the news cycle is so fast that things just kind of come and go, you know, like that, but I’m still hearing people talking about this. And although that, you know, when it was really a driving force in conversation, it’s definitely quieted down a little bit. People are still talking about it. It’s definitely seemed to have a resounding effect on people’s awareness of social media and the dilemma that currently occurs because of it. So I don’t think we’re too late on the train. Yeah. I, I would, I don’t think
Rafie Edruce:
The social media will ever die at this point. So I think it’s relevant for us to talk about it no matter when we decided to really conversation having said that though, I mean you know, having watched it, I mean, we’ll go a little bit more in-depth you know, as we go along in this, in this episode, but like, you know, did you feel that there was like a bit of an agenda to it or, you know, was, was it play, was it playing it straight or was there a bit of an agenda to it? What do you think if, you know, if I have,
Aaron Radcliffe:
I have to say it definitely seemed watching the documentary, that there was an agenda that they’re pushing and this is typical for most documentaries, you know, they’re trying to prove a point. But especially, you know, more so with this documentary than I feel like with others because of the sort of dramatic flair that they added on top with the fictional sort of actors and the side stories and how doomsday in dystopian, everything sort of ended up being in these like fictional like storylines. So definitely seemed agenda-driven. Not that I argue with the agenda. I actually think they points out that people need to be talking about and that people need to be aware of. But I did feel like it was a little one side of the coin and they tried to talk about the other a little bit, but definitely a bit of an agenda. What do you think?
Rafie Edruce:
No, I mean, it set out to paint social media in a very terrifying light, and I think it’s succeeded in doing that to a large degree, we’ll go into the details later on you know, but I do feel that they could have talked about the positive influence that social media has had on our lives a little bit more. It just felt like it just felt incredibly lopsided. And this is a one of those, you know, there are fine on both people’s sides of the argument. Right. but it’s something along the lines of, you know, there, there, there could have been more to sort of talk about, you know, it’s not all doom and gloom at least give us a little bit of a real
Aaron Radcliffe:
Light, a bit more, right. Just give us some light at the end of the tunnel. And they touched upon it a few times. You know, there was a few comments made by some different people that are interviewing where they did try to say, Hey, this is all not bad, but a lot of it is. So there were some efforts, but it was definitely pushing a, a doom and gloom type agenda, which obviously there are undeniable aspects of that, you know, with social media in our current times. But I would’ve liked to have seen a little bit of, you know, a little bit more both sides.
Rafie Edruce:
All right. Yeah. I, I completely agree with you there let’s dig into it. Shall we say
Aaron Radcliffe:
So let’s dig in. I’m hungry.
Rafie Edruce:
So we opened with a guy named Triston, right? Who in the documentary labels him as Silicon Valley’s conscience? Right. And he attained this nickname because he crafted a presentation about ethical design while he was at Google. Right. And shared it with everybody. And apparently, the whole thing went viral, you know, and cause he was referencing ethical design with reference to his addiction to email. Right. And he loves emails so much. He’s always checking his emails, sending emails and I’m guilty as charged with that one. Yeah. I think we all are. And then, you know, of all the wonderful products that Google was putting out, he noticed that nobody was talking about how addictive email was right. And so he decided like, you know what, I need to address this. And he sends out a presentation talking about ethical design and, and the responsibility that people have that Google has to create products that aren’t this crazy addictive.
Rafie Edruce:
And it reminded me of Jerry McGuire in the movie, Jerry McGuire, who, you know, for those of you that aren’t familiar with Jerry Maguire, he’s a sports agent. And at some point he has an attack of conscience. He realizes that he treats his clients just like money. You know, he treats him like, they’re just banks, you know, that they’re giving him money and he doesn’t see them as human beings. And he writes a memo asking everybody to treat athletes like humans instead. And he, and the result is the same for the both of them. People pay attention to them for a short while. And then eventually they both get ostracized by their respective industries and, you know, come out of the entire experience as changed men, wanting to make their chosen industry much better. Right. So I thought that was an interesting parallel, you know?
Aaron Radcliffe:
Well, yeah, you mentioned that analogy. We were chatting about this last night and you mentioned the analogy to me and I really liked it now full disclaimer. I’ve actually never seen Jerry McGuire, but I’m very well, I’m very, I’m very well aware of Jerry McGuire, the storyline, Tom cruise, show me the money, you know? But yeah, I thought it was a really interesting analogy and they’re similar because in the same way that the product, whether it’s social media on one hand or fictional Jerry Maguire and him being a sports agent, you know, the product is all driven by money by capital. You know, hence since the line, the show me the money line and, you know, at the end of the day, the problem that we’re having with social media is that these companies are driven by profits. And sometimes what is good for human beings, isn’t always good for the bottom line of Facebook and their shareholders and trying to raise their company value on a quarter by quarter basis. So we have that contrast right there, but that’s a common thing with companies across the world, you know, like, you know, capitalism for its pros and its cons is driven by money and that, you know, creates competition, which creates better products. But the argument is that we’ve never seen a product that can affect civilization and culture on this scale. And that’s the difference in this is that this is so beyond anything else that we’ve experienced as a collective sort of culture and collective sort of just experience. And it’s a little scary,
Rafie Edruce:
It’s more than scary because it’s absolutely, gut-wrenchingly terrifying. You know, I don’t like horror movies, but I fell. I was watching one. Yes,
Aaron Radcliffe:
Well, I was stressed. I was stressed as hell after that I needed like a glass of wine and I just needed like to relax because that was a stressful experience.
Rafie Edruce:
Yeah. There’s one thing like, you know, cause when, when they were breaking it down, right. And you know, we know social media is addictive. Right. We know this because millions, billions of people are on it every single day. But when they broke it down as to why it’s so addictive is when it got really, really scary.
Aaron Radcliffe:
Yeah. Cause I’m very interesting too, because it was very insightful. I think that did a good job of sort of giving you an a good explanation of how these algorithms and the machine learning work, but yeah, go on. Yeah.
Rafie Edruce:
Yeah. Cause you know, I’ll just illustrate it with like a couple of examples that I remember from, from the documentary. You know, they talked about how every single aspect of social media is just one of many millions of tiny experiments that they’re, they’re doing on you every single day, every single second that you’re on social. Right. you know, two people who have the same, you know, political views, the same circle of friends, you know, even the same interests, right. We’ll have wildly Facebook feeds, right. Just to see who reacts better, who stays on the content more compared to, you know, like what we call AB testing, right. Just to see which form of content delivery gets that person to stay in social,
Aaron Radcliffe:
Of course. And as to where we do like a B test, you know, they’re doing a, B, C, D E F G is as far as the eye can see. And you know, they’re, they’re amplifying it in a way that has never been done before. And that’s, that’s the genius in this product. I mean, at the end of the day, the product is pretty incredible for what it does, what it can do. Those micro experiments that they’re doing on a, on a user by user, by user level to make their algorithms smarter is, is a Testament to the genius of the engineers who have created these programs. The problem is that obviously it’s, it’s, it’s being leveraged in the wrong way sometimes. Yeah.
Rafie Edruce:
And the thing is that as a result of those experiments, they, you know, they find out what you connect with and how you connect with others. Right. And this preys on our biological imperative, right. In our DNA to connect with other people, to, you know, to sort of form these bonds, right. And it’s this constant like drip feed of connection with others and whatnot that forms the basis for all of the social media addiction that we all experience and is. And it’s just playing with our, with our biology and, and it’s, and it’s, it’s scary.
Aaron Radcliffe:
Yeah, man, it, it, it definitely is. But I do want to take this, this, this opportunity. Cause I, I want to, I did want to say something in this episode and I’m going to take this opportunity and we’re going to call it and quick rant. Okay. And I just want to say that while it’s absolutely terrifying and there are 100% crucial problems with social media that we need to address. I don’t know. I think that it’s also important to see the other side of the coin with not just social media, but with technology in general, as to where, you know, while there is this undeniable doom and gloom, not arguing that there’s a lot of positives with this that, you know, you and I were talking about. And, you know, I think we also need to focus on some of these, you know, social media also gives people the ability to start a business for free, you know, like things like this such, such, such a concept was it was in, in, in describe, you know, you couldn’t even imagine that years past, you know, so, so the, the, you know, social media and the internet, and I’m just, and I know you were saying, you love the internet.
Aaron Radcliffe:
I love the internet. And I want a beautiful, weird open internet for the whole world to connect. And there is that element of it that social media has made so amazing that like a stay at home mom can start a business and use Facebook for free to market her business and to create a business and, and, and to, and to make sales and to generate sales like that is astonishing, you know? And so I just want to make sure that we do clarify that while there is this doom and gloom ness to the entirety, it’s like, there’s also great things as well. That’s all I just want to make. I just want to throw a little optimism to the podcast. Sure. That everyone heard my quick rant and rant is over.
Rafie Edruce:
No, that’s fine. I, I, I understand where you’re coming from. Yeah,
Aaron Radcliffe:
Yeah. We were talking about this last night and you, you completely agreed. Yeah. I’ll be a dude
Rafie Edruce:
Sarah about this, and you can be the, the, the angel of optimism in all of this, you know,
Aaron Radcliffe:
I should change my job title here from, from content due to, to angel of optimism. You got away with words, Rafi, I’m telling you, you’re, you’re a poet man.
Rafie Edruce:
You know, that’s, that’s what I try to be. Try,
Aaron Radcliffe:
Try Michigan.
Rafie Edruce:
Usually I usually can get my point across quite well, I think. Yeah. Maybe that’s why I suppose that’s why they hired me. So that’s, that’s all good.
Aaron Radcliffe:
Makes sense. Yeah. yeah, so there’s,
Rafie Edruce:
There’s just one note that I feel that we need to talk about because it’s something that was mentioned in the documentary and you know, playing on to that whole idea of like forming connections and whatnot. Right. And like you said, like people can start businesses up from basically zero, you know, and then put in a little bit of effort and all that. And he could reach thousands of people, you know, as long as they have a good product and a good message, that sort of stuff. Right. But then you know, in, in traditional like marketing terms, you know, you, if we go to say we go back far enough before, say the internet, we talk about, you know, you put a billboards, you put ads in newspapers and whatnot. You know, and, and the, the people that would then speak to you would be people that were interested in your product or your service.
Rafie Edruce:
Right. And more often than not, you know, it’s a, it’s a transactional conversation, right? Oh yeah. We’re having some technical issues here, Erin, my man, are you there? Hey, I’m here, man. Can you hand your back? Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Sorry. As I was saying, we were talking about yeah, traditional marketing, right? Like you know, traditional advertising where you put up billboards, you put ads in newspapers, put ads on radio or on TV, and then people that would actually make the effort to reach out and look for you would be very interested in either trying out your product or actually engage in your services. Right. It’d be a hot lead. Yeah. A hot lead. Right. So more often than not the conversation that would happen would have a, you know, a high degree of interest in whatever it is that you’re selling already.
Rafie Edruce:
Right. The thing is that nowadays with social media, you know, you could put a product out there that, you know, that’s that piece of a very niche market, right. And might not necessarily have the widest appeal or, you know, that sort of thing. And there’s nothing stopping, you know, some snotty nosed Cheeto, dust, dust, fingered, a tyrant on the internet going, Oh, you know, this product is so late and blah, blah, blah. And then they create a meme out of it. And then, you know, next thing you know, your business is being ridiculed and your product is, you know, is being is being maimed for all the wrong reasons. Right. And that reminded me of something that was said in the documentary where they said, we might have evolved to have higher brain functions, but have we evolved to absorb the fallout from knowing what 10,000 people think of us all at the same time?
Aaron Radcliffe:
Quote. Yeah, definitely. One of the quotes from the documentary that stood out to me, because it does make you think, because we’re evolving at such an exponential rates with our technological capabilities that, you know, it took us like a thousand years to conquer fire, you know? And then in like 60 years, we invented the airplane and then went to the moon, like the difference of the technological advancement. You can’t even compare the two. And it’s really interesting because we are, we are biologically Cree, you know, we, we have, let me start that over evolution has sort of created us, you know, to this, the biological creatures that we currently are. And yeah. Are we prepared for that? Are we biologically evolved to handle what 10,000, 20,000, even a hundred people think of us? Are we, you know, are we evolved at all to even understand how to handle the way that these things impact us emotionally? It’s a great quote. And it’s really thought provoking.
Rafie Edruce:
Yeah. And it’s like, you know, I mean, okay I’ll play the angel of optimism for this, for this particular segment. Oh, we’re switching roles, role places for just for a while, you know? Cause you know, the thing is that like, you know, yeah, 10,000 people might say something terrible about your product or whatever and whatnot. Right. Or say something terrible about you as the business owner, because you know, people are people and yeah, they’ll, they’ll, they’ll say things like this, but on the flip side, what happens if 10,000 people don’t like you, but a hundred thousand or a million do a million people say nice things about you, you know, and whatnot. And you know, it’s. Yeah. And, and you would think then, you know, is the trade-off worth it right. In the sense that yeah, I have 10,000 people seeing crap about me, but then I have a million Morrissey now, now you’re doing great. You’re doing fine. You know what I mean? It’s like, you know, like there’s good and bad to it as always right.
Aaron Radcliffe:
There absolutely is. That was a good little, you make a good angel of optimism
Rafie Edruce:
Like that. Yeah. I do. I do. I know you can’t see my halo, but yeah. It’s there it’s, it’s hidden under the horns. Yeah. It’s the hair that’s like hiding everything today, so yeah. But like, yeah. So going on from that, right. Another thing that they touched on in the documentary was AI. Okay. And you know, we, in marketing, we use, we use AI a lot. We use machine learning, we use algorithms a lot. Right. I mean, that, that helps us you know, that helps us figure out you know, like audiences that helps us, you know, target you know, target our campaigns a little bit better. You know, we want to reach people that would, would have a positive experience with whatever it is that we’re marketing. Right. of course, yeah. And there was a, there was a, there was another line that was really great in, in the documentary that talked about how everyone talks about the doom that will happen if AI, you know, when, if AI takes over the world, but then they fail to realize that AI already runs the world. Right. And this hit home to me because it was like, okay, hang on a minute. You know what, I’m what I’m setting up my campaigns. And I’m doing my market research. I’m, you know, going into a portal, typing in my parameters, my search parameters and the algorithm and the AI feeds me this information. And I act on it. AI already runs our lives. Doesn’t it
Aaron Radcliffe:
In so many ways. And that’s, what’s so interesting about the documentary is that sort of highlights that and it makes it, you might, you know, because we grew up watching movies like the matrix and Terminator and thinking like, Oh, that’s, that’s what that’s, what’s going to happen when the machines really take over. But it’s actually, it’s proven to be a little bit more subtle. Now the machines haven’t quite taken over, I’m not trying to, you know, blow this be too dramatic. But in the essence of our dependence on them you know, whether it’s, whether it’s an artificial intelligence or some sort of algorithm for a social media platform or some sort of algorithm for like city planning, I mean, algorithms are everywhere. They are, we are interacting with them on a day to day, hour by hour, minute by minute basis.
Aaron Radcliffe:
And this documentary just sort of made you realize how we are actually engaging with these. Like let’s just use Facebook or social media as an example. And as we engage with them more and more, the algorithms increasingly grow smarter and smarter and more and more capable of knowing exactly what they want, the best type of content to put in front of you that can then lead to you being on the platform for more time, which then equals more ad revenue for the company. It’s the circle of life and the AI gets smarter and smarter. So, it is interesting because yeah, it is kind of already here in a lot of ways in terms of our dependence on these algorithms and this artificial intelligence.
Rafie Edruce:
It’s sick. It’s funny that you mentioned the matrix. Okay. Because they referenced the matrix quite a lot in the documentary. They mentioned it, I think at least three or four times right now, this whole thing about AI, you know, controlling our lives, you know, and already running the world reminds me of an interaction between Neo and counselor Hammond in the second movie, right. In the matrix reloaded where they’re down in the basement of the last human city of Xyrem Zion. Right. And they’re looking at all these machines that are, you know, purifying the water, purifying the air, you know, recycling their waste product, all that stuff. And they have this very interesting conversation about, you know you know, who controls, who do the machines control us or do we control the machines? And Neo says, you know, no, we control the machines. We could shut them down at any time the machines, you know, they, they, they, they live and die.
Rafie Edruce:
According to what we want to watch, to which point then councillor Hammond says, yes, we could shut down the machines at any time. But if we do that, the city dies. Everybody in the city dies. If we make that decision to shut down the machines and Neo is left very uncomfortable by that conversation. And as was I at the time when he goes, am I right now? Yeah, because this came out in 2002, this movie, you know, and it’s quite prescient when you think about it, like the themes that it was discussing back then you know, and then we see how it applies now. And we think, okay, if, if we were to remove all the algorithms, they say, we got rid of social media tomorrow. Right. We got rid of all of the algorithms you got rid of all of the AI that helps us, you know, with our, with our campaigns and whatnot. Right. What did you think would happen?
Aaron Radcliffe:
Oh, wow. That is a really extreme hypothetical question. I think that, I mean, we’re definitely at a point in society where I think that we could live without AI, you know, if it were to disappear overnight, hypothetically, I think that we would be able to, it would be okay. But I think that as our dependency increases over time and not just from a social media platform, just in terms of like everyday lives and, and, and things like, like I said, things like city planning are increasingly reliant on artificial intelligence. There’s so many different industries. Everything’s, you know, you hear about, you know, San Francisco and like, you know, the Valley, and everyone’s always talking about, you know, proprietary algorithms, you know, everybody wants some proprietary algorithm for their software, which increases its intelligence over time. So I guess to answer your question, I think that we’d be, we’d find a way to move on like now, but like five, 10, 15 years in the future our dependence is just increasing on these algorithms by the day. Yeah.
Rafie Edruce:
I’m trying to figure out you know, like what would be good if we kept it and we somehow managed to get rid of all the bad boots. Right. But then, you know, that brings me on to something else that I recall where one of the former Google employees that was interviewed by the documentary said that we, you know, we live in this very, very crazy time where it’s a simultaneous utopia and dystopia at the same time, we’ve talked about all the bad stuff. You know, the, the addiction, the, you know, the, the AI, you know, how our lives are slowly being run more and more by algorithms, you know, how we seem to be losing control of that. But at the same time, you know, if I needed to go from point a to point B from one end of Singapore together would just go out on the curb. I pull out my phone, I call the car, it’s there in five minutes. And that is it a freaking miracle. Yeah. And you couldn’t have done that, like, you know, 10, 15 years ago, right. That was not possible. Right?
Aaron Radcliffe:
No. And even like more specifically towards our industry, you know, like the ability for us to do advertising on Facebook and create lookalike audiences. So we’re ensuring that the people that we’re marketing for and our clients are getting their products directly in front of people that are extremely interested in their product. I mean, that is so powerful, you know, and it’s also interesting on the consumer side, because less and less than my being dealt ads, that I’m not interested in and more and more on being dealt ads and products that I am interested in, which as a consumer, I kind of like, you know, like I don’t, I don’t, you know, there’s commercials that I just didn’t care about. It seemed like it was a waste of money on me, but I’m getting a lot of, you know, these days we’re getting more and more used to direct sort of ads being placed in front of us.
Aaron Radcliffe:
And then I just rather see ads, the products that I’m interested in versus ads, the products that I’m not interested, that’s just my opinion. I’m not sure, but so it’s one of the other positive ends. So on the marketing side, it has given us incredible tools to be able to target people. And, and that’s, that’s the key word right there is targeting whether it’s Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Tik TOK ads, Google ads, the ability to sort of target an audience has been, has been great for our industry and great for the return on investment from our clients.
Rafie Edruce:
Yeah. And, you know, I think for people as well in that sort of, you know, scenario where they’re being served, you know, content and products and services that they’re actually interested in, you know, for me, it’s like it sort of, I think this happened, you know, when Facebook first changed their, their first major algorithm change, sometime in 2016, 2017 you know, leading into 2018 when they talked about what w you know, the, the way that they were changing, how to serve ads, for example, right. And they would prioritize, you know, people’s conversations and whatnot, you know, that meant that the ad space, you know, that was being served to people was definitely less, but that at the same time, you know, that ad space was then reserved for stuff that was going to be far more relevant to you as a, as a user, in that case rather than being served, something that was completely
