Is “Ethical Social Media” an Oxymoron?
Looking for Healthy Connection: Why I’m Shifting to Vero-True-Social
I am asking myself (and the world) how to use social media to deepen authentic connection and share thoughts without subjecting one another to predatory marketing practices, invasion of privacy, and worse. I am doing this because my formula for finding the heart of medicine is about the deep alignment of values with practices, and I want avenues to create and share content like the Missing Curriculum. I also want to show that we can reshape our practices in ways that don’t make us feel like dung beetles rolling a ball of shit uphill in an inevitable Sysiphean eternity.* We can support one another and validate the power and importance of making incremental changes that suit us individually but sum to a cultural shift and truer health. Part of my work is to make regular offerings as examples to kindle that kind of change, to provide a lift, and to engage in ways that run true to each other and our humanitarian calling.
I’ve almost gotten used to being surveilled in the ways that bring targeted ads into my internet space. Then I watched The Social Dilemma** a couple of weeks ago on Netflix and had my mind blown. It’s a documentary featuring tech thought leaders who bailed on their social media jobs when they came to terms with what they were helping create. There were elements of this story that were dimly known to me, like pieces of a puzzle, but this movie assembles the pieces into the bigger picture. It’s not good. It’s also not healthy, so that makes it our business in particular. Here are my take-aways:
We aren’t the customers of these platforms. We’re the product. Our attention is being sold by social media platforms to their real, paying customers.
The longer these platforms hold our attention, the more they learn about us and the more valuable their data becomes to business interests.
A sophisticated, entirely unique data profile is created of each one of us that is continuously refined by input from our subsequent activity on the internet.
Our unique profile is used to manipulate our thoughts and behavior without our awareness, much more dangerous than irritating targetted ads. These algorithms work like the Wizard of Oz, pulling levers behind the curtain, bringing things into our peripheral awareness, beckoning our engagement.
Knowing that people are hardwired to attend to threats, disruptions of expectation, and novelty, a distinct “reality” is created for each of us based on our profile that powerfully predicts what we will find novel and hold our attention.
The emphasis on attention-grabbing threat amplifies social polarization by distorting our perspective and overriding our pro-social inclinations.
These platforms are intentionally addictive and potentially harmful to our mental health, especially for young people. They harness our biological drive for connection, and the little neuroendocrine “rewards” we get cause us to keep pressing the bar, picking up the phone, checking email, responding to push notifications, delivering more of our attention to the algorithms and markets in a self-propagating loop.
Looking for a more ethical platform, I have settled on Vero-True-Social because there are no ads, no algorithms, and no data mining. That makes it distinct from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I’ll continue to use LinkedIn because of some of what else it offers. I have reluctantly used FaceBook but personally am wanting to get away from it (and never really wanted to be involved in the first place). In the interest of full disclosure, I have not done a thorough investigation of the financial model for Vero. For now, it’s free, but they reportedly are considering a subscription plan. I myself would prefer to pay a little than have my attention hijacked. I will be posting short pieces, delectables that aim to fuel finding joy in medicine, a tiny bit at a time. Good Medicine. My handle on Vero is @laurenkosinskimd. Like Instagram, the only way to sign up for Vero is from your phone. Even if you don’t connect with me there, you might prefer their agenda to what else is going on. While you’re at it, consider turning off all push notifications except those you absolutely, nonaddictively want. Use the Do Not Disturb function on your phone selectively and on a scheduled basis if you can manage that—it’s hard in many specialties and roles to ever be unavailable. And don’t take click bait; choose what you browse intentionally, knowing that you give away a little of yourself with every click.
*Thanks to Jim Doty, MD for this mental picture during the recording of our convo for Sound Medicine Podcast (although the expletive is mine—he did NOT say s#!+) **Check out The Social Dilemma on Netflix if you’re curious about this and want to make better choices for yourself and your family. I found more information at the Center for Humane Technology and in Krista Tippett’s OnBeing conversation with Anil Dash, “Tech’s Moral Reckoning.”
