I'm still undecided if the most shocking part of all that is how bad their data is, dedup-wise; how ancient is their tech; how unethical it all is; or how much every journalist or researcher working on AI and Ethics could not care less about this.

What sucks is that I get the reason why the researchers don't care or gloss over it. It's why I initially got into the space: there's something magical about working on massive data sets and unlocking possibilities with it.

I worked on the largest social data set available from the major providers (~20PB or so) and it was super cool (from a PM perspective) to unlock the possibilities around analyzing the data set.

The idea that I can unlock insights and change behaviors is an alluring concept until it is used improperly or inappropriately. That was ultimately why I left the data/marketing world.

When is using data on people to manipulate their behaviors _not_ inappropriate? That's straight up evil.

When they opt in. Going to the gym more, stopping smoking (or other bad habits), driving safer, cutting down on media consumption.

Unfortunately positive change is harder to elicit than negative change.

There’s are companies trying to help you lose bad habits that let you program alerts, set budgets, etc.

- Freedom, RescueTime do that for your web-use;

- my bank (Monzo) and a stealth company by alumni thereof do it for your spending.

There have also been a lot of efforts at Facebook to show you content that would lead you to have more positive interactions, like posting similar things yourself rather than be a passive spectator.

I’m involved in several of those projects.

> There have also been a lot of efforts at Facebook to show you content that would lead you to have more positive interactions, like posting similar things yourself rather than be a passive spectator.

The other examples are decent (if you explicitly opt-in, not just mindlessly click a checkbox), but that Facebook one...seriously? It is extremely disappointing to see someone use that as an example of "good manipulation" on a site like this non-sarcastically. How could it be good for a corporation to hire psychologists to manipulate customers into spending more time on their product? Especially a product that is known to negatively affect mental health. It's hardly any different from Joe Camel trying to push kids to smoke.

> How could it be good for a corporation to hire psychologists to manipulate customers into spending more time on their product?

The effort was precisely to offer a different objective than time spent on the site, that is a reasonable first approximation for usability and relevance, but not a good self-referential objective. There is evidence that mirroring content has a positive psychological impact.

If I used data to find people who were starting to lean into anti-vax conspiracies and provided them with accurate information about vaccines to change the behaviour of some parents - is that straight up evil?

How about identifying people who are likely to fall for a scam (e.g. whose friends have just invested in a Ponzi scheme) and give them info on how to avoid a scam?

Straight up evil is massively overplaying it.

Yes. Someone failed you.

What's evil about providing life saving, accurate information to people at a time they most need it?