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A comment on The Social Dilemma. Parent comment

Re:The Social Dilemma by cmehdy on Sunday September 20, 2020 @11:14PM (#24539442)
Nielsen ratings[0] have been a thing since the 1930s, so in a way people's attention has indeed been commoditized for a while now - only with an increasing granularity that has now reached some of an individual's metrics (and we're continuing to go along that path with smart devices and addition of sensors).

I'm not sure why saying to people that their attention and subsequent changes in behaviours were the fundamental parts of entire markets would be conspiratorial, but I might be misunderstanding you.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_ratings

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Re:The Social Dilemma by 1propionyl on Monday September 21, 2020 @06:47AM (#24541866)
Two key differences:

1. Nielsen boxes were and are opt-in.

2. You were and are compensated for keeping one.

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Re:The Social Dilemma by cmehdy on Monday September 21, 2020 @08:53AM (#24542726)
1. Social media is opt-in

2. You are compensated by accessing an incredibly complex system and network for free where otherwise you would have to maintain or pay for some kind of infrastructure.

(I am playing the devil's advocate here because it is interesting to me to understand in what way other than granularity this would be any different from the way the media has been communicated to us for a long time)

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