[Script] The Sins of Silicon Valley - Act 2, Scene 6 (Continued)

 [Images of Psychology]

VO: Psychology is a powerful science that is a bit younger than our so called ‘hard’ sciences like Chemistry, Physics or even regular biology.  There is a lot about the brain and human behavior we’ve learned, but despite being inexact, because we as complex social animals are complex; there is still a lot that has been learned.  We are living organisms; we respond to stimulus, and governments and universities have poured billions of dollars into understanding what it is that makes people tick.

[Image of Stanford and Milgram Experiments]

VO: Two of the most notorious examples of human experimentation in psychology were the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments.  In Milgram, they connected a person up to electric wires to determine how much shock someone was willing to do under orders from an authority figure.  And let's just say it wasn't pretty.  In the Stanford Prison experiment, they had participants become prisoners and guards.  The Guards began to act more and more authoritarian, and things got worse and worse for the prisoners until after six days, the whole thing was shut down.  Now, some justifiably question a lot of things about these experiments but one thing that did happen was reform requiring more consent from people before they took part in one of these experiments.  Meaning, to be part of a psychological experiment, you need to consent to participate, and it has to be informed consent.

[Image of Facebook and addiction]

VO: And back to Facebook.  There is a popular element in software called Gamification.  It means that you get tiny little rewards for continued behavior; and facebook does this masterfully.  Again, remember the little games they used to have like Mafiawars or Farmtown where you were there to click and click and click to getahead.  Eventually, Facebook screwed Zynga, the company that made those games over when their research showed them that they had people hooked enough that they could make people click on outrage or fear instead.  Make no mistake, Facebook knew exactly what it was doing when it made the timeline less about your friends and more about conspiracies and outrage factories because by manipulating your emotions, you got addicted and made them more money.

[Image of Science images]

VO: But lets remember what an experiment is.  It means you have an idea; like Rocks can levitate things with their mind…and then use a hypothesis to test if rocks can do that.  You set things up, watch, repeat, and have a control group of say…plastic rocks that dont levitate things.  The point is, you have a theory, you test that theory and look at the result.

[Images of Teens and Children]

VO: Officially, teens as young as 13 can sign up for facebook, but realistically they are a lot younger than that.  But even 13 is a problem.  

[Images of Southpark and Eula episode]

VO: We’ve all read horror stories about the EULA, even if most people still dont actually read them.  But since our corrupt courts and captured alphabet organizations are useless against Big Tech; they can put illegal and unethical things in there and not get challenged on it. 

[Images of Clockwork Orange and Medeival Torture]

VO: But it doesn't matter what they put there; a 13 year old can’t give consent.  They simply can’t.  There is no country in the world where a 13 year old can, without their parents, given consent to take part in a psychological experiment.  Do you see? We know Facebook tests its psychologically addictive content on control groups to see what is more engaging..ie addictive, and we know that there are 13 year olds using it.  Millions upon millions of them.  That makes Facebook the largest unregulated experiment in human  history; and no one is taking them to task for this.  

[Images of Regulatory Agencies]

VO: All of these people have examined or in some cases even fined Facebook, but no one is thinking of the children.  If we won’t even enforce existing law, how are we going to ever hold these giants to account?