Todd Sampson’s warning: ‘These companies will do anything to get advertising in front of us’
“I think we’re on the cusp of massive societal change,” Todd Sampson, writer and creator of Mirror Mirror: Love & Hate told Mumbrella. “We’re reaching a kind of wake-up phase where people are seeing the correlation between mental health, suicide, and ADHD, and all of these things are now being related to and resourced around our internet usage.”
“I also think there’s going to be a corporate revolution, not a societal shift,” Sampson explained, adding “but a corporate one, with corporate responsibility, particularly around privacy, which has been a very loosely traded thing.”
There’s no doubt the internet is the most powerful, mind-altering thing on earth. The world wide web is certainly affecting how we relate to each other, and how we love and hate, but what impact will this have on our future, and what does this mean for advertisers?
Over two nights, in a Baltimore Films production for Network 10, Sampson explores how the internet is changing us and what we can do about it. But, the question remains, are we too late?
“In Mirror Mirror, we focused primarily on the influence of the internet and how it’s changing our kids, our attitudes and our minds,” he said. “At the heart of it is advertising, the attention-based advertising model, where these companies will do pretty much anything to hold our attention long enough to get advertising in front of us. And that comes with a huge cost. And it’s only now that we realise and the research is coming in explaining what that cost is.”
“I’m not anti-tech, and I’m certainly not anti-advertising. It’s been my career for most of my life. But what’s the cost of all of this?” said Sampson. “There was a stage where Mark Zuckerberg came out and said, 80% of all new advertising dollars were spent on Facebook. Okay, what cost is out of this? And you could argue that we are potentially wasting away a generation of kids in the name of their profit. And it’s a monopoly.”
Sampson explained that a company’s trust will become increasingly important as consumers turn to them to generate change and regulation.
“We as consumers will look to companies that will uphold our trust, and look to companies that know when and how to draw the lines and say, ‘Okay, we are not going to sell your data to Facebook’, or ‘We’re not going to allow you to be advertising on only fans when your programmatic just slaps you on there,” he said. “We’re not just going to follow the machines, we’re not just going to follow the algorithm.’ I think that we’ll find another generation of companies that are digitally savvy, that is going to be responsible on behalf of customers. And I think those companies will have a corporate reputation that people will be drawn towards.”
Looking back, Sampson noted that regulation of the internet is a priority following his months of research in making the film.
“I believe regulation is on its way, and I want regulation when it comes to the internet,” said Sampson. “I’m not pro-regulation in general, because I’m not pro-government in general, because I don’t think that they’re necessarily the best regulators on the planet. But, when it comes to the internet, 4.6 billion people are now glued in a social experiment controlled by a handful of white American men. They are totally under Section 230, unregulated. They’re considered neutral media.”
In the second episode, Sampson explores the world of the metaverse, particularly the primary motivations for it being created.
“Currently, Google primarily controls Facebook, because that’s the channel in. Particularly Google and Apple, are arguably the two most powerful forces that exist from a tech perspective. And those, especially Apple now, and you can see Apple just went public with all its privacy advertising, so clever,” he admitted. “And so Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook and all social media love to sidestep the mobile phone because the biggest impact mobile phone could have on Facebook is ad blocking.
Sampson said if they do that, “Facebook’s in a huge amount of trouble.”
“So, what Facebook wants to do is move us off the mobile device and into the metaverse,” he said, adding, “that’s why they bought Oculus, a company that makes virtual reality headsets.”
“The problems of Metaverse, as we cover in the film, one of the developers and creators of the metaverse went into the metaverse in one of their trials and was gang raped within 20 minutes of being in there because now you imagine the issues of anonymity, anonymity and invisibility,” he said.
From personal experience, Sampson said virtual sites are uncomfortably addictive, and scary. “I went into one of those virtual sites, chat sites, one of their models, and it was crazy, and first of all, it was incredibly addictive. But, also, again, within minutes, I saw these people following these kids in the corner, and it’s going to take what we know and amplify the negatives. And that’s scary.”
To begin the two-part series, Sampson said the opening scene is confronting and will shock viewers, but believes it was necessary to show it how it is, unfiltered, to warn parents over the dangers that lurk on the internet.
“The opening scene on Monday’s episode is huge, it’s shocking. We barely got it on commercial television at a 730pm time slot, but we thought it was so important to show parents the world in which they live, even if it involves people being shocked by it,” said Sampson. “There are two different worlds going on. There’s a whole generation of kids, my daughter’s included, that live online. That’s everything for them. And then there’s us, another generation that had the option, you know, we were before the internet, or before mobile internet, and we know the world without it. My kids don’t. And my biggest worry, is that it’s one of the driving forces of the series, are we wasting a generation of kids? Are we wasting a generation of children?”
“There is plenty we can do. In the series, we put up lots of techniques and lots of things we could use,” he added. “And I think corporations and the ones that are advertising on these mediums are going to put pressure on these companies as well. They’re going to put pressure on these companies to do the right thing.”
Mirror Mirror: Love & Hate starts Monday, 10 October and continues Tuesday, 11 October, 7.30pm on Ten and 10 Play.
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