[HN Gopher] "User engagement" is code for "addiction"
___________________________________________________________________
"User engagement" is code for "addiction"
Author : rbanffy
Score : 339 points
Date : 2021-03-04 19:07 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (medium.com)
| [deleted]
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| Imagine how different social media would look if it were
| subscription based and required much, much less investment and
| revenue could grow linearly with the userbase.
|
| The incentive of an ad-supported, vc-funded social media is to
| addict you.
|
| The incentive of a subscription service is to be useful enough
| that you stay subscribed. If you log in once a week but never
| cancel, that's the ideal situation for a subscription service.
|
| What I wrestle with is whether consumers will ever accept a small
| subscription fee (and I mean VERY small) after they've been given
| everything for free, even if it meant less psychological
| manipulation, no ads and strong privacy.
| ldbooth wrote:
| Let's talk about taxing the 'user engagement' companies similar
| to what is done with cigarettes and alcohol.
|
| Mess with their money.
| HNfriend234 wrote:
| Social media is a perfect example of where this is used. I know
| countless people that are literally addicted to it. They want to
| see every new update continuously and the social media apps are
| designed to do this through notifications.
|
| I saw this clear as day when I was at jury duty. We were waiting
| for the court to get back into session. There was a girl sitting
| next to me on the bench and I noticed about every 5 minutes she
| would open up her phone and go through her routine. First pull up
| facebook, scroll through it. Close the app then pull up
| instragram, scroll through. She did this consistently for the
| entire 2 hours we were sitting there (the court was delayed). If
| that isn't addiction, I don't know what is.
|
| Then look at all the mental health problems young people are
| having these days - bullying, depression, suicide etc. and I
| would say a big part of that is influenced by social media.
| People see other people living the "good life" and they get
| depressed because they can't have the same. Young women see
| "pretty" women on Instagram and they know they can never compete
| with that, so their self esteem drops to nothing. Then you have
| all the bullying that goes on as well. Completely toxic
| environment.
|
| Social media is the cigarette of our generation.
| bosswipe wrote:
| > Then look at all the mental health problems young people are
| having these days
|
| Is there any evidence that mental health is worse than for
| previous generations?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Is there any evidence that mental health is worse than for
| previous generations?_
|
| I don't think so. But people do seem more fragile these days.
|
| Still, even if it isn't worse, that doesn't mean we shouldn't
| try to do something about it.
| C19is20 wrote:
| Couldn't' 'seeming more fragile these days' be a part of
| copycatting, in that if person X got offended by something,
| then these addicted-to-social media-types copy the
| behaviour...and then some?
| [deleted]
| foofoo4u wrote:
| Two sources that show anxiety and depression are on the rise
| with the youth.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/social-
| trends/2019/02/20/most-u-...
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2019/07/12/a-growing-n...
| mdpopescu wrote:
| > If that isn't addiction, I don't know what is.
|
| In my case, boredom. I normally fix that by reading books on my
| Kindle, but if I don't have it for some reason, the phone is a
| good substitute.
| hashkb wrote:
| Kindle app on phone is decent. Better than Instagram.
| alcover wrote:
| I had a girl like this next to me on a train. For the whole one
| hour journey she scrolled and switched between apps in a
| spasmodic manner. At times she would lay the phone down for a
| few secs then resume at once.
|
| It looked sick. It looked like someone on amphetamines.
| polynomial wrote:
| > Social media is the cigarette of our generation.
|
| Except with cigarettes we could point to the very real physical
| harms of lung cancer, emphysema, etc.
|
| With social media we just have vaguely sinister warnings about
| addiction and mental health issues, which can seem paltry in
| comparison.
|
| The former was obviously a health problem that was deranging
| people's bodies, whereas the later is seen largely as a social,
| not a medical, problem.
| hashkb wrote:
| It took a really long time for us to realize that. Doctors
| used to push cigs.
| Shared404 wrote:
| > Then look at all the mental health problems young people are
| having these days - bullying, depression, suicide etc. and I
| would say a big part of that is influenced by social media.
|
| Guess who has suffered through most of those, without any kind
| of social media, outside of HN :)
|
| Edit: And suffered before getting on HN. Seems relevant to the
| situation.
| hector_vasquez wrote:
| "User Engagement" is now indeed code for "Addiction," but not
| because user engagement has changed in any meaningful way. It's
| because society has been transforming terms that used to have
| medical/clinical definitions to mean something completely
| different. PTSD and OCD are two more examples.
| zerocrates wrote:
| Of course that process of "mainstreaming" clinical terms and
| shifting their meaning hasn't meaningfully changed either. See
| as an example the endless treadmill of clinical terms for
| intellectual disabilities re-purposed as insults by the general
| populace, causing the medical community to shift to new ones,
| and so on.
| 8note wrote:
| What did the tobacco industry used to call addiction? It can't
| be that new.
|
| Also, I didn't know that addiction was originally a clinical
| term. til
| Judgmentality wrote:
| I've heard OCD used casually/incorrectly before, but never
| PTSD. Is that really a common term?
| ketzo wrote:
| "Oh man, I hate scrum stuff; I've got some real PTSD from how
| my old job did it"
|
| "I wanna be hopeful about the Bears' playoff run, but I've
| got PTSD from last year's reverse sweep"
|
| I hear stuff like this pretty commonly, yeah.
| haswell wrote:
| I think there are two things going on here.
|
| I personally suffer from C-PTSD (C=Complex) stemming from
| childhood trauma. C-PTSD (generalized as PTSD caused over
| months/years vs. a single or cluster of traumatic events,
| e.g. warfare) is still relatively new compared to the
| traditional understanding of PTSD.
|
| So there is some legitimate expansion of the definition of
| PTSD.
|
| But one thing I've noticed since I received the diagnosis is
| just how many people around me use the term "PTSD" casually.
|
| - "That project gave me PTSD"
|
| - "I have PTSD from my last boss"
|
| - "I have PTSD from the last four years of political
| upheaval"
|
| Now, I should be clear, I do think it's possible to be
| impacted by truly traumatic circumstances that don't rise to
| the level of what we traditionally think about when we hear
| the term.
|
| But I also see the term used far too casually, far too often.
| teh_infallible wrote:
| Agreed. Overuse of these words trivializes the actual
| conditions they originally described.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| Duplicate
| chalst wrote:
| Please link to claims of duplicate submissions. This story is
| not shown before on
| https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=medium.com/swlh
| eesmith wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26153331
| leereeves wrote:
| The previous post had a different URL
| (craigwritescode.medium.com) which now redirects to the URL
| in this post.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26153331
| [deleted]
| Nasrudith wrote:
| I couldn't even finish reading the article - it was just back to
| back vapid sinisterizing cliches with no actual point. That
| conceited paranoid douchebag would call a Chinese takeout menu "a
| plot by communist China to render him utterly dependent upon them
| for sustance, monopolize his income and jeopardize his health
| with MSG".
| falcolas wrote:
| Now, amp that all up with even more colorful light shows and
| sound effects, and you have loot boxes. Also, amusingly enough,
| referred to as "user engagement" by game studio heads (also known
| as "recurring revenue", as if it's a reasonable subscription and
| not a fucking slot machine).
| Nbox9 wrote:
| "Recommendation" is code for "Advertisement".
| teh_infallible wrote:
| The word "addiction" is overused in my opinion. Bad habits are
| not addictions. An addiction is something which actively harms
| you, but you can't stop doing it.
|
| Yes, you can argue social media is harmful, but it generally does
| not cause people to lose their jobs or spend all their money.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I agree that "addiction" can be overused (irony unintentional),
| but I think it can be objectively defined by whether or not it
| causes a lasting biochemical change in the user (eventually),
| which causes discomfort or pain upon withdrawal. Food, for
| example, does not; we enjoy it (sometimes), but having more
| does not make us eat ever-larger amounts (if it's, say, a green
| salad; high-fructose corn syrup I admit the jury is still out).
|
| So, the assertion that social media is "addictive" would
| translate to, "it conditions the user to require a dopamine (or
| whatever) hit that they will return to the social media to
| acquire, and will feel bad (worse than before they used it) if
| they stop using." Whether or not that's true of social media is
| debatable, but I think it is raising at least a valid question.
|
| On the other hand, even though Stack Overflow has a lot of the
| same software features, it has no such problem, so I think the
| important question is what does Facebook do differently than
| Stack Overflow to cause people to spend ever-larger amounts of
| time on it, to no real purpose?
| mpalmer wrote:
| COVID has been more harmful than a deadlier disease would be
| because it spreads more effectively.
|
| If social media caused people to lose their jobs or spend all
| their money, far fewer people would use it, and public
| engagement with the problem would be greater.
|
| I suggest that social media's harm to society is greater
| _because_ it 's less harmful to the individual than gambling,
| etc.
| dharbin wrote:
| Can someone have a gambling addiction? I've often heard that
| gambling addiction is a real problem, so why can't social media
| be addictive? Social media and mobile games like to use similar
| "engagement" techniques as slot machines, for example.
| benlivengood wrote:
| > The word "addiction" is overused in my opinion. Bad habits
| are not addictions. An addiction is something which actively
| harms you, but you can't stop doing it.
|
| I suggest parasitism as a more accurate description of what
| seeking "user engagement" is.
| fartcannon wrote:
| I'm addicted to caffeine. It's relatively harmless, might even
| help me work better. No one ever lost their job or spent all
| their money on caffeine. But it's unquestionably an addiction.
| polynomial wrote:
| Quite a few would lose their jobs if NOT for caffeine, I'd
| wager.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| If we're going into like very technical definitions I believe
| what you're talking about is physical dependence. In a mental
| health context persisting use even after multiple serious
| negative consequences is part of the definition of addiction.
|
| Though even there I think they are moving to phrases like
| "drug use disorder" partly because of usage mismatches like
| this.
| andrewla wrote:
| This kind of semantic game has to stop.
|
| If you water down the meaning of "addiction" enough then you can
| say that anything is "addictive" and with that, you can carry
| over all the connotations of the word.
|
| Then people start saying "I'm addicted to coffee" and "I'm
| addicted to bread" and before you know it people saying "I'm
| addicted to heroin" are met with "well, why don't you just stop,
| like I did with coffee for a week that time".
|
| Since the dawn of time people have tried to make things that
| people want to use. Making "addiction" a synonym for "success" is
| just stupid.
| faitswulff wrote:
| People can be neurochemically addicted to coffee. I suspect the
| same can be said of social media.
| mdpopescu wrote:
| To be honest, I still don't understand how people use the word.
| Am I addicted to water? I have nasty physiological reactions if
| I stop using it. What about sleep? Is that a bad habit I should
| get rid of?
| WaxProlix wrote:
| Addiction has levels to it, and any one addiction isn't going
| to be identical to others. Caffeine addiction is a very real
| thing, as is heroin addiction. Just because the latter can be
| much stronger and more harmful doesn't mean the former can't
| exist.
| alcover wrote:
| Yes it's addiction for many users.
|
| They're hooked on notifications, not disabling them even though
| it interrupts real-life conversations, sleep, scenery enjoying,
| etc..
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| I don't like the current trend of social media apps burying users
| under push notifications, calls to action, and other engagement
| hooks.
|
| However, there's a second, parallel problem adding fuel to the
| fire: The more we talk about overindulgence in social media (or
| Netflix, or video games, or fast food) as an act perpetrated by
| evil corporations on us helpless individuals, the less sense of
| individual agency we give ourselves. I'm not suggesting that we
| let social media companies off the hook, but battling this
| problem is going to require more than simply shaming them in
| Medium posts. We have to start reminding people that they are in
| control of their decisions, and that they can take steps to
| reduce their social media usage to healthy levels.
|
| I know the common refrain is "Delete Facebook!" but that's the
| equivalent of abstinence-only education. We need to start talking
| about how to configure Screen Time on iOS, or how to use
| Facebook's built-in tools to hide content you don't want to see.
| We also need to encourage people to take control of their feeds,
| muting users and topics who draw them into unproductive
| discussions.
| UShouldBWorking wrote:
| Wait till you see what they are doing to women.
| itsjustmath wrote:
| Humane tech has an informative page detailing how to "take
| control": https://www.humanetech.com/take-control
| matwood wrote:
| > We have to start reminding people that they are in control of
| their decisions
|
| Exactly. I not a big FB user, but last year I was on a lot more
| than normal b/c I was home. Then one day I realized I was just
| either arguing with family or reading things that left me
| disappointed, and wondered why am I subjecting myself to this?
| I didn't delete my account because I still use messenger to
| communicate to a few people, but I haven't been on FB proper
| for months.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| > The more we talk about overindulgence in social media (or
| Netflix, or video games, or fast food) as an act perpetrated by
| evil corporations on us helpless individuals, the less sense of
| individual agency we give ourselves.
|
| If it's done well, it should have the opposite effect.
| Describing all the ways that companies are trying to get you
| addicted will help inoculate people against their tricks. In
| order to psychologically defend yourself, you first need to
| understand exactly what you're defending yourself against.
| _greim_ wrote:
| > the common refrain is "Delete Facebook!" but that's the
| equivalent of abstinence-only education. We need to start
| talking about how to configure Screen Time on iOS, or how to
| use Facebook's built-in tools to hide content you don't want to
| see
|
| To this list I'd add the concept of _epistemic hygiene_. Just
| as crowding together in metropolises re-wired our culture to
| value hygiene, these informational metropolises of social media
| will eventually cause us to greatly value epistemic hygiene.
| Seeing a rage-inducing headline would then evoke a kind of
| "ew..." response. At least, this is what I hope will happen.
| Maybe it will require a generational turnover.
| hshshs2 wrote:
| These companies are spending billions to destroy your self
| control, it's a nuanced situation... but they're using absurd
| amounts of power to undermine us. We don't have the high
| ground. They are actively and knowingly manipulating people's
| emotions.
|
| I recognized that I am not equipped to fight them, so I left
| and will encourage others to really think about whether or not
| they can put up a fight. IMO most people don't even know
| they're being manipulated and that's absurdly dangerous.
| AdmiralGinge wrote:
| >We have to start reminding people that they are in control of
| their decisions, and that they can take steps to reduce their
| social media usage to healthy levels. I know the common refrain
| is "Delete Facebook!" but that's the equivalent of abstinence-
| only education. We need to start talking about how to configure
| Screen Time on iOS, or how to use Facebook's built-in tools to
| hide content you don't want to see.
|
| I couldn't agree more, and to add to that I think it's usually
| a foolish approach to treat people as hapless automatons
| without any agency if you're trying to convince them that your
| point is worth listening to. If you look at two of the worst
| political failures in the UK recently (the Remain campaign for
| the Brexit referendum in 2016 and Labour's election campaign in
| 2019), I think what they have in common is that they
| essentially told people "you're a downtrodden proletariat
| buffeted about by forces well outside your control, but we can
| make things better for you" which is such a foolish approach in
| my opinion. Regardless of whether they actually do or not, the
| average person likes to think they're in control of their own
| destiny so blaming everything on Facebook being manipulative
| bastards will never work if your aim is to change the public's
| relationship with social media.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > they essentially told people "you're a downtrodden
| proletariat buffeted about by forces well outside your
| control
|
| That's the plain and simple truth, isn't it? I mean, I don't
| control facebook.
| AdmiralGinge wrote:
| Yeah it might be true, but it's extremely counterproductive
| to point this out when you're trying to convince someone of
| something. People like to feel like they have agency, even
| if it's mostly an illusion.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| People also don't like to be lied to, and most people are
| well aware they don't control Facebook.
| legerdemain wrote:
| I agree! The economic effects of Brexit are difficult or
| impossible to measure, so they're not worth worrying about.
| On the whole, Brexit was good for British people because it
| gave them a feeling of action and momentum, like they had a
| real "hand in history." Britain has never been as energized
| and optimistic as it has been post-Brexit.
|
| In the same way, I bristle at the suggestion that I'm not
| rational enough to resist the "addiction" of push messaging.
| We all know what the word "addiction" actually means. This is
| not addiction, this is just hokey phooey using fake-medical
| language to push a liberal agenda of extra regulation.
|
| Every time I get a notification from Twitter or Facebook, my
| day gets a little brighter. When LinkedIn tells me that
| someone is looking at my profile, that means someone cares,
| and that's a wonderful thing to know.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Your experience is far from universal. Twitter has made my
| life measurably worse: I'm less happy, have less free time,
| react less charitably to people I disagree with. I can look
| through my comment history and identify the periods where I
| was most active on Twitter, because I'm constantly flying
| off the handle at people for no good reason.
| legerdemain wrote:
| Would you call yourself helplessly "addicted" to Twitter?
| If not, then you disagree with the premise of TFA.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I would. Every morning, I wake up saying I'm going to log
| off Twitter for the day as soon as my coffee's done, and
| most days I end up logging multiple hours of Twitter
| time.
| legerdemain wrote:
| I see. I wish you success in breaking your addiction. A
| number of support tools are available!
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| What helped me was actually deleting my account and after
| that, not feeling like creating a new one.
|
| I still peruse feeds of some people I used to follow, but
| now, instead of doing it compulsively every hour or
| whenever I need my dopamine, I do it once a month or so,
| if I don't forget. I don't have them bookmarked, so I
| also enter the full URLs.
|
| And if Twitter says I need to log in to read more of a
| thread, or whatever, too bad. I don't have that thingy
| that you use to log in to Twitter.
|
| Now, Facebook is a different story since they offer a
| very walled garden. You cannot even read most of the
| stuff unless you log in, by default. Trouble is, there
| are people on it I interact with. As it happens with some
| of those people, Facebook is the only way to reach them.
|
| And another thing is Hackernews, of course.
|
| See, those are places where stuff happens. You go there,
| scroll to what interests you, engage in a discussion, and
| it almost feels like meeting people again, especially in
| a pandemic world.
|
| Or I just want to feed my brain with new stuff to get
| that sweet dopamine.
|
| I think that what could change this addiction could be
| entraining the brain to release dopamine as a reward for
| engaging into more immersive, time-consuming activities.
| Like reading more of the long form, deep articles or
| books. Watching a 2 hour movie instead of 15 minute usual
| youtube fodder. Get that side project to a usable state
| (starts crying).
| heterodoxxed wrote:
| | _the less sense of individual agency we give ourselves_
|
| In aggregate, the population is at the mercy of material
| forces. Turning a social problem into an individual moral
| failing has never managed to solve anything at scale.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| It's less about screen-time or self-control and more about
| toxic, malicious software used for communication.
|
| A lot of the calls-to-action used to generate "engagement" are
| the same calls to action used for legitimate communications,
| and the only way to tell is to "engage" with the product.
|
| There's nothing wrong with people opening their social media
| app if they receive a real message from a friend. The problem
| is when the platform is incentivized to "manufacture" messages
| even when there aren't any.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _We need to start talking about how to configure Screen Time on
| iOS, or how to use Facebook 's built-in tools to hide content
| you don't want to see_
|
| I have my home router configured to not allow any social media-
| capable devices to connect on Sundays.
|
| After a few weeks, the FOMO cycle is broken and you realize
| that there's more to life than scrolling.
| robterrell wrote:
| Can you share your blocklist, please?
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| > I know the common refrain is "Delete Facebook!" but that's
| the equivalent of abstinence-only education. We need to start
| talking about how to configure Screen Time on iOS, or how to
| use Facebook's built-in tools to hide content you don't want to
| see.
|
| Isn't this also denying people their individual agency, though?
| Using Facebook is not like sex is for teens, who are faced with
| the rather unavoidable biological realities of puberty. There
| are many ways to achieve the things people seek from Facebook,
| some technological and some not.
|
| We don't need to start under the assumption that people will
| not be able to commit to having more healthy media consumption
| habits. These tools offered by Apple, Facebook and Google you
| mention are not things we should be encouraging. If these
| companies had the user's best interests at heart, their
| products would not need these kinds of sub-features in the
| first place. But when you study the gambling and nicotine
| industries to figure out how to better hook your users to your
| mobile apps, you didn't start out from the right place. So I
| would reckon the answer to that would be to abstain from the
| product entirely.
| scsilver wrote:
| I think our built environment and lack of engaging community is
| the main reason we are disadvantaged against self control. We
| need trust and support of others, we need it daily, and we dont
| get enough of it to make significant progress against many
| addictions. A change in our built environment is a start to
| improving our connections to our local community, and
| subsequently continued accountability when facing addictive
| influences.
| ckosidows wrote:
| This is all just personal anecdote. It might be wrong for you;
| maybe it doesn't apply to everyone, but it has worked for me...
|
| The options seem to be: 1) Delete your social media account 2)
| Set up timers (OS-level, account-level, etc) 3) Filter you feed
| to only the people who matter
|
| The first two options didn't work for me. I created a new
| account and deleted the timers. The first option left me
| feeling excluded. The second option just turned SM into a drip-
| feed, making me check whenever the timer was up. If they work
| for you, great!
|
| The option that worked was to filter facebook and snapchat to
| only show people who personally mattered to me in the physical
| world. I only see things about people I come into contact with
| and care about. I know them well enough to know the whole story
| rather than just what they post at face value. Their posts can
| encourage conversations rather than make me feel bad about some
| cool thing I'll never do or know more about.
|
| Social media is a tool which, used effectively, can benefit
| you. But used ineffectively it can harm you. I hope schools of
| the future or some people/institution teach effective social
| media use. Or hopefully we can enforce social media companies
| to follow some regulations regarding user wellbeing.
| ummonk wrote:
| I'm not sure empowering users in this way would be all that
| effective. It would be like trying to empower people to avoid
| opioid addiction. It's hard to set and stick to limits on
| something that is designed to addict you.
| santoshalper wrote:
| It's shockingly easy to delete Facebook. I haven't used it in
| years, and it almost never comes up. They have done a masterful
| job of making you feel like you cannot live without them
| through the careful application of dark patterns, but I assure
| you that not only do you not need it, but once gone, you also
| will not miss it.
|
| Seriously, give it a try. Shockingly easy.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > battling this problem is going to require more than simply
| shaming them in Medium posts. We have to start reminding people
| that they are in control of their decisions, and that they can
| take steps to reduce their social media usage to healthy
| levels.
|
| Yes, but that's only going to have a small effect, at best.
| Just like you can't solve the obesity crisis by telling people
| to eat less.
|
| Things are getting more addictive
| (http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html) because companies
| under technology and capitalism form weak superintelligencies
| that are capable of building things that are increasingly
| addictive. So asking people to use willpower to overcome that
| is going to increasingly fail.
|
| I think the only thing that could succeed is government
| intervention.
|
| > I know the common refrain is "Delete Facebook!"
|
| If FB and other social media providers were required to
| federate using ActivityPub, then people would be able to delete
| FB and still have access to their friends and contacts on it.
|
| > We also need to encourage people to take control of their
| feeds, muting users and topics who draw them into unproductive
| discussions.
|
| With ActivityPub it would be a lot easier to build applications
| that allow them to control and curate their feeds for
| themselves. The user is back in control.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| >We need to start talking about how to configure Screen Time on
| iOS, or how to use Facebook's built-in tools to hide content
| you don't want to see.
|
| We are so outgunned it's almost ridiculous to try. The game is
| rigged.
| cgriswald wrote:
| Apps and websites often don't honor their own configuration
| choices. They use loose definitions to slide in advertisements
| or other unwanted information. They do not give you the
| granularity to decide what types of information you actually
| want. They also change them after you've taken the time to get
| it sort of working for you.
|
| You're not going to give people agency by having them press a
| button provided by someone else. The button doesn't really do
| anything. "Cold turkey" is really the only solution to these
| mind games.
| mywittyname wrote:
| > I know the common refrain is "Delete Facebook!" but that's
| the equivalent of abstinence-only education. We need to start
| talking about how to configure Screen Time on iOS, or how to
| use Facebook's built-in tools to hide content you don't want to
| see.
|
| I see it more akin to the opioid crisis. Just like drug
| manufactures shouldn't be pushing opioids as a way to deal with
| minor pain and depression because they know it hooks users.
| Maybe social media companies shouldn't be pushing hateful and
| outrageous content to hook their users.
|
| You can sing about personal responsibility all you want. But
| these companies pay scientists millions of dollars a year to
| come up with ways to keep you hooked. The only way to win is
| not to play the game. Normal people are seriously outgunned
| here.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Can you provide some reading material about the scientists
| that get paid millions of dollars to keep you hooked? This is
| the first time I've heard of scientists involved.
| ummonk wrote:
| FANG pay is usually hundreds of thousands not millions, but
| most data scientists at these companies are working to
| optimize user engagement.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| They spend millions on _multiple_ scientists, not per-
| head.
| loopz wrote:
| They for sure don't work on solving the climate crisis.
| That's unprofitable.
|
| Wall Street gobbled up most ph.D's and researchers years
| ago, but marketing/ads space have a stranglehold on much of
| it nowadays.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There are lots of examples of this.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/18/facebook-
| cambri...
|
| > He was hired to work at Facebook as a quantitative social
| psychologist around November 2015, roughly two months after
| leaving GSR, which had by then acquired data on millions of
| Facebook users.
|
| https://venturebeat.com/2014/06/07/exclusive-to-sell-ads-
| in-...
|
| > Corey has been working as a quantitative researcher at
| Facebook since last summer. His growth research team has
| "two sociologists and a manager trained in communications
| with a sociologist as an advisor," according to an article
| he published early this year. The team helps expand
| Facebook to developing countries. Corey uses R-based
| software stack, collects data via Hive and uses a few other
| coding languages to do his job.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/ever
| y...
|
| > We now know that's exactly what happened two years ago.
| For one week in January 2012, data scientists skewed what
| almost 700,000 Facebook users saw when they logged into its
| service. Some people were shown content with a
| preponderance of happy and positive words; some were shown
| content analyzed as sadder than average. And when the week
| was over, these manipulated users were more likely to post
| either especially positive or negative words themselves.
|
| > This tinkering was just revealed as part of a new study,
| published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National
| Academy of Sciences. Many previous studies have used
| Facebook data to examine "emotional contagion," as this one
| did. This study is different because, while other studies
| have observed Facebook user data, this one set out to
| manipulate it.
| theplague42 wrote:
| Literally any analyst or data science job related to growth
| or user engagement on social media.
|
| https://research.fb.com/category/data-science/
| [deleted]
| misdichotomy wrote:
| > Normal people are seriously outgunned here.
|
| This is quite right. PragmaticPulp's phrase "an act
| perpetrated by evil corporations on us helpless individuals"
| is a bit of rhetorical jujitsu, creating a strawman to set up
| a rallying cry "I believe people have agency!" You don't have
| to assume that individuals are "helpless", as if they are
| generally helpless and lacking agency, to agree that these
| corporations are exploiting them.
|
| That said, people's agency is limited (bounded rationality).
| Awareness of how one is being manipulated is not evenly
| distributed among the population (asymmetric information).
| And even when there is awareness, people are unevenly
| affected by it and unevenly empowered to deal with it.
| danaliv wrote:
| Indeed, that's precisely what makes these techniques so
| powerful. For many people, even self-knowledge isn't a
| reliable defense.
| amelius wrote:
| Perhaps a solution is that we separate the delivery of social
| media posts from the company that produces them. (Just like
| email can be received in a client that is not run by e.g.
| companies that send spam).
|
| This means that we can teach our Social Media Inbox
| (abbreviated here SMI) that we don't like certain messages, and
| the SMI will remove them from the feed.
|
| The trick here is that the SMI has its incentives aligned with
| the user, not the social media companies. So there is no
| incentive to make us addicted.
| rapind wrote:
| We're just witnessing advertising's race to the bottom.
| Eventually everything published is questioned because all forms
| of media are incentivized to push drivel for eyeballs.
|
| The optimist in me see's how ridiculous and blatant the drivel
| is becoming and suspects we'll achieve some sort of collective
| enlightenment before we extinct ourselves. A smarter media then
| emerges (timing is everything here) eschewing advertising
| dollars in favour of a more consumer friendly model.
|
| Then again, I'm probably being naive.
| ceh123 wrote:
| Paid services to align interests with the user (best user
| experience wins) are the way to go and I really hope they win
| out in the long run. I also think individual driven filters
| and algorithms are the way to go. In my experience, heavily
| AI/ML driven algorithms for user experience (think spotify
| suggestions) lead to overfitting super quickly. ML assistance
| can be amazing (obviously), but I know I want some degree of
| manual control on my algorithms.
|
| Another plug[0] but, I'm hoping to be a part of this
| solution. Just a personal project right now, but I'm building
| a search website whose end goal is to be ad-free (paid) and
| let users create filters to remove any of the countless trash
| websites that SEO their way to the top of google.
|
| Currently I've just got it working for web search and a few
| filters I've created for myself (removes a ton of websites I
| never find value in, some blogs, news sites, pinterest, etc.)
|
| [0] https://hadal.io
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| >I know the common refrain is "Delete Facebook!" but that's the
| equivalent of abstinence-only education
|
| Not at all; its more like breaking up with a toxic,
| manipulative, dishonest partner. There's many more fish in the
| sea and there's many more ways to heathily socialize than just
| Facebook. Though I suppose people in abusive relationships
| often have a sort of Stockholm syndrome where they see no
| alternatives.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| not only do people in abusive relationships often have
| stockholm syndrome, many people are actually materially
| dependent on their partner, for example women who have stayed
| home a long time historically but also still today, and thus
| they literally cannot leave. Or they have children, or
| leaving might put others at risk.
|
| Point of working through the analogy being, even on an
| individual basis framing leaving a relationship as some sort
| of arbitrary choice is kind of nonsensical, in particular if
| there is a power imbalance between the people in the
| relationship, to the point where staying in an abusive
| relationship might be a 'rational choice'.
|
| Which is actually why we've created very elaborate laws and
| customs surrounding marriage rather than telling everyone
| "well if you don't like it just leave".
| parkersweb wrote:
| It's off-topic - but I found this BBC podcast on the
| simplification of using Stockholm syndrome as an
| explanation fascinating:
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000s7n1
| [deleted]
| jointPrb wrote:
| The other side of this is how these companies build engaging
| products that thousands struggle with. May be a solo developer
| could learn some lessons. Can anyone shed light on how to build
| engaging products and make users come back? What methods are
| these companies using that small dev can utilize and learn?
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| You could also say it is staying competitive. User engagement is
| important, the user should be in charge of setting limits. Sure,
| anything can become addictive if the user has the "right"
| personality, but using an app is still a far cry from using
| recreational drugs. However, porn and some gaming are coming
| close.
| mumblehat wrote:
| A tangential point about the horrifying power of euphemism: I've
| done some consulting work with some large biopharmaceutical
| companies in the past and found myself consistently shocked at
| how effective euphemism was at making people comfortable talking
| about, and doing, very questionable things. E.g. "Maximizing
| treatment" = "extend how long a patient requires our medication".
| This was at a senior level and these were, on the face of it,
| warm, caring people having a very comfortable and open
| conversation. I had always assumed decisions that directly
| disadvantaged the consumer would look different, with some sense
| of secrecy or at least awareness. Nope, one level of language
| abstraction is apparently all it takes.
|
| There are countless other examples out there. I just finished
| "Cruel Britannia" regarding the torture practices of the British
| over the last century. They were particularly adept at it.
| Euphemism is such a powerful tool for doublethink and systemic
| abuses of power.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Posts like this completely misunderstand how companies like
| Facebook think and operate. As a result, they cause people to
| fight boogymen instead of working toward positive change.
|
| Yes, using Facebook instead of doing something like talking in
| person or reading a book is probably worse for you in the long
| run.
|
| But most people don't do those things instead of Facebook.
| Instead they use Tiktok. Or watch TV. Or read Teen Vogue. Or get
| drunk and watch reality TV. Or sit alone in their nursing home
| with no real connection to any other human.
|
| Facebook doesn't want you to be addicted, addiction is bad for
| user retention in the long term. Facebook wants you to be a
| happy, healthy Facebook Family of Apps(tm) user. I know this
| because I oversee ML launches on some of the highly
| controversial/addictive surfaces on a certain Facebook property.
| ksm1717 wrote:
| Given that the only thing like evidence available to the public
| regarding how Facebook thinks and operates is the outcomes, and
| any insider knowledge is, by nature, rife with conflict of
| interest, I don't think you could expect anyone to assume
| benevolent intentions.
|
| Not to mention I don't know what would be effective work toward
| positive change from an outsider when the decisions made for
| and by the company are (completely reasonably) made internal to
| the company.
|
| I kind of agree that the Facebook boogeyman stuff is played
| out, but it's not like there's much of an alternative to
| discuss.
| panic wrote:
| Facebook _employees_ want you to be a happy, healthy Facebook
| Family of Apps(tm) user. But Facebook as an emergent entity of
| its own has "wants" which can be hard to see from the inside.
| Facebook employees don't actually know what happens between
| each individual user and their Facebook account. You can do
| user studies, or gather aggregate metrics, but any technique
| you might use will obscure what's really happening in one way
| or another. And the whole internal idea of what is happening
| will naturally be bent toward what helps Facebook survive. In
| particular, it's very important that what Facebook employees
| are encouraged to imagine as positive change is not damaging to
| Facebook itself, or the company will eventually die.
| mgraczyk wrote:
| Thanks for the reply.
|
| It's true that Facebook the company is an emergent entity,
| and that the companies behavior and "wants" don't necessarily
| match those of its employees.
|
| I disagree with the claim that "any technique you might use
| will obscure what's really happening in one way or another."
|
| RCTs that measure self-reported wellbeing and other
| engagement-independent measures of mental health do not
| obscure what's really happening. Techniques like this could
| be used to actively improve user health, even at a cost to
| engagement.
| fumar wrote:
| I understand your POV and can empathize. I tell myself similar
| affirmations. "Our users value our features and content. They
| connect to the world for the better using us." But, I can't
| shake the truth of our business model - ad revenue. It drives
| the entire organization down a strict path.
|
| Take an extreme example: A manufacturer of sugar. You started
| your company because of close proximity to sugar cane but over
| time the sugar industry grew. Then science revealed how bad
| sugar is for the human body in large amounts. Can you shift
| your business from selling sugar to an alternative? You are in
| the business of selling sugar and everything is centered around
| one goal "sell sugar". There is a subset of buyers that buy and
| consume in large quantities. Do you tell your consumers to stop
| eating sugar?
|
| FB and similar are in the business of selling available ad
| inventory. Thanks to technology the availability and
| "sweetness" of it is unlimited. Can we quantify the potential
| individual or societal impacts? Science claims to think so and
| its not looking great.
| qvrjuec wrote:
| So at what point does the metric used for user engagement cross
| a threshold for 'addiction'? Wouldn't incentives to drive this
| metric up across the board to increase revenue outweigh the
| pressure to maintain a healthy relationship with the Facebook
| Family of Apps(tm)? Regardless, I still can't see the
| motivation for Facebook to act in a way to ensure the user is
| healthy, only to ensure the user is engaged at an optimal level
| for Facebook and not the user.
| CivBase wrote:
| If a service is monetized with ads, then the user is the product.
| We say that a lot but I think a lot of people still don't
| understand it, especially outside the tech sphere. "Engagement"
| isn't about building a better service; it's about serving more
| ads. "Driving user engagement" should be seen as synonymous with
| "psychologically manipulating users to use the service so they
| see ads".
| api wrote:
| This is true, but it's not exclusively limited to ad-driven
| models. It can also be true of surveillance or in-app purchase
| models. The latter has become big in gaming where games addict
| the user and then steer them toward purchasing special items,
| expansion packets, "loot boxes," etc.
|
| Basically any app or service where there is a direct link from
| the amount of time the user spends on it to revenue
| incentivizes shady "Skinner box" addictive designs and other
| dark patterns.
| hinkley wrote:
| If George Carlin were alive we'd have 3+ hours of material on
| this topic from him.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Why not "providing value to users so they use the service so
| they see ads"? A lot of providing value is marketing and
| engagement. It can be manipulative and it can also be
| beneficial to the user - both should be accounted for.
| viraptor wrote:
| Different metrics. Providing value could be measured in
| different ways concentrating on that. Engagement doesn't even
| have to provide value. User going through more pages to get
| to the thing they need and spending more time in the app is
| engagement.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "It can be manipulative and it can also be beneficial to the
| user"
|
| Example please, how it can be beneficial to me, to be
| manipulated by ads.
| benlivengood wrote:
| This would be great if the metric was measuring value.
| Measuring value is hard; the closest quantified analog we
| have is money.
|
| So a valid comparison might be "how much would anyone
| actually pay for this ad-funded thing?" It turns out the
| answer is often $0.
| CivBase wrote:
| Why invest in "providing value to users" when psychological
| manipulation is so much cheaper?
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Because people tend to drop you and forget about it when
| you only provide clickbait and doomscroll fodder when they
| realize that you have nothing of value to provide.
| CivBase wrote:
| I'm not so sure about that. What value does Facebook
| offer that isn't done better by a dozen other platforms?
| Most people I talk to openly admit it provides them with
| no value, but they still idly scroll through their feeds
| day after day and can never bring themselves to ditch the
| platform. Simply put, they're addicted. Facebook is
| widely hated yet wildly successful because they have
| mastered psychological manipulation.
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Speaking for myself as a light FB user in the US, I get a
| ton of value from seeing my relatives' updates.
| Otherwise, I would have no connection with the next
| generation of babies in my family.
|
| I generally find this line of thinking problematic:
| conversations with a homogenous and small group ->
| generalization based on an interpretation of their
| interpretation of their experience.
|
| Also objectionable but on the other side: people's
| revealed preferences for how they spend their time are
| better indicators of what they find valuable.
|
| Neither explanation is particularly compelling except as
| confirmation bias IMO.
| CivBase wrote:
| I was providing a quick and simple example, not making a
| generalization about all Facebook users. Just as my
| anecdotal evidence does not necessarily demonstrate an
| addiction problem across all Facebook users, your
| anecdotal evidence does not demonstrate a lack thereof.
|
| The point is that there are users whose use of a service
| is driven by psychological manipulation, not by a value
| proposition. The relationship between many people I know
| and Facebook is merely an example.
| devmunchies wrote:
| > If a service is monetized with ads, then the user is the
| product
|
| false. The derived data and access to eyeballs is the product.
| The user is a resource for creating the product.
|
| Some analogies: - Cows are not the product,
| milk is the product. Cows are a resource/asset. -
| Prostitutes are not the product, sex is the product. The women
| are resources.
|
| I feel this more accurately dehumanizing than simply stating
| users are the product.
| 8note wrote:
| I don't think the eyeballs are the product.
|
| Eyeballs don't need to be advertised to because they don't
| spend money
| Nasrudith wrote:
| Spending money is the assumption but that is unworkable as
| a metric for a third party. Far easier to say you did your
| part with x views than whatever janky curve on attributed
| sales would result in.
| roughly wrote:
| I feel like there's basically two business models in the world -
| you can be a baker, in which you try to create a product that
| customers will want on its merits, and work to make the best
| possible customer experience, or you can be a crack dealer. I
| think a lot of people think they're bakers, but you gotta
| realize, the moment you start sprinkling crack in the cookies,
| you're not selling cookies anymore.
| throwaway1525 wrote:
| Can you give few examples "baker" products which have scaled to
| really large scale? I always see it as everybody starts as a
| baker but over time it becomes a sliding scale.
| ceh123 wrote:
| To piggy back on this, is it possible to continue being a
| baker at scale without pricing most people out of your
| product?
|
| i.e. is it possible to provide something like (internet
| search) or (social networking) that relies on a paid model?
| Not everyone who needs/uses google or facebook can afford an
| iPhone.
| roughly wrote:
| I'd consider the auto industry to be a "baker" industry (for
| the most part). Ikea's a "baker", GAP is a "baker". A lot of
| the pre-digital world made pure play baked goods.
| marcinzm wrote:
| >A lot of the pre-digital world made pure play baked goods.
|
| Coupon codes on your receipt, planned obsolescence,
| strategic item placement in store to encourage buying
| additional or more expensive items, loyalty programs and
| points, physical marketing mailings, targeted pre-internet
| advertising, etc.
| hashkb wrote:
| Careful with fashion. Fashion trends are manipulated to
| keep the dopamine flowing if and only if you update your
| wardrobe every season. All the magazines, shows, etc...
| it's not entirely innocent of the problems we're
| discussing.
| NortySpock wrote:
| Apple hardware/software, Microsoft Windows, Intel hardware,
| Netflix (buffet TV shows), Amazon web store (logistics), Etsy
| store, Steam / GOG Games - all of these (except Netflix) are
| selling* either hardware or software, to you, once.
|
| Netflix is a subscription to access and stream a lot of
| shows, but it is "fee for subscription service", not all that
| different from an alarm company subscription, OnStar, or a
| subscription lawn maintenance company.
|
| * Ok, Steam / GOG Games or Microsoft Windows is a licensed
| use with limited conditions, it's not like you can use it on
| just any hardware
| marcinzm wrote:
| Most large e-commerce sites including Etsy aren't bakers.
| They use recommendation engines, personalized site
| experiences, email marketing campaigns, discount coupons
| for repeat purchases, dark patterns, offsite re-targeting
| ads and so on to get you to buy and buy repeatedly.
|
| edit: And the ever fun one of free shipping with a minimum
| order of X, great way to make you think you're getting a
| deal by giving them more money.
| carabiner wrote:
| Two business models in tech: selling a product vs. selling ads.
| The latter is really selling your users.
| roughly wrote:
| right, baker and crack dealer.
| NortySpock wrote:
| selling a product vs selling ads vs selling a feeling
| (dopamine hits)?
|
| Some freemium games are clearly just trying to hit the
| dopamine center.
| crowdhailer wrote:
| Very much so. It's something we're trying to push back on at
| https://sendmemo.app
|
| But how do you measure success, we're a messaging app. - Total
| messages sent - Number of conversations.
|
| Measuring any of this will mean we optimise keeping users on the
| platform.
|
| We're trying active conversations, where to be active means only
| at least one message per week. We'd love to find a metric which
| went up as each individual user spent less time on memo. A "time
| to solution" metric
| ketzo wrote:
| I quite like the idea of measuring "time to solution" somehow,
| particularly for more business- or productivity-oriented
| software. I guess that doesn't make sense if you're making a
| video game or a social network, though.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Or even "effort to solution".
| mstipetic wrote:
| Why not just ask every now and then "did you enjoy interacting
| with our service?" Or "are you finding value here?" and have
| people rate it.
|
| I've often thought how different facebook would look like if
| they asked that and optimized for that metric
| benlivengood wrote:
| The "time to solution" metric sounds a lot like SRE's mantra;
| automate ourselves out of a job. This is often measured in how
| many hours of human labor we can save for better use elsewhere.
|
| The optimal app requires zero interaction time from the user
| but still provides tangible benefits. Aside from entertainment,
| most people don't really want to interact with software.
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