[HN Gopher] Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends ___________________________________________________________________ Instagram, TikTok, and the Three Trends Author : kaboro Score : 217 points Date : 2022-08-16 13:37 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (stratechery.com) (TXT) w3m dump (stratechery.com) | rconti wrote: | > I saw someone recently complaining that Facebook was | recommending to them...a very crass but probably pretty hilarious | video. Their indignant response [was that] "the ranking must be | broken." Here is the thing: the ranking probably isn't broken. He | probably would love that video, but the fact that in order to | engage with it he would have to go proactively click makes him | feel bad. He doesn't want to see himself as the type of person | that clicks on things like that, even if he would enjoy it. | | I found this comment super-insightful. I generally _hate_ online | videos with a passion. I DO NOT click "recommended posts" or ads | or videos or what I consider garbage. But that doesn't mean I | don't sometimes get interested in a thumbnail I see until I | realize what "they're" trying to get me to click on. | BitwiseFool wrote: | I absolutely _loathe_ YouTube Face. If you 've never heard of | the term, it's that exaggerated, wide-eyed, often with an open- | mouth, expression on most thumbnails. I know that at some | psychological level it works, probably because it hijacks the | part of our brain that is meant to respond to when a fellow | human being in front of us makes that expression - there _must_ | be something dangerous going on behind us and we need to pay | attention. | | Even credible channels do this, Linus Tech Tips has such | thumbnails and I'm sure it measurably affects their view count. | I just lament how so much of getting people to click on videos | has become reduced to the kinds of tricks that work on babies. | I mean that literally, if you've ever played with a toddler or | seen caretakers playing with them, you'll notice they use the | same kind of exaggerated expressions and gesticulation. | alt227 wrote: | Veritasium has an excellent video exploring this exact topic | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2xHZPH5Sng | jatins wrote: | The problem is that it's not clear (at least to me) whether | adding the "Youtube face" is making people click on the | videos more, or is it just making YouTube push the video to a | wider audience resulting in higher engagement. | | Is there some way to assert "Given the same audience of X | people, adding such thumbnails results in more clicks"? | layer8 wrote: | I don't think that the YouTube algorithm pushes videos | based on their thumbnails. | NCC1701DEngage wrote: | It is pretty obvious as a creator. The analytics available | encourage experimentation. You find that mentioning | subscribing or making a more visually engaging thumbnail | will significantly boost important metrics like CTR. CTR is | a metric almost entirely dependent on thumbnail image, | although title and description play small roles, and CTR is | an incredibly important metric for getting the content | served by the algorithm. | | And it isn't entirely true that including a face mugging | for the camera is always the most visually engaging | (although representations of people are very attention | grabbing). A person in the image is a character for a | story, the whole "worth a thousand words" is true in that a | whole narrative can be compressed into a single image and | viewed with a glance. A person or other sentient being is a | character for that story (I'm sure cat thumbnails do well | too). | | Just try to think of an interesting narrative involving | exclusively inanimate objects. Kinda hard; the whole | "animate" thing seems to be necessary to give a before, | middle, and after to events (ok, maybe collisions, | explosives, and rockets might work, they'd probably do well | as thumbnails too). A thumb with Linus looking surprised or | disappointed or puzzled gives a short and incomplete | narrative about the object he is looking at and how it made | him feel those emotions. Part of this is that watching the | video will give you a more complete narrative. | joegahona wrote: | "Please take a moment to subscribe" and "smash that bell | icon" are the video version of "Subscribe to my crappy | newsletter" popups. And before that, in the world of | print magazines, it was multiple subscription cards that | fell into your lap -- even if you were already a | subscriber. The reason is an unsatisfying one: They work, | and it's difficult to measure penalty metrics that show | they're causing more harm than good. | | I would think a human face would be the most effective | thumbnail, and that there are psychological reasons for | this. When I worked in print magazines, there were | metrics thrown around a lot for how well cover subjects | did in terms of newsstand copies sold: Animals > | inanimate objects; Humans > animals; color > b&w; photos | > illustrations; eye contact with the camera > looking | away; females > males. | | Apps are also getting into the fun, and tons are now | including screaming faces[1] as their icon, no matter how | related to the gameplay. Can't wait for a productivity | app trying to pull off this icon... | | [1] https://i.redd.it/2t190ls2j2571.png | fleddr wrote: | There's so much wrong with this trend. | | First, from a purely operational and pragmatic point of view, I'm | stunned how paranoid well established networks are about the | Tiktok competition, willing to make existential changes to mimic | them whilst potentially destroying themselves. | | Why can't there be differentiation? Why not improve your own | network, fix its many issues, allow for some co-existence? | "Innovate or die" is an exaggeration for Facebook and Youtube, | they aren't going anywhere anytime soon. | | Second, I'm shocked (but not really) how not a single of these | companies (or governments) take a shred of responsibility in even | thinking about the human impact. There's already a laundry list | of serious problems associated with social media and the | trajectory is to just escalate it even more? A machine rapidly | feeding you short videos, many to be AI generated, as the | ultimate "solution"? | | Third, we've already established how the combination of social | media and misinformation can lead to fatalities (example: FB and | Myanmar), political interference, escalating polarization and | instability, and more. The only counter force, ineffective as it | may be, would be real users pushing back and trying to "correct" | things. | | The next generation has no such pushbacks. It's all just one | recommendation engine with ultimate power. Do we even know what | the fuck we're doing? | photochemsyn wrote: | You have to dig through this entire article to get to the | punchline, but here it is: | | > "These AI challenges, I would add, apply to monetization as | well: one of the outcomes of Apple's App Tracking Transparency | changes is that advertising needs to shift from a deterministic | model to a probabilistic one; the companies with the most data | and the greatest amount of computing resources are going to make | that shift more quickly and effectively, and I expect Meta to be | top of the list. None of this matters, though, without | engagement." | | Relevant quote: | | > "The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he | sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and | simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client." | -- William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch | | This is slightly more complex with the social media business | model: the product is the viewer, rather like a fish. The heroin- | like bait to catch the viewer is the stream of short distractive | entertainment content. The actual client buys the fish (the | viewer) from the social media outfit. The actual client is an | advertiser out to sell a product, a government out to push | propaganda, a politician out to get votes, etc. | | The more interesting aspect of this is that the clients might be | paying the social media providers to control the content stream | as a means of manipulating their audience. Weapons manufacturers | might want Facebook/Instagram/Twitter to bury anti-war content; | corporate media giants might want independent outlets booted off | the recommendation algorithm results; established political | parties might want independents hidden from view; etc | | It's very plausible that this monetization model - i.e. not just | the delivery of targeted advertising content to the 'engaged' | audience, but also the targeted removal of competing content as a | kind of shadow control of what that audience gets to see, is part | of the revenue stream of Meta, Google, Twitter, etc. | | Of course, people will agree that China is doing this with | TikTok, but many tend to get uncomfortable if asked if the US | government and major corporations are also playing this game on | Twitter, Google, Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit. | xapata wrote: | They don't need to pay for removal of competing content | directly, because people only have so many hours in the day. If | they pay to promote favorable content, the unfavorable content | will be crowded out. | Banana699 wrote: | But "people" isn't just a single thing, it's a distributed | system of many interdependent but ultimately independent | agents. If you only grind your own axe, yes many people will | be indeed swept in, but a lot of other people will spend | their parallel hours seeing others grind their own axe, which | would include the axes of your opponents. There is an | equilibrium where you reach all the people you would ever | reach but your opponents still carves out their own niche out | of other people's attention. | | Whereas, if you pursue both pushing your agenda and | suppressing your opponent's agenda, you will more truly make | it zero-sum. Now even the parallel people who would never | see/care about your own propaganda would also never see your | opponent's propaganda, because you suppressed it at its | source. | sinecure wrote: | Your summary of this phenomenon resonates with my experiences | navigating the internet all these years. I find reddit to be | the most perfect example of watching something authentic, | human, and real... devolve into a manufactured, astroturfed | facsimile of a forum community. | | Years ago, reddit was filled with interesting discussions and | analysis. Beautiful debates would rage on /r/news about current | events, with equal showing of opposing viewpoints. Deep | discussions on cinema in /r/movies. Excited chatter about the | next video game and people's past favorites in /r/games. It was | a place to talk shop for any interest. | | Today, reddit is a vastly different place. /r/news is a perfect | example of how ad companies and political groups pulled it off. | Around the height of Trumps office, the left was able to | strongly rally around hatred for the man and therefore hatred | for any conservative. During this time of high emotion, the | /r/news subreddit had a mod overhaul which completely aligned | the political framing to 100% progressive, with a search and | destroy mentality to all right wing thought. Only certain | "power users" with ties to established media companies and left | wing political groups would post articles there and any | competing user or troublesome commenter would be banned. After | only a few months of this, anyone with a centrist or right wing | opinion was banned or just left, and today /r/news is now a | perfect echo chamber for progressive politics. If a newbie were | to go visit /r/news on reddit today they would have to believe | that surely everyone must think this way, and surely /r/news is | a reflection of reality, but it is not, it is a curated and | controlled echo chamber. | | The power inherent in falsifying organic communities and | engagement in propagandizing and selling things to people is | incredible. Our society is increasingly distrusting of | traditional media, news, talking heads and the like, and have | turned to the authenticity of social media strangers to get a | better idea of the real discourse around current events. When | those pools of discussion get poisoned, manipulated, and | falsified, it further breaks down our ability to understand | each other or feel connected. | | On the advertising front,/r/movies and /r/television are merely | a constant stream of Movie/TV ads and celebrity gossip. | /r/games might as well be the front page of a games industry | magazine. The organic discussions are few and far between, and | the marketing pushes from content creators are ever more | apparent. You will see movies get odd posts by some rabid fan | who just saw the newest release and can't wait to share how | wonderful it was! Several comments agree that this new movie is | a joy, great fun! Then you watch it and it's awful, true | garbage, and if you search around you'll find out most real | people agree... and you realize you were tricked, no human ever | liked this dull film, some social media intern wrote that | reddit post and paid for flair to pop it up. You start to | realize that from mainstream reviews... to reddit posts.. | everything online is bought and paid for. What can you believe? | | This is the reality of the modern online social media space. | Users are cattle to be herded towards products and worldviews | and mindsets. Governments and companies alike prod and seduce | us towards their desired result, and we're meant to believe | that everything we're experiencing is authentic... but it | isn't. | | The question now is... what's next? We know that people feel | more alone and disconnected than ever before, and that | authenticity seems to be in dwindling supply... how can we take | back the internet? How can real discussion and community build | up again? Maybe it's discord, maybe it's web3.0. Who can say... | but we cannot accept that this beautiful cyberspace of human | knowledge is becoming the worlds largest marketing ploy. | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | > but many tend to get uncomfortable if asked if the US | government and major corporations are also playing this game on | Twitter, Google, Instagram, Facebook, and Reddit. | | De-monitization on YouTube should make this obvious to anyone. | | Why would YouTube recommend content that isn't going to make | them money? | | Companies get to decide what makes money / where their ads are | placed (this makes sense). | | The problem is - the social media companies are big enough that | they don't really need to care about your user experience. You | AREN'T the customer! All they care about is serving you ads. | | YouTube would much rather you have a mediocre experience using | YouTube for 5 minutes and they make $0.50 off you than you have | an outstanding experience for 30 minutes but they make $0 off | you. | | You get what you pay for - and with Social Media... That's | nothing. | pixl97 wrote: | >The payoff, though, will not be "power" for these small | creators: the implication of entertainment being dictated by | recommendations and AI instead of reputation and ranking is that | all of the power accrues to the platform doing the recommending. | | This is what these companies want. Take the power away from a few | ultra powerful users (Kardashians for example), and retain that | power for themselves. | thebradbain wrote: | And yet... by doing this they're trying to socially engineer | away something fundamental to all societies throughout | humankind: people have been worshipping their influencers, | celebrities, figureheads, idols, deities, demigods, and Gods | their entire history. | | Even TikTok has its stars (and they're huge now). | meowkit wrote: | The atomisation of culture is evidence enough for me to | believe that this erosion of worship is already under way. | Its so much more diffuse. The cultural icons we each follow | is so diverse already. | | I can imagine AI generated icons that only get to continue to | persist if they can adequately capture the attention of X | amount of productive apes. | outsidetheparty wrote: | "the company correctly intuited a significant gap between its | users stated preference -- no News Feed -- and their revealed | preference, which was that they liked News Feed quite a bit." | | I think what it actually revealed is that you can sometimes force | people to accept something other than their stated preference, if | you do it gradually enough and leave them no choice in the | matter. | strogonoff wrote: | > That's because the company correctly intuited a significant gap | between its users stated preference -- no News Feed -- and their | revealed preference, which was that they liked News Feed quite a | bit. The next fifteen years would prove the company right. | | Stop right there. What you mean is that their corporate wallets | like it. These companies delude themselves if they consider | "spend more time in the app" as an indicator for users liking it, | in no sane world it is true. | | I like Mail.app because I need to spend so little time in it to | get the most value out. I hate Instagram because it happens all | the time that I missed a friend's post because I didn't scroll | far enough. | | Curiously enough, this self-centered self-delusion only happens | in UI teams of pseudo-free double-sided market "products" where | you have to keep viewing ads to make the corp money. | | This business model also breaks how the market is supposed to | work--the actual users and paying customers are now separate | groups, users cannot vote with their wallets (or even leave, | because the offering is free and my friends are here so the moat | for competitors is infinite), and company's interests are not | aligned with theirs. | stavros wrote: | "Heroin users said they didn't like heroin, but it turns out | they take it quite often, so they must like it" | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | I think your comment is both wrong and spot on. | | IMO the "wrong" part is that most heroin users will tell you | _they fucking love_ heroin. It makes them feel great /escape | from life's problems, and users know this. The fact that | users also know that heroin is destroying their lives isn't | incompatible with loving it. | | The "spot on" part of your comment is that the addictive | dynamics between social media and heroin are basically | exactly the same. And over the past 5-10 years as this | awareness has grown (e.g. documentaries like The Social | Dilemma), social media companies have paid lip service to | acknowledging some of the dangers of "endless scrolling", but | the rise of TikTok has proven that the lip service was always | bullshit. The _second_ another company came along with a | stronger drug, all the incumbents are immediately trying to | copy that addictive drug. They don 't give _2 shits_ about | your well-being and never did. | stavros wrote: | > IMO the "wrong" part is that most heroin users will tell | you they fucking love heroin. | | Yeah, the analogy wasn't great there but I think the point | comes across. This is very timely for me, as I've just had | a day spent playing chess (and losing) for hours. | | I hate it, but I can't stop, because I get easily addicted | to games. Luckily, I've wasted enough time on DotA to | recognize the pattern, so I uninstalled the app, but by now | I recognize the pattern of "this makes me feel terrible but | I can't get enough of it". | | Not everyone is, which is, I think, why social media | (especially jealousy-fueled ones like Instagram) is so | insidious. It's easy to mistake it for enjoyment. | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | Yep, I think the good analogy is someone on a diet. It's | like the social media companies are saying "Hah, see, you | say you don't want chocolate cheesecake, but you eat it | every time I put it in front of you!!" | | No shit sherlock, if I didn't love chocolate cheesecake I | wouldn't need to be on a diet in the first place. But we | need to acknowledge (as you put it, "It's easy to mistake | it for enjoyment") the ability to say "Even though I am | addicted to this thing, I know it's bad for me and I'm | trying to stop". | | Social media companies are trying to pretend (as they lie | through their teeth) that there is no difference. They | are modern-day drug pushers and I wish society would | treat them as such. Instead of saying "Oh cool, you have | that great job at Facebook" I wish we would give them the | same amount of social respect we give to corner meth | dealers. | cloutchaser wrote: | This is a really silly point frankly, and can be applied to any | product people have ever gravitated towards. | | You might claim to not like tv but it still became the most | used entertainment product for decades. | | Same goes for the newsfeed. | | Any social network or product with a newsfeed will easily beat | one without for users using it. Whether utopians like yourself | think people like it or not is irrelevant. It's about survival. | Not "corporate wallets" | strogonoff wrote: | What are those alternatives that you are comparing TV and | newsfeed-powered social to? Point to a single product without | newsfeed that lost to a product with newsfeed because of | refusing to implement this feature. | np_tedious wrote: | MySpace? | nprz wrote: | Crack seems to be a product people gravitate towards, but | that doesn't mean it's a good product or beneficial for the | user. | cwkoss wrote: | (Crack) consumers like crack. Nobody likes news feeds | filled with ads. | mbesto wrote: | > news feeds filled with ads. | | The OP's point wasn't about ads but about the algorithmic | newsfeed. The newsfeed is designed and optimized to make | you like scrolling. So, yes people do _like_ to scrolling | but hate it when they realize that it might take you 20 | minutes instead of 2 minutes to get to your best friends | new baby announcement. Sure, ads contribute to that | frustration, but they aren 't the sole reason for it. | cwkoss wrote: | The key distinction is that news feeds' customers are | advertisers, not the audience. News feeds were not built | to maximize the audience's experience: it's an inherently | consumer-adversarial technology. | awillen wrote: | Nobody said good product or beneficial to the user - the | discussion is about people's preferences. Many people have | very strong preferences for crack over not crack. | gammarator wrote: | Most of the theorizing about this episode gets the history | wrong. The user outcry was because News Feed on rollout | suddenly broadcast widely communication that had been | previously been reasonably private. Suddenly pokes and wall | posts between two friends were pushed to your entire network. | | Users weren't wrong to dislike this! Facebook violated their | assumptions, just as if you learned someone was live-streaming | your conversation with them at a bar. In response, Facebook | provided more granular privacy controls--but more importantly, | users changed their behavior to adapt to the assumptions of the | new platform. | | (The outcry also highlighted the potential for virality in | feed-like platforms, which was great for growth but of course | also has negative consequences...) | deckard1 wrote: | Looking at Facebook is like looking at the rings of a tree. | You can see the time where they worried about Twitter. Then | they feared Snapchat. Now you can see how TikTok is making | them panic. | rossdavidh wrote: | "That was the problem with Twitter: it just wasn't convenient for | nearly enough people to figure out how to follow the right | people." | | This was never the problem with Twitter. The problem with Twitter | is that it has no option to turn of retweets globally; don't show | me retweets from anyone, only original tweets. If it had this, so | that I would only see original content from people I follow, I | would be back on Twitter. | a123b456c wrote: | They offer it on tweetdeck | MintDice wrote: | benjaminwootton wrote: | There is something about the TikTok style swiping videos which | just hits differently. | | I am far from the demographic for TikTok, but find it super | addictive so just keep it off my phone. | | I barely use Instagram, but having checked in a few times | recently I find myself mindlessly swiping their "Reels" for hours | before pulling myself away from it. | | YouTube is my goto timewaste, but now when I pick it up on mobile | I find myself in their "Shorts" feature which is the same kinda | thing. | | Just that cycle of short videos in rapid fire.... humour, | interesting fact, attractive woman, aspirational products, | beautiful scenery, political argument then back around the cycle | again is just like digital crack. | | Just say no! | mike10921 wrote: | YouTube is my time waster as well (besides when I actually | watch technical info). | | YouTube Shorts are decent but I must keep the volume off | because for some reason creators think they must add the most | annoying music to any video clip they upload. Similar to the | way you describe TikTok I feel like I need a cold shower after | endlessly scrolling those videos. | BitwiseFool wrote: | I suspect they do it because they are trying to snap your | attention back to their video. Kind of reminds me how a few | years ago people would intersperse "ear-rape" segments in the | video. It's that thing where the blast the volume up and the | audio gets all distorted for dramatic - and infuriating - | effect. | strikelaserclaw wrote: | same here with the youtube/tik tok shorts, a barrage of video | diarrhea to make my brain light up. | benjaminwootton wrote: | You can almost feel it grabbing your brain, and it takes real | will to stop scrolling and get up. These products are really | powerful. | distrill wrote: | > I am far from the demographic for TikTok | | I don't know who you think is in and out of their target demo, | but it has pretty good penetration in lots of age and interest | brackets. I would argue that pretty much every demographic is | fair game. | cloutchaser wrote: | Isn't this basically what 9gag also does, but TikTok just built | a better interface and recommendation algorithm? | | 9gag seems almost exactly the same as tiktok, it just never got | personalized | josefresco wrote: | Also StumbleUpon which was(?) personalized but was for | websites not short-format video. | andsoitis wrote: | _That's because the company correctly intuited a significant gap | between its users stated preference -- no News Feed -- and their | revealed preference, which was that they liked News Feed quite a | bit. The next fifteen years would prove the company right._ | | That is also why you don't rely solely on your own preferences | and behaviors for deciding what product features to build. | | Also interesting: | | _1. The Pre-Internet 'People Magazine' Era | | 2. Content from 'your friends' kills People Magazine | | 3. Kardashians/Professional 'friends' kill real friends | | 4. Algorithmic everyone kills Kardashians | | 5. Next is pure-AI content which beats 'algorithmic everyone'_ | swyx wrote: | "the replacement of humans with machines will continue until | morale improves" | slowmovintarget wrote: | My AI-generated content is being virtually consumed and | clicked on by thousands of AI readers. No actual people in | the loop. _Happiness increases._ | | I also have an AI that filters out AI generated content so I | only see things sourced directly from people I know to be | people. Granted, Cortana sometimes slips and gets it wrong | and lets through something that obviously came from an AI... | Hmm... I wonder how that happened. _Happiness decreases._ | trebbble wrote: | I'm so glad the gap between "we can keep very-long-term | records" and "AI now dominates content creation" is going to be | large enough, even for very recent things like video games, | that I'll have enough _excellent_ "content" to last multiple | lifetimes without ever having to pay attention to the AI stuff. | jrm4 wrote: | At the risk of being overly optimistic: Number 4 is an | interesting inflection point that could potentially (hopefully) | sow the seeds of it's own destruction (or at least radical | transformation?) | | Which is to say, the move from 3 to 4 strikes me as a move | toward "real human interaction," owing to the fact that the | "content" there is much less prepackaged Kardashianism and much | more "real person sharing real thing." | | Hence why I think 4 to 5 is very far from a sure bet. I'm not | sure even what Pure AI could even meaningfully signify here. | ketzo wrote: | If content-generation AI is given sufficient resources and | training input, I think 4>5 is pretty much guaranteed. | | The recommendation systems that power "algorithmic everyone" | are not optimizing for real human interaction, or real people | sharing real things; they're optimizing for the _absolute_ | most engaging content that they can find. | | This is Kardashian-killing because no one person or brand -- | not even Kim -- can create the most engaging content in the | world on every single post; and even if they could, they | can't do it at a rate to fill an entire feed. | | Sufficiently good recommendation systems kill the Kardashians | because they can crawl through an _ocean_ of user-generated | content and find the winners. | | If you combine a sufficiently good content- _generation_ AI | with the data you glean from the world 's best recommendation | system, you can just _create_ the most engaging possible | content, without even knowing what that would be. | telchior wrote: | I don't think that "Algorithmic Everyone", the one you're | phrasing as "real human interaction" is really either | everyone or real humans. Instead, it's turning a handful of | Kardashians into a million Kardashians. The number of | performers, and niches, vastly grows but it's still all | performance. | | I think that's one reason that a lot of kids love TikTok but | adults generally can't stand it. Kids are looking for sources | that show them how to act. TikTok is basically a giant tips | channel. Here's how to be silly, here's how to dance, here's | how to be a goth... It's like an enormous highschool, but if | the highschool were completely made up of amateur actors | trying to get the most attention. | jasonladuke0311 wrote: | > Which is to say, the move from 3 to 4 strikes me as a move | toward "real human interaction," owing to the fact that the | "content" there is much less prepackaged Kardashianism and | much more "real person sharing real thing." | | I believe we are well into number 4 and let me tell you, | neither the "person" or the "thing" feels "real". Everything | is so contrived, scripted, architected, and manufactured that | the entirety of social media feels like The Truman Show at | this point. | jrm4 wrote: | So, my take is the following: I still believe that it's all | getting "more human," and that this isn't necessarily | mutually exclusive of "contrived, scripted" etc. The | difference is "Kardashianism" is filtered through big media | selling ads, vs. e.g. "TikTok" -- at the point of creation | -- is filtered through nothing but the sensibilities of the | creator and mostly stays what it was at the point of | creation. Ergo, much more human. | thenerdhead wrote: | A good perspective on the ever-shifting mediums. | | Isn't the whole premise of modern social media to get you to | engage in stuff you would not normally engage in out of societal | norms, but is data driven to prove you can't look away? | | Most modern "personalized infinite feeds" are preying on these | psychological tricks where we can't look away from something | shocking, seductive, or comforting. i.e. show something painful | and then show something pleasureful to play games with your | dopamine and adrenaline. | | Technology will continue to get more persuasive until we find | moderation with it. The medium will continue to evolve and we'll | continue to increase our screentime year over year cutting into | our sleep and work until we do so. | | https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Persuasive_technology | | https://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpao/multimedia/infographics/ge... | | I even wrote a book on this topic from the perspective of a | millennial. While most of my mental health issues were because of | my addiction to the internet/technology/media, I can only begin | to wonder how this fares to the rest of the world given some of | the known statistics about depression, anxiety, self-harm, and | more at younger ages. | notacoward wrote: | > Isn't the whole premise of modern social media to get you to | engage in stuff you would not normally engage in | | I think "whole premise" is a bit of an exaggeration, but there | is only so much "organic" engagement to be had. Some social | media (e.g. Tumblr) don't try to reach too far beyond that. | They're content in their niche. Facebook and TikTok, on the | other hand, have infinite ambition and infinite appetite for | engagement. They're well beyond the point where they need to | employ manipulative dark patterns (and keep inventing new | ones!) to keep those numbers up. | thenerdhead wrote: | > Facebook and TikTok, on the other hand, have infinite | ambition and infinite appetite for engagement. They're well | beyond the point where they need to employ manipulative dark | patterns (and keep inventing new ones!) to keep those numbers | up. | | Mind elaborating here? I'm interested in your perspective | regarding social media not employing newly discovered dark | patterns (infinite video feeds, shorter content, targeted | ads, personalized algorithms, etc) | notacoward wrote: | Well, "social media" covers a lot of things including this | right here. Tumblr is IMO one of the best examples of less- | manipulative social media recognized as such. There are | ads, but they're so ill targeted that they're often the | butt of jokes among the denizens. There also is a new-ish | algorithmic feed, but the _default_ is strict reverse- | chronological people you follow. While people do post | videos - often from the bigger or modern sites - they 're | far from dominant. I think Reddit is at approximately the | same "evolutionary level" but I don't hang out there much | so I could be wrong. | | Personally I find my time on Tumblr much more gratifying | than my time on Facebook (yes I still actively use both) | but that's more cultural rather than technical. Is the | relative lack of vapid "influencer" types a function of | culture or format? I think Reddit is at approximately the | same "evolutionary level" but I hardly hang out there so I | could be wrong. Reddit might also be the main | counterexample to the general rule that sheer size and the | OP's three axes all go together. | svnt wrote: | It was confusingly worded but the parent probably holds the | same position you do. | | They're saying big social media is beyond the 'natural' | resting size where they would exists if they did not engage | in dark patterns, and so must make and use new ones to stay | there. | k12sosse wrote: | This must be the whole "medium is the message" thing he was | talking about | mjamesaustin wrote: | Does an addict "like" the thing they are addicted to? Or have the | chemical responses in their brain been manipulated to the | advantage of the person selling the addiction? | | Recommendation media is the perfection of a system that uses our | dopamine response to control the behavior of those viewing it. At | some point, I think we can agree that this isn't good for those | consuming the content, especially as research shows that | increased consumption decreases feelings of happiness and | increases loneliness. | jkkramer wrote: | A rule of thumb I sometimes use to assess products, including | ones I've built: | | Looking back at the last year, are you (or your users) happy | with the time spent using the product? Do you/they regret it? | | Juicing short-term engagement can be effective for startups, | but it isn't everything, and doesn't necessarily lead to | lasting value. | [deleted] | AndrewKemendo wrote: | There's a middle period in addiction where you still get novel | enjoyment from the thing you're doing, but finally realize it's | bad for you. It seems to be around that time when people choose | a path - either quitting that thing or leaning into it, | consequences be damned. | | So yes they still like it, but the ratio between enjoyment and | suffering starts to invert such that it's beyond the point of | diminishing returns. Beyond that point you are mentally or | physically dependent, and it starts to become simply avoiding | the withdrawls. The addictive behavior becomes the new normal | even if it's totally destructive. | | This is why addiction is so hard | | Note here: most people are thinking about intoxicants when | reading the above, but it's equally true for anything in | unhealthy amounts (food, games, running, collecting stamps | etc...) | pvarangot wrote: | > It seems to be around that time when people choose a path - | either quitting that thing or leaning into it, consequences | be damned. | | It's not that simple. You can fool yourself into thinking | there's no consequences like "being on social media 12 hours | per day is completely normal, I know a lot of productive | people that do it", and then lean into it more. There's also | the chasing the dragon thing "maybe Trump will kill himself | and if I make the first most upvoted Reddit comment I may | become an online celebrity", in which every time you do | something it feels like a novel thing because you are waiting | for the time you actually get the dragon. | pixl97 wrote: | Addiction becomes more problematic when 'everyone is doing | it', as you say with food/games, these are things everywhere | in society and are hard to get away from. I'd say it's just | as difficult to get away from social media since there is no | general stigma that it is bad. | rconti wrote: | My question is, what happens to social media when it stops being | social? I _liked_ the fact that everyone I knew in college was on | Facebook, and _disliked_ having to remember what silly username | my friend was using on Twitter this week, or how I knew this Joe | Blow person I followed at some point for some reason. | | I _like_ seeing my friends' vacation photos and other friends | commenting on them. | | I _hate_ how reels and stories move from social to broadcast. Why | can't my friend group comment on an IG story and have a | discussion? Why does it have to be in DMs? (Unless we do that | stupid thing where you share out a scene from a story (ugh, yes, | I realize how old it makes me that i don't even know what to call | it) and tag everyone involved) | | The less a platform has the _kinds of content_ that drives the | network effect, the less reason for there to be a network at all. | It just becomes TV. And I use that comparison purposefully; | television is extremely popular, I watch plenty of it myself. But | without the _active_ network effects of social media, what drives | user-to-user engagement? How do you get new people to sign up, | beyond "hey, look at this tiktok I saw"? Or is that enough? | m3kw9 wrote: | The problem is current AI generation contain no creativity, they | are trained from human made data set. And machine generated data | set is also learnt from human data | mlboss wrote: | I would argue that human creativity is also recombination of | existing images/thoughts/experiences. There is no ghost in the | machine who comes up with novel ideas that didn't exist before. | Everything new is just a combination of old ideas combined in | new ways. | rsweeney21 wrote: | The leap from "recommending" content to "generating" content | reminds me of the leap from cars that we drive on the ground and | cars that fly. | | It seems like the future, but it's much further away than we | think. | personjerry wrote: | If you're an innovator and think along this trend, then you're | fighting the fight in the trenches where Facebook and TikTok are | already embedded and winning, and AI already promises to win the | next round. | | For me, the question is where can there be a shift that causes | the existing competition to become derailed altogether? And how | can you help induce such a change, and ride the wave? | | For example, imagine a social shift away from the "online all the | time" trend to "hanging out with people IRL", riding the end-of- | covid wave. | pixl97 wrote: | If there is such a shift, it will be a paradigm shift and very | difficult to predict before it happens. | stevewatson301 wrote: | Such shifts are more likely to happen due to legislation and | lawsuits than people voluntarily opting out of using FB/TikTok. | (Similar to how the Sackler family was responsible for the | opioid crisis which was only brought under control by | government action.) | erichocean wrote: | > _the opioid crisis which was only brought under control by | government action_ | | "Coming wave of opioid overdoses 'will be worse than ever | been before'" Source: | https://news.northwestern.edu/stories/2022/07/coming-wave- | of... | | I guess there's still work to be done if this is the | government having things "under control." | ape4 wrote: | We hate it but we also wish we'd invented it. | upupandup wrote: | im afraid this short attention optimized dopamine manipulation | system is going to be deterimental for our collective mental and | cognitive capacity, especially with covid. | | in particular im fearful of the impact on young developing minds, | this is literally setting them up for failure or maybe this is | the end goal? | strikelaserclaw wrote: | I am on a crusade to regulate my wife's instagram usage and | will pretty much ban social media for my children (or at-least | heavily regulate it). My wife agrees that she is much happier | on the aggregate when she uses instagram less. Having worked in | industries close to social media, the people here have no | qualms about doing anything possible to increase revenue, whats | worse is how smart some of the people are. | arwineap wrote: | > whats worse is how smart some of the people are | | Smart people can use instagram, I'm not sure what you're | getting at. | strikelaserclaw wrote: | i meant more like those who are doing whatever to increase | revenue for their companies not actual users themselves. | Jensson wrote: | That sentence referred to the people working at Instagram, | not the people using Instagram. The poster meant that it is | sad that smart people spend so much time and energy trying | to get people addicted to these things. | tboyd47 wrote: | It already has. The ultimate expression of this dopamine mill | is on-demand porn, and that's already run its course addicting | practically the entire population and giving them sexual | dysfunction. Social media is like "porn lite." | [deleted] | sytse wrote: | Great article. The author mentions: "Machine learning models can | now create text and images for zero marginal cost". Another step | was just taken in this direction with TikTok launching an 'AI | greenscreen' based on text prompts | https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/15/tiktok-in-app-text-to-imag... | nassimsoftware wrote: | I don't think we have solved image generation with DALLE-2 yet. | There are still many challenges before we move on to video: | | - generating drawing that upon close inspection don't have | obvious defects. | | - generate hand drawn text. | | - being able to replicate the same character along multiple | angles consistently with the same style. | | I feel like this is going to become increasingly hard because | there are many things in drawing that can't be capture quite well | with words. | | It's analogous to code being more expressive than no-code drag | and drop. | KaoruAoiShiho wrote: | A little bit dubious about the last one, it doesn't seem like a | straightforward progression to me. But the first 2 for sure. | slowmovintarget wrote: | The Three Trends (according to the article): | | 1. Medium: text -> images -> video -> 3D graphics -> VR | | 2. AI: time -> rank -> recommend -> generate | | 3. UI: click -> scroll -> tap -> swipe -> autoplay | | By this definition, the end of the line is a totally passive | consumption of endorphin-inducing pablum that blots out the real | world. (I may be exaggerating a touch.) It might stop short of a | wire into the pleasure centers of the brain... but not by much. | | Makes me wonder if there's a market for the equivalent of health | food where we go back to social media and deliberately avoid | "recommendation media" (which may be the most important two words | in the entire post). | fossuser wrote: | Urbit is trying to build the tools that enable this (in part by | fixing the ad driven engagement incentives that lead to | centralization and the current state). | | One interesting bit is if you're making vegetables when | everyone else is giving away heroin it's not enough to just to | make great vegetables, you really need to offer something that | can't exist outside of what you've built because your core | technology does something different. | | I think Urbit's distribution and handling of auth could be that | for distributed DevEx and building collaborative apps in a way | that's way simpler than on the current web stack. It's not | quite there yet but there's a path to this reality and success | is among the potential outcomes. | elefanten wrote: | Do you have any recommended introduction to Urbit that | touches on these possibilities in particular? | fossuser wrote: | Which particular ones? The DevEx auth stuff or the | incentive fixing bit? | | The ID model is probably where I'd start since it's what | fixes spam/moderation problem in a way that can actually | work without centralization. When IDs have a small, but | non-zero cost spam becomes uneconomical and it's easy to | block an ID. IDs also accrue pseudonymous reputation. From | there you can start to fix a lot of the other stuff. | | The DevEx bit also heavily depends on that. When you build | the OS to handle IDs you move the abstraction up the stack. | Modern operating systems don't do this in part because they | were built before the web. As a result modern operating | systems are largely just machines user's use to open a web | browser and every centralized web application has to | rebuild their entire auth stack and all of the | collaboration tooling. They're incentivized to do this and | be incompatible with everything else because centralization | tends to lead to ad-driven business models and all the | incentive problems associated with that. | | If the OS handled IDs and collaboration you could just | build your app, distribute it to the network and rely on | built in OS libraries to do the complex work relying on | guarantees from the OS itself. The users wouldn't need | accounts on a bunch of centralized services. | | People have tried to do this on the unix stack, but it | fails for a few reasons[0][1]. It's not impossible to build | something else that could work though and rethinking the | stack from first principles leads to something that could | work. | | Imagine if all linux users could just dm each other because | the OS itself handled encrypted communication between IDs. | You could build and distribute linux apps without a mess of | complexity just by publishing it to your node. You get the | capability to build really collaborative applications out | of the box because of a lot of these guarantees without | having to give up control. There's a lot more possible than | this in this model - I think it's a path to escape the | local maximum we've been trapped in and get closer to the | web the 90s cypherpunks imagined (and the personal computer | hackers before them). | | [0]: http://moronlab.blogspot.com/2010/01/urbit-functional- | progra... | | [1]: https://urbit.org/overview | shalmanese wrote: | The final social network will be named Tasp. | Kiro wrote: | > a wire into the pleasure centers of the brain | | Sounds like the dream. I hope I live to experience it. | cratermoon wrote: | Allow me to recommend Jenny Odell's book, _How to Do Nothing_ | [1], or watch a ~30m talk by Jenny[2] | | 1 https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/600671/how-to-do- | no... | | 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dveUrpp6vs8 | benreesman wrote: | You might enjoy The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect [1]. It | addresses these themes quite directly. | | The thing is, we're sort of talking (still somewhat | hypothetically) about the Internet becoming more like hard | drugs here in terms of entertainment/pleasure/addiction | potential, which puts pretty much everyone except for (by HN | standards) serious conservatives in a bind on slamming social | media: liberals like me and the many libertarians on here | usually feel that the War on Drugs has been a catastrophe, | alongside pretty much all prohibition aimed at people who are | turning to escapism because the rungs of the real-world | achievement ladder have been knocked out above them. | | I personally believe that explosive growth in escapism (see: | opioid crisis) is driven by shitty opportunities in the real | world. There is always going to be some set of highly potent | diversions, and there will always be some fraction of the | population that has a hard enough time with them to need | professional help. But IMO none of Internet pornography, | painkillers, video games, or crazy-optimized recommender | systems are going to destroy lives and societies in job lots if | those societies have high mobility in real-word achievement. | So, not our society right now. | | I'm probably biased having worked in social media in my life, | but the flip side is that I also know how how the sausage is | made, I think that sort of balances out. Everyone has to form | their own opinion here, my point can be TLDR'd as: | "decriminalize drugs" and simultaneously "fuck TikTok" isn't | really a consistent worldview. It's reasonable to say "fuck | marketing TikTok to children" alongside "decriminalize drugs", | and I'd probably agree with both. | | [1] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metamorphosis_of_Prime_Int... | ricardobeat wrote: | There is most definitely something different at play here, | though I can't point out exactly what. It's hard to imagine a | 60-year old grandmother hooked on crack, porn or painkillers, | but I know several who spend 8+ hours a day glued to a screen | playing Candy Crush. | gen220 wrote: | I think it's that crack, porn, and painkillers are, to | varying extents, counterculture or taboo. Whereas an | "innocent" Candy Crush addiction is more socially | acceptable. | | It's fun to speculate on why that's the case, but it seems | likely intractable to nail down. | | Although, I'll point out that while they're both categories | of addiction, pension funds can only invest in and make | profits from the more "innocent-feeling" category. | | I'd guess that, if there were a regulatory environment that | allowed for public companies that could legally encourage | people to indulge their $taboo_addiction, then said | $taboo_addiction would cease to be taboo and become more | prevalent, for better and worse. | benreesman wrote: | We might come from different socio-economic backgrounds | then, because the idea of a 60-year old grandmother | addicted to painkillers far in excess of medical need is | depressingly mundane to me. | drekipus wrote: | > if those societies have high mobility in real-word | achievement. So, not our society right now. | | Our society isn't high mobility? Who has a higher mobility? | | (* I realise this is the internet but I'm assuming you're | talking about one of the five-eyes nations) | scottmcdot wrote: | Can I coin the term "recommedia"? | austinjp wrote: | "Recommercial" | cwkoss wrote: | VR is never going to be a replacement for short form video. | Casual passive consumption of video benefits from being able to | fit in between other activities easily. I'm never going to want | an immersive experience when I have 2 minutes to kill waiting | for a friend to show up at a bar - I just want easily | digestible content snacks. | hammock wrote: | >Casual passive consumption of video benefits from being able | to fit in between other activities easily | | The same was said of video vs. reading. "I'm never going to | want a video experience, it doesn't fit in between other | activities as well as reading a page of something." | evouga wrote: | Sure, but plenty of people still browse Reddit or Instagram | (or HackerNews), listen to podcasts, etc. | | There is a middle ground between "AR will never take off as | an entertainment medium" and "AR will kill | video/images/text." | johnmaguire wrote: | To be honest, I still feel this way. I can't stand when | content is only available in video format. Give me text! | mike00632 wrote: | I feel this way when I click on a news article and it's | actually a video with a headline. | nomel wrote: | To be fair, I think most everyone agrees that XR is the | future, not VR. XR could easily take the replacement. | bmazed wrote: | over/under 2040 ? | evouga wrote: | Under. Way under. | | Google Glass's spectacular failure had a chilling effect | on the entire industry, but it failed due to (1) lack of | killer apps, (2) poor aesthetics, and (3) consumer | concern about privacy. | | But ML has revolutionized image and video processing, | Apple etc. could design a less hideous headset, and | nobody cares about privacy anymore. | nomel wrote: | > could design a less hideous headset, and nobody cares | about privacy anymore. | | I think it would help to not make most of the promotional | material about video recording, and not make a _huge_ | camera the most visible feature. I don 't think it's a | coincidence that the Quest lineup, including rumored | Cambria and Apple renders, obscure the forward looking | cameras. | | Google Glass picture, which looks like a webcam on your | face: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/19/ | google-gl... | monkeydust wrote: | Isn't VR a type of XR? | nomel wrote: | VR is the world real-world excluding half of XR. | Excluding the world is often not desirable, which is why | VR, alone, definitely isn't the future. | buildsjets wrote: | Likewise. I'd never want to have to take out my handheld | computer, boot it up, and connect it to the internet just to | kill 2 minutes looking at pictures of cats, when I can just | as easily look at my wallet full of cat Polaroids. | | I see a future where you blink twice to power up your ocular | nerve implants for a few minutes of stim, then power 'em down | when you get a popup that your buddy is nearby and ordering | drinks. | tacotacotaco wrote: | You think people in the future will have experiences in the | real world with other real humans. That their buddy isn't a | bot algorithmically refined to maximally connect with it's | user. And that the user can power down their ocular | implant. How cute. | layer8 wrote: | If/when VR becomes as easy as putting on a pair of | sunglasses, then it won't be much different from pulling your | smartphone out of the pocket. Luckily, we're probably decades | away from that being feasible, on the technological front. | cwkoss wrote: | VR is by its nature immersive. Immersion is inherently at | odds with quick and easily digestible. | | 3d video served by an AR sunglass display is plausible (but | probably way overkill for the next decade), but feeling | like you're in an entirely different environment while | waiting in line at the post office is never going to be a | thing people want. | layer8 wrote: | I disagree that it's that much different from people | being immersed in their smartphones, not taking notice at | all of their surroundings anymore. With a sunglasses-like | solution, you probably would/could still see the actual | surroundings in your peripheral vision, or via pass- | through, similar to how you can still hear your | surroundings through non-sealing earphones, or via pass- | through for sealed ones. | cwkoss wrote: | Very implausible imo, have you used VR before? Will never | be safe to use in public spaces: what and who is around | you is unpredictable, so only AR will be viable. | ryandrake wrote: | > Casual passive consumption of video benefits from being | able to fit in between other activities easily. I'm never | going to want an immersive experience when I have 2 minutes | to kill waiting for a friend to show up at a bar - I just | want easily digestible content snacks. | | This presumes the existence of important "other activities", | and relegates this content consumption as some lower-priority | thing done between these activities. I know people who really | don't have any important other activities: passively | scrolling through video after video is their primary | activity. For this [I'd guess growing] group, VR's ability to | block out the unimportant real-world is the next obvious | step. | nomel wrote: | > It might stop short of a wire into the pleasure centers of | the brain | | I don't think we'll ever reach that. I'm sure there will be | non-invasive methods, soon enough. | croes wrote: | Do you remember the passengers of the Axiom in WALL-E? | ssalazar wrote: | > By this definition, the end of the line is a totally passive | consumption of endorphin-inducing pablum that blots out the | real world. | | Doesn't seem all that different from 99% of media consumption | thats existed in my lifetime. | wutbrodo wrote: | The novel element is combining the passive medium with | infinite content. In my circles, sitting slack-jawed in front | of the TV for hours was something that only those with little | mental energy or drive did[1]. By contrast, probably 75% have | some non-trivial degree of slack-jawed passive social media | consumption, even more so since IG and Tiktok. | | To wit, I think what's interesting about this Era of media | relative to the TV Era is the vanishing proportion of the | population that's able to escape the habit. | | [1] Not a value judgment: my sister and her husband consume | massive amounts of TV but they're also both early-career | doctors. I would be braindead at the end of the day too. | 650 wrote: | Idk how people do this, its just so boring. I tried tiktok | and the first 200-300 scrolls were interesting, but then | its just people regurgitating the same comedy/meme. Sure | you can find a niche subject you're into like cooking, but | most topics do get kind of dry after a while. I do think | I'm in a minority though and know quite a few who spend | hours a day on tiktok/insta. | EricMausler wrote: | It's enjoyable for 20 minutes a day, especially when | waiting on something. | | The key things are: | | 1) time offline is on your side. you can saturate | yourself with current trends that interest you pretty | quickly. You need to allow actual real world time to pass | for those trends to update. | | 2) scroll with purpose and intent. aggressively dismiss | things that don't immediately get your attention from any | unknown source. (Helps the algorithm actually cater to | your interests) | | 3) tell the algorithm when you don't like something. | There's usually a "don't show me content like this" | option somewhere. I felt dramatic about it at first, but | it's the only tool you have to keep the algorithm from | incorrectly assuming you enjoyed the content when you did | watch the entire thing (out of sheer curiosity / hope / | general inaction). | | I noticed I now get a lot of low profile things in my | feed that are actually pretty cool and fit the medium | nicely. Lots of trade work stuff, before / afters, | machines doing stuff, stand up comedy bits, etc. Those | personalized things do not have room to flourish if I am | giving too many things a chance. | croes wrote: | In my lifetime the content didn't get automatically adjusted | to my needs to get me hooked. | tshaddox wrote: | No, but it was undoubtedly produced with the intention to | get the most people hooked as possible. Traditional media | was just less effective at hooking people because of the | limited number of distribution channels and the cost of | producing content. | prox wrote: | From Edward R Murrow famous speech: _This instrument can | teach, it can illuminate; yes, and even it can inspire. But | it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to | use it to those ends. Otherwise, it 's nothing but wires and | lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle | to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. | This weapon of television could be useful._ | csixty4 wrote: | yeah that's basically describing broadcast tv & radio | Banana699 wrote: | None of those are AI-generated (therefore don't have the | potential massive automated scale) or auto-play. | julienb_sea wrote: | Broadcast radio & tv are definitionally auto-play, | arguably much moreso than social media apps which have | pause and rewind and browsing functionality. | | I digress, the scalability point is fair and this is an | irrelevant sidebar | dylan604 wrote: | are you sure? it sounds like the exact same playlist on | every station with the same owner in the same market with | such little care about the content in the playlist but | only based on an algorithm. | | so maybe AI === brain dead corporate owners? | ajmurmann wrote: | IMO the differ here is less about AI vs human curated, | but curated/generated for a very broad audience vs one | specific consumer, ideally live as their mood or | interests change. We aren't there yet with the highly | dynamic mood and interest changes (e.g. interest fading | after 5 Dr pimple popper videos, let's throw in some | wingsuit stuff), but it's on the same trajectory. Address | broad audience -> address smaller, niche audiences -> | address individuals -> address individuals in the moment | mola wrote: | Yes, we already have "slow AI". It's the corporate | paperclip machine. It's has a strict value function; make | money to shareholders. And it will do what ever it takes | to make more of it. | | All these ppl scaring us with AGI are either distracting | us from the clear and present dangers of slow AI so they | can keep profiting from it , or are just duped by silly | technooptimism. | oefnak wrote: | Why do you think that a malevolent AGI wouldn't use these | tactics to make money / influence public perception? | | I think these are two sides of the same coin. | mftb wrote: | You can't ignore matters of degree. It does sound | similar, but just by reducing the content chunk length to | ~20 secs, they've dramatically improved the algorithmic | manipulation and ad insertion (from their point of view), | making it all far more effective. | | In the old model people left the tv droning in the | background, in the new model, people are riveted by their | phones (with 2nd and 3rd screens (and radio (and | billboards)) droning in the background). | throwyawayyyy wrote: | Being only semi-serious, but: wouldn't an auto-generated | Netflix look pretty much like Netflix? | adolph wrote: | Max Headroom was a human powered simulation of such a | future. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Headroom | mftb wrote: | There was a time I hadn't thought about Max Headroom in | years, now I feel like he's all over the place again. | guelo wrote: | TikTok isn't that far off from America's Funniest Home | Videos. | karaterobot wrote: | No, that's not what he's saying. Broadcast TV & radio is | human-generated, audio and video, and not immersive. It's | several steps behind the trend he's predicting. And they | are also not equivalent in terms of getting user engagement | and attention, which is why those industries have shrunk so | much. | dzuc wrote: | > Makes me wonder if there's a market for the equivalent of | health food where we go back to social media and deliberately | avoid "recommendation media" | | See: https://www.are.na/ | froidpink wrote: | BeReal's growth is probably a good example of this kind of | "organic" and "healthy" social media | alpha_squared wrote: | Disclosure: I haven't used BeReal. | | I fully expect BeReal's model to change in less than two | years from now (probably within a year). I see it quickly | devolving into tedium after a while. Users will disable | notifications to post, become passive consumers. | "Influencers" drive adoption of platforms and it's hard to be | the same type of influencer unless you're constantly living | that lifestyle, which almost no influencer today actually | does. | Invictus0 wrote: | David Foster Wallace predicted it all in the 90s | LordEthano wrote: | Exactly what came to mind | majormajor wrote: | I was thinking the wireheads from Hyperion | nonameiguess wrote: | Arguably, Aldous Huxley got pretty close half a century | earlier than that, but I guess he failed to anticipate that | the United States would become and remain so ideologically | committed to keeping recreational drug use illegal that we'd | need to find a more expensive and convoluted means to | approximate wireheading. | skyyler wrote: | I've heard this sentiment before, could you explain what you | mean? | ZantaWB wrote: | He touches on this idea a lot, but most deeply in Infinite | Jest where the parallels between between addiction to media | and addiction to drugs is a major theme. In that story | people have developed 'Entertainments,' basically video | segments. Someone makes an Entertainment so unbelievably | good that anyone who watches it is immediately stupefied | and has no will to do anything but watch the Entertainment | over and over. This Entertainment becomes a potent | terrorist weapon since it can essentially take out anyone | to whom it's broadcast. | allenu wrote: | > Someone makes an Entertainment so unbelievably good | that anyone who watches it is immediately stupefied and | has no will to do anything but watch the Entertainment | over and over. This Entertainment becomes a potent | terrorist weapon since it can essentially take out anyone | to whom it's broadcast. | | There's a Monty Python sketch where someone comes up with | the funniest joke in the world and dies laughing after | penning it. It's eventually learned that anyone who reads | or hears the joke immediately laughs themselves to death. | Of course, eventually the army gets a hold of it to use | as a weapon. | swyx wrote: | see also Neil Postman - Amusing Ourselves to Death | (fantastic title) | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death | | they were calling this out since 1984 - hard to | distinguish between luddism and genuine problems | reginaldo wrote: | The book "Technopoly", by Postman, is also very well | worth a reading. But I'd say the most relevant to this | trend is "The disappearance of childhood". The book's | thesis is that childhood is a modern invention, in that, | before the printing press, and mass education / literacy, | there was no need for childhood as a learning period. In | the middle ages, childhood ended at age 7, as soon as | children became more or less self sufficient in their | bodily functions. | | Literacy requires effort, and protected time to acquire | analytical skills that are not natural to humans. | Childhood was, then, embraced, because it's the way to | get literacy. | | All-encompassing technologies that require no effort, | e.g. TV or, as it appears to be the case, AR, might end | the need for childhood, hence the book title. Among the | novel technologies, the computer would be the one to | "save" childhood, but only if society requires active (as | opposed to passive) competency with computer technology. | Quoting Postman: | | "The only technology that has this capacity is the | computer. In order to program a computer, one must, in | essence, learn a language. This means that one must have | control over complex analytical skills similar to those | required of a fully literate person, and for which | special training is required. Should it be deemed | necessary that everyone must know how computers work, how | they impose their special world-view, how they alter our | definition of judgment--that is, should it be deemed | necessary that there be universal computer literacy--it | is conceivable that the schooling of the young will | increase in importance and a youth culture different from | adult culture might be sustained. But such a development | would depend on many different factors. The potential | effects of a medium can be rendered impotent by the uses | to which the medium is put. For example, radio, by its | nature, has the potential to amplify and celebrate the | power and poetry of human speech, and there are parts of | the world in which radio is used to do this. In America, | partly as a result of competition with television, radio | has become merely an adjunct of the music industry. And, | as a consequence, sustained, articulate, and mature | speech is almost entirely absent from the airwaves | \\(with the magnificent exception of National Public | Radio\\). Thus, it is not inevitable that the computer | will be used to promote sequential, logical, and complex | thought among the mass of people. There are, for example, | economic and political interests that would be better | served by allowing the bulk of a semiliterate population | to entertain itself with the magic of visual computer | games, to use and be used by computers without | understanding. In this way the computer would remain | mysterious and under the control of a bureaucratic elite. | There would be no need to educate the young, and | childhood could, without obstruction, continue on its | journey to oblivion." | ru552 wrote: | What you describe as the "end of the line totally passive | consumption of endorphins" we already have. It comes in various | forms of drugs and you can pick the type of world blotting | experience you desire. | josefresco wrote: | Reminds me of the Pixar movie Wall-E | 0000011111 wrote: | Its the next step of facebook - meta. Think ready player one. | sh4rks wrote: | That would fit under the "video" category | monkeydust wrote: | I keep thinking of Wall-E more frequently recently - with | macro trends such as global warming , automation as and great | resignation plus Elon and his rockets. | evouga wrote: | "Medium" and "AI" are spot-on IMO, but the "UI" track seems | suspect to me. | | "Click" and "Tap" are essentially the same thing (on a desktop | vs. on a mobile device): the user actively selecting what | content to view next. So are "scroll" and "autoplay" (for | text/image and video content, respectively). In the former, the | user has agency over what to view, and in the latter, the | transition is automated. | | I'm very skeptical that fully automated UI will ever replace | giving the user a small selection of recommended items. | seydor wrote: | They remind of the characteristics of TV just with different | technologies and AI generation instead of sitcoms. | thelock85 wrote: | This reminds me of the evolution of the slot machine (as read | in Matthew Crawford's _The World Beyond Your Head_ ). A rough | analog would be: | | 1. Medium: Mechanical reel > Digital reel | | 2. Gameplay: Fixed odds > Adjustable odds > Programmatic | adaptive odds | | 3. Experience: Pull the lever and win or lose > Pull the lever | and win even if you lose (e.g. get back change) > Swipe a card | and win even if you lose > Swipe a card and watch the game | auto-play until you're out of money | | After reading that book (in 2014), I made my last Facebook post | (the history of the slot machine) and promptly downloaded my | data and deleted my account. I'm paraphrasing but Crawford's | point was basically that social media is a socio-emotional slot | machine. | BigHatLogan wrote: | Fantastic book. The stories about the slot machine players | who wear black pants so that they can urinate without being | noticed was shocking, to say the least. They are so addicted | to the machines that they won't even get up to use the | restroom. | | The phrase he used, "playing to extinction", very much | reminds me of what's happening now across most entertainment | categories, broadly speaking (autoplay, loot boxes, slot | machine-style gaming content, etc.) | HappySweeney wrote: | It isn't so much that they are addicted (though they are), | but that someone will take their spot while they are up. | jonny_eh wrote: | That's just a rationalization they tell themselves. | HappySweeney wrote: | It's more than that. In a game like roulette, probability | has no memory. In slots, the payout must come eventually, | and playing losing rounds only brings you closer to that. | There are slots players just waiting for others to go | bust so they can swoop in. | | Also, one would hope that those that are so addicted that | they are fine to just haul-off and piss themselves would | be able to think ahead and simply wear a diaper. | drekipus wrote: | > In slots, the payout must come eventually, and playing | losing rounds only brings you closer to that. | | Riiiigggghhhhttttt | bigtunacan wrote: | The payout is always less than the take, but the parent | is correct. In most areas (of the US at least) casino | slot machines are pretty tightly regulated to have to pay | out a certain percentage of the take. | | To give an example, slot machines in Nevada must pay out | a minimum of 75% of the take. Additionally, no | programming/odds updates or machine resets may be made to | the slot machine until the machine has sat idle for a | minimum of 4 minutes; and if an update/reset is being | made the machine _must_ clearly display that this is | occurring. | | So the sick thing here is that each loss does in fact | bring you closer to the winning spin. One of the only | real strategies of slot machines (in the sense that there | can be a strategy to a game of luck) is to stand around | idling watching other people lose, then after someone | leaves a machine with a bad run you immediately drop in | to the spot and start playing the same machine. | guelo wrote: | The 75% isn't calculated per player or per session. It's | the theoretical minimum payout over the long run. | Basically it's just code that does win = | rand() < .75 | ryandrake wrote: | Reminds me a little of Star Trek TNG's _The Game_ [1], where | the crew becomes addicted to an automated AR/VR game that | just sits there autoplaying, directly manipulating the | brain's pleasure sensors. Something like this, but one that | also slowly transfers the contents of the user's bank account | to a corporation, could be the ultimate end-result of our | current capitalist-technologist trajectory. | | 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_(Star_Trek:_The_Nex | t_... | beckingz wrote: | "To unlock more Dopamine Crystals, please do this | Mechanical Turk task and complete a side quest for Pepsi | flavored Vat Fluid" | jjeaff wrote: | Hmm, so basically you just sink into an overstuffed recliner | and stare into a huge screen while it feeds you content | interspersed with commercials? | 62951413 wrote: | Idiocracy was a documentary | mike00632 wrote: | How much is this recliner you speak of? Can I pay to skip | ads? | gzer0 wrote: | "The implication of entertainment being dictated by | recommendations and AI instead of reputation and ranking is that | all of the power accrues to the platform doing the recommending." | | I found this quite profound. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-16 23:00 UTC)