19 ms·

Sean Parker unloads on Facebook “exploiting” human psychology

603 points by jbuild 9y ago

harryf 9y ago
Paul Graham wrote a great piece on this in 2010 http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html > As far as I know there's no word for something we like too much. The closest is the colloquial sense of "addictive." That usage has become increasingly common during my lifetime. And it's clear why: there are an increasing number of things we need it for. > The next 40 years will bring us some wonderful things. I don't mean to imply they're all to be avoided. Alcohol is a dangerous drug, but I'd rather live in a world with wine than one without. Most people can coexist with alcohol; but you have to be careful. More things we like will mean more things we have to be careful about. > You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly. We'll have to worry not just about new things, but also about existing things becoming more addictive. That's what bit me. I've avoided most addictions, but the Internet got me because it became addictive while I was using it. Sounds pretty eccentric, doesn't it? It always will when you're trying to solve problems where there are no customs yet to guide you. > And unless the rate at which social antibodies evolve can increase to match the accelerating rate at which technological progress throws off new addictions, we'll be increasingly unable to rely on customs to protect us. That means there's going to be a market for products to manage addiction. My bet would be driven by parents and schools
- amelius 9y ago
  > As far as I know there's no word for something we like too much. There is an expression that could be relevant: Supernormal stimulus, [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus
  - 0xADADA 9y ago
    NAILED IT
    - amelius 9y ago
      Yes, the wikipedia article also mentions: > Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett argues that supernormal stimulation govern the behavior of humans as powerfully as that of animals. In her 2010 book, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose, she examines the impact of supernormal stimuli on the diversion of impulses for nurturing, sexuality, romance, territoriality, defense, and the entertainment industry’s hijacking of our social instincts.
      - deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
darepublic 9y ago
There's many people out there, myself included, who signed up with Facebook years ago and don't use it today. I don't like FB personally but don't understand the steady stream of criticism about -- that it's too addictive, that the site should be curating content in the wake of the last election? Pretty sad if you ask me. FB is not responsible for verifying the truth of every FB news post, nor helping its users to live productive meaningful lives. If you are addicted to FB you should do some soul searching.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- a3n 9y ago
  Social media will have their "cigarette moment," after enough time has passed to do the studies.
  - snomad 9y ago
    These statements + the 60 minutes piece awhile back (https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/brain-hacking-2/ https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/brain-hacking-2/) make this a very likely outcome. I wonder what the equivalent warning label + restrictions will look like.
    - ashark 9y ago
      Removing much of the motivation for this crap by outlawing exploitation of user data, and making even having it very expensive and/or risky, through huge bond or insurance requirements to cover data breaches for anyone who stores such things, would be a good place to start. And yes, that should absolutely apply to more traditional data-mining companies (credit card companies, for example).
- Super_Jambo 9y ago
  Because facebook is a handy label for all forms of malicious capitalism. And the excesses of malicious capitalism are becoming sufficiently extreme that people are starting to notice. It's much easier to notice this in new technologies rather than old ones you're already comfortable with. So facebook gets the flak, which is deserved but lots of other people avoid it. Take soft drinks which are terrible for peoples health. Your profit comes from: 1) Convincing people that buying your drink will make them popular & happy. 2) Convincing the government to keep corn subsidies. 3) Convincing everyone that calories in calories out and self control are the _real_ method to health. Our sugar water isn't at fault it's your personal weakness! We're in a situation where powerful companies use their economic clout to buy off the government and convince the population of falsehoods so they can make more profit. This isn't new but since we've gotten pretty optimised on at solving genuine human needs (companies vs entropy) is much harder to profit from than fooling suckers into bad choices (companies vs irrational monkey brains). So now all our most profitable companies largely work to create little anti-competitive fiefdoms and to fool people into harming themselves. So of course people are going to point out that this is terrible and we should probably do something to regulate it's excess.
dalbasal 9y ago
For a big enough digital product, "hacking psychology" happens by default, more than intentionally. First, it happens through competition. Good psychology hacks are things like tinder's fast paced swiping. Out of the squillions of dating apps, the one with a good hack won. I think Facebook used an identical hack for its first version, the hot-or-not version. Twitter's basic concept. Snapchat's. Lots of examples. All good "psych-hacks" that formed a core of successful products, arrived at through a sort of natural selection process. I suspect that almost any app which does not "solve a problem" leverages some hack instead. Second, psych-hackers FB actually employ are not psychlogists. They're data scientists doing split tests. If this works like that, will you like more posts. A/B testing is really behavioural psychology expirementation, weaponized. I think both of these are quasi-inevitable. But, constant optimization towards viral drek is not. Where I think FB should be sheepish about is allowing the optimization to go on directionless. The only goals are quantitive. Quality is a foreign concept. No one has asked the question "what should FB be." The answer is simply "popular." This isn't inevitable. Applied to businesses as a whole, you could replace "popular" with profitable. All businesses are under this imperative. But, that doesn't mean directionless. Businesses can strive to be all sorts of things in addition to (or preferebly as a path to) profitable. FB is itself an example of this. What I want from FB (and Google) is a recognition that they are media companies, the biggest media companies. After that, they need to start dealing in quality. If you only optimize for quantity of reactions, shares and such while disregarding quality you become a shitty tabloid. No taste. No integrity. Just clickbait. FB need to ask themselves "is the content (eg news) on FB of good quality?"
- splittingTimes 9y ago
  > For a big enough digital product, "hacking psychology" happens by default, more than intentionally... Totally agree. > ..arrived at through a sort of natural selection process. I am not so sure. This all well-known stuff and employed methodically. There is an interesting article where a Google design ethicist explains how technology hijacks your mind [1]. TL;DR: Hijack 1: If You Control the Menu, You Control the Choices. Ask yourself: What’s not on the menu?, Why am I being given these options and not others? Do I know the menu provider’s goals? Is this menu empowering for my original need, or are the choices actually a distraction? Hijack 2: Make apps behave like Slot Machines - give a variable reward. If you want to maximize addictiveness, link a user’s action (like pulling a lever) with a variable reward. You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing. Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable. Hijack 3: Fear of Missing Something Important (FOMSI). If I convince you that I’m a channel for important information, messages, friendships, or potential sexual opportunities — it will be hard for you to turn me off, unsubscribe, or remove your account — because there is a 1% chance you could be missing something important. Hijack 4: Social Approval. When you get tagged by my friend, you think s/he made a conscious choice to tag you, when actually s/he just responds to Facebook’s suggestion, not making an independent choice. Thus Facebook controls the multiplier for how often millions of people experience their social approval on the line. Hijack 5: Social Reciprocity (Tit-for-tat). You follow me — it’s rude not to follow you back. When you receive an invitation from someone to connect, you imagine that person making a conscious choice to invite you, when in reality, they likely unconsciously responded to LinkedIn’s list of suggested c ontacts. Hijack 6: Bottomless bowls, Infinite Feeds, and Autoplay Hijack 7: Instant Interruption vs. “Respectful” Delivery. Messages that interrupt people immediately are more persuasive at getting people to respond than messages delivered asynchronously. Hijack 8: Bundling Your Reasons with Their Reasons. When you you want to look up a Facebook event happening tonight (your reason) the Facebook app doesn’t allow you to access it without first landing on the news feed (their reasons), so Facebook converts every reason you have for using it, into their reason which is to maximize the time you spend consuming things. In an ideal world, apps would always give you a direct way to get what you want separately from what they want. Hijack 9: Inconvenient Choices. Businesses naturally want to make the choices they want you to make easier, and the choices they don’t want you to make harder. NYTimes.com claims to give you “a free choice” to cancel your digital subscription. But instead of just doing it when you hit “Cancel Subscription,” they force you to call a phone number that’s only open at certain times. Hijack 10: Forecasting Errors, “Foot in the Door” strategies. People don’t intuitively forecast the true time cost of a click when it’s presented to them. Sales people use “foot in the door” techniques by asking for a small innocuous request to begin with (“just one click”), and escalating from there (“why don’t you stay awhile?”). Virtually all engagement websites use this trick. === [1] http://www.tristanharris.com/2016/05/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds%E2%80%8A-%E2%80%8Afrom-a-magician-and-googles-design-ethicist/ http://www.tristanharris.com/2016/05/how-technology-hijacks-...
untilHellbanned 9y ago
Social media companies are cigarette companies. They should be taxed and frowned upon accordingly. Remember way back when when cigarettes were cool? Well fast-forward 70 years and that’s social media now.
- mbrock 9y ago
  An interesting dual to that is "cigarettes are a social network."
- dbmikus 9y ago
  That's a very hyperbolic statement. Facebook still has merit as a way to organize and communicate with your social group, even if there are some negatives. For cigarettes, I don't know what positives people can claim with a straight face. That you get to go outside at work for a smoke break?
  - riot504 9y ago
    70 years ago no one viewed cigarettes in the negative.
  - pdkl95 9y ago
    The analogy works surprisingly well. I really wish I didn't have to breath the Facebook's (and Google's) secondhand smoke every time when I interact with other people (or websites). Just like smoking, putting a "like" button on your website or using any of their services to chat with someone inflicts causes "secondhand" damage on people that choose to people that chose not to "inhale". > I don't know what positives Nicotine is a drug. It should be obvious that some people enjoy its effects and/or find it useful. The tolerance effect may reduce those benefits for some (most?) people, but that doesn't change that it had (or continues to have) positive effects. > claim with a straight face Maybe you should ask the doctors at the Harvard Medical School[1] et al about the benefits nicotine seems to have for several mental health issues? Now that we are finally moving oast the taboos on any nicotine-related research, these discoveries might lead to entirely new types of medication. [1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/Nicotine_It_may_have_a_good_side https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/Nicotine_I... (paywall - google cache bypass: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:t8ekKUjkJosJ:https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/Nicotine_It_may_have_a_good_side+&cd=26&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:t8ekKU... )
glitcher 9y ago
> When Facebook was getting going, I had these people who would come up to me and they would say, 'I'm not on social media.' And I would say, 'OK. You know, you will be.' I think the tide has been steadily turning on this. I never did use social media beyond creating an account for work or curiosity, quickly getting bored and abandoning. Sure there may have been a time where I felt a little less connected, but those feelings have diminished over time. The "workarounds" available for those not on social networking are abundant, and more importantly to me, much simpler and time effective for me to use.
- ben_jones 9y ago
  As someone who "left" social media I still frequently feel a void from it. Recently I moved back to my hometown and realized I had completely lost touch with anyone I knew in high school. Different phone, didn't port contacts. I know they all live nearby but I feel like I lost them forever. The bottom line is there is no connection.
  - dublinben 9y ago
    Is that really so bad? You moved away so they were no longer in your life. Now you have the opportunity to run into them at a reunion or a bar and authentically catch up. Alternatively, you could have both been passively observing eachother's lives online, and you'd have nothing to talk about.
  - ravenstine 9y ago
    Before social media, those are people we forgot about and moved on from. And for good reason. Social media, especially Facebook, seems engineered to create this illusion that we're more connected with our "friends"; while those people may have been our friends in another time, that doesn't mean they're our friends now just because we have Facebook connections with them. If it only takes not having a Facebook profile to not exist to people, they're not really our friends to begin with. I can say this about the vast majority of people who are my "friends" on Facebook; I know for sure that 99% of them will never contact me unless Facebook prods them to post "Happy Birthday" on my timeline. This isn't to say that my connections are bad people, but it's to say that social media has distorted what friendship and human bonding actually mean in order to profit on peoples' loneliness. It's not difficult for a truly lonely person to come to that conclusion, but that perspective solidified in me when I became real-life friends with a neighbor of mine. It had been several years since I made a non-superficial friendship. And no social medium was required. I was reminded that real friends are actually interested in seeing you, talking to you, and coming to you first when they've got news about something. Just one friend like that is far more valuable than all the "friends" I ever had on Facebook. You may still feel a void from it, but I do hope you eventually make some real-life connections like I have and forget about your old "friends" entirely. I abstained from Facebook for 9 months, and even near the end I was feeling the void. Going back to it was starkly different and I realized how much of a waste of time it is. I do still use Facebook, but only as a photo repository since I do have some semblance of friends and family on there. Though I'm sure they wouldn't bother with me if I wasn't there to bolster their friend-count.
mindlessmarty 9y ago
The thing is...by nature humans are a group species. If the group is using facebook, you will be compelled to use this too, either for social validation,feeling of belonging or whatever. You will always be weakened even if you don't need facebook. This is the hack. Even if you don't use it because "I value my real-life interactions. I value the moment. I value presence. I value intimacy.' you as an individual will always lose power in the group and will always be looked as weak, because in nature, humans are a group species. Sean Parker seems to know this and these guys abuse of this power
- nine_k 9y ago
  Of course, if you are a leader, you can sway your entire group to use something else as a primary medium. I've seen a few examples. The catch is twofold. Leaders, by definition, are few and far between. Moreover, for a leader, FB offers tools and prospects to gain an ever-expanding audience. The leader must have a strong aversion to FB to ignore this lure.
malloreon 9y ago
Then spend the billions you made off fb taking it down, Sean.
- kyledrake 9y ago
  I think cancer immunotherapy research is a far better use of his money than "taking down" a social network (with what, guns?) I've got plenty of critical things to say about social panopticons, but perspective, please.
ChanningAllen 9y ago
It's such an interesting discussion to me because it's kind of an open question: is the problem really with exploiting human psychology per se? Or is it with exploiting human psychology to achieve non-constructive ends? The time investment that Facebook exacts from its users far outweighs the benefits it provides — e.g. social cohesion. So we feel much less comfortable with the platform's effective psychological hooks. But take an app like stickK[1], which cleverly recruits social and financial pressure to incentivize user-defined good behavior, and the effectiveness of the hooks don't make us so uneasy. Nir Eyal recently discussed this distinction on the Indie Hackers podcast[2]. I suppose a part of this is due to consent; stickK users consciously sign up to be manipulated. But consent can't be the entire equation, or else we'd let modern-day cigarette companies off the hook. It's 2017 — smokers know what they're signing up for, and yet they sign up. [1] http://www.stickk.com/ http://www.stickk.com/ [2] https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/023-nir-eyal-of-hooked#1153.017 https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/023-nir-eyal-of-hooked#...
- ihaveahadron 9y ago
  "exploiting human psychology" what a shitty way of describing "hes doing something i dont like" the level of psychology education of "the people" and the level needed for me to communicate with them is apparently out of whack
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jstewartmobile 9y ago
"The inventors, creators — it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway." All of the recent social media handwringing looks more like dismay over alt-right shitposters co-opting their psyops weapon than a moral awakening.
bobsil1 9y ago
Setting aside addictiveness, it’s way too spammy, trying to get you to do work to juice some PM’s engagement #s. Deleted my acct.
jstewartmobile 9y ago
"Because I'm a billionaire, I'm going to have access to better health care so ... I'm going to be like 160 and I'm going to be part of this, like, class of immortal overlords. [Laughter] Because, you know the [Warren Buffett] expression about compound interest. ... [G]ive us billionaires an extra hundred years and you'll know what ... wealth disparity looks like." After Peter Thiel's blood thing, and quotes like this, I think the French were a little too hard on Marie Antoinette.
- vldx 9y ago
  I think this was intended to be ironic? Thought it’s funny.
  - jstewartmobile 9y ago
    From this other quote and the way he delivered it, I think he is a sociopath, and the longevity quote is only half joking. "The inventors, creators — it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway."
    - jhiska 9y ago
      A sociopath wouldn't be open about what the harm they did because they don't care to help others heal. He talks about it because he feels guilt but knows he won't be punished. He understood it was immoral. He still did it, because morality doesn't have the power to stop actions. Now he feels guilt for doing evil. But at least now he's ultra-rich and powerful. He understood what he was trying to achieve.
      - jstewartmobile 9y ago
        How does 'fessing up long after you've been caught red-handed "help others heal"?
        jhiska 9y ago
Lich 9y ago
I went to a hackathon a few years ago. At the end of the hackathon, my team member (about 10+ years older than me, I am in my early 30s) asked to contact her on Facebook. I told her I didn't have one, because I didn't. Not even an account that I didn't log-in to. She gave me a weird look, then frowned, as if I was shunning her. My other team member looked shocked as well. I thought it was weird that if you don't have a Facebook account you're kind of looked at weird now.
- dogruck 9y ago
  I’ve also never opened a FB account. I also used to receive those surprised reactions. For whatever reason, nobody ever reacts that way anymore. To me, that’s one strong indicator that FB doesn’t actually matter.
  - tspike 9y ago
    There was a marked shift at the beginning of this year. I think everyone got political fatigue and Facebook was a channel for exacerbating the overexposure.
    - jf 9y ago
      For me, I'd been wanting to leave for a while, political fatigue was "the straw the broke the camel's back".
- karllager 9y ago
  Met a guy in his twenties recently. He wanted to share something with me on FB. Told him I had no account. He replied politely: Oh, yes. I believe the many people in tech do not have one. He was a smart guy.
- Vinnl 9y ago
  Ha, try WhatsApp. I see more and more people cancelling their Facebook accounts (mostly because they feel like it's become too much of a time-waster), but WhatsApp is the normal way of communication now. The advantage is that I can still give my number and people will see that I don't have WhatsApp, so at least nobody feels like I'm dissing them.
ChuckMcM 9y ago
And the scarier quote is this one: "Because, you know the [Warren Buffett] expression about compound interest. ... [G]ive us billionaires an extra hundred years and you'll know what ... wealth disparity looks like." Having a large ranch of data cows is one of the ways of getting there.
- nostrademons 9y ago
  It's worth noting that a hundred years ago, people were saying that about Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie. Today the phenomena is exactly the same but the people are different. Compound interest only works if you can maintain your returns without going negative. Even ignoring death & family members, the world changes around you and your mental models become outdated. A hundred years ago, investing in steel, oil, and automobiles was a sure path to riches. Now, not so much.
  - groby_b 9y ago
    Yeah, no. Money tends to stay around. https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-1427-are-still-the-richest-families-in-florence/ https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-14... The Rockefellers are still the 24th-richest family in the US: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2016/06/29/billion-dollar-clans-americas-25-richest-families-2016/#3984cb3232f5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2016/06/29/billion-... Sure, it takes work keeping up - the Vanderbilts are a great example of what not to do - but money does usually beget money. Carnegie is, I think, the most interesting example: He gave away almost all his money. His belief was summed up with "The man who dies rich, dies disgraced". The Carnegie Corporation (a foundation), however, held on to the money neatly - their current endowment is $3 bln.
    - nostrademons 9y ago
      24th richest with $11B spread across 174 surviving heirs doesn't seem all that rich to me. That averages out to about $60M/heir, which is about what you get for selling a medium-sized technology company with cofounders & investors, or a relatively small one you own yourself, or owning 0.01% of Facebook or Google (roughly first 50-100 employees, if my equity experience with other startups is any guide).
ihaveahadron 9y ago
in psychology, at the top your brain has two modes, exploit and explore. some people stop doing one of them. in physics we describe this as what happens when people die.
eanzenberg 9y ago
It's fine.. in 10 years when Mark leaves FB and starts philanthropy he will be hailed as a tech savior in a similar vein to Bill Gates
- ng-user 9y ago
  I'm going to assume he will never leave FB by choice
dang 9y ago
pg "unloaded" on this ten years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=77173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=77173. The submission can be read here: https://web.archive.org/web/20071109094843/http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html https://web.archive.org/web/20071109094843/http://ycombinato... Surprisingly to no one, a year later the issue hadn't gone away: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=372593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=372593
- hammock 9y ago
  Is this the equivalent of "Android had it first" anytime there's an iPhone feature announcement?
  - dang 9y ago
    For me it is more like "Crack used to be addictive; it still is, and it used to as well."
overgard 9y ago
I have to admit, sometimes I worry about the ethics of capturing peoples attention given all we know about psychology now, whether it's through social media or video games or other things where optimizing for people's attention is important. I work in video games, and on the one hand I'm pretty proud of the work I do, but on the other hand you see people get a little bit over-invested in these things and it's easy to wonder if it's totally a good thing to be able to push people's buttons like that. Once you're past the naivety of like "is this fun", and you start thinking in terms of like intermittent reward schedules and ways to monetize players it starts feeling... weird? I don't know what you can do about it though. I can't imagine any company willingly dumbing down engagement with their product for the common good. I'm guessing that as all these psychological techniques become more prevalent, cultural norms will probably shift to counter.
- ravenstine 9y ago
  Social climate is really the most reliable way to temper the effect of social media. If the mainstream media wasn't paid for years to repeat the words "Facebook" and "Twitter", it's possible our present would be significantly different. People should not feel as if they must be on some company's advertising platform in order to maintain friendships with people. It's pretty sick that a lot of people feel this way. Messages about the damaging effects of social media need to be promoted in society, just as we hammered home the cancer-causing effects of tobacco. In fact, it would be great if there was a counter-advertising campaign against social networks that told people how they worsen depression, how many hours/days/years you're wasting on Facebook, and that you can put down your phone and actually do things with your friends. If Facebook has any real value, it can fight negative press. But they won't because they have very little value; just with big tobacco, they'd spend a bunch of money on misinformation and slander, which would come out and make them look worse than when they started.
avenoir 9y ago
Wanted to share something that I think is relevant to this discussion. I'm an avid listener of Rogan's podcast and I found his recent interview [1] with Sebastian Junger very insightful. Junger is a journalist who spent a lot of time with American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. He talks a lot about how social media makes us asocial and how a lot of people who experienced war and turmoil oddly miss the experience because it brought everyone closer together and gave everyone purpose, much like what used to happen when societies were tribal. It's a long interview but I would highly recommend giving it a listen. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iurXFfNriyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iurXFfNriyg
anocendi 9y ago
"Make them drop their "brains." It's cleaner."
o_____________o 9y ago
> exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with The hubris! Napster wasn't his idea or tech, Facebook wasn't his idea or tech. This man is the most undeservedly rewarded person in tech history. The commentary that we're dissecting here is tepid and late.
tryingagainbro 9y ago
Facebook cares about EARNINGS, every quarter. The same thing that made Sean Parker super rich. Not "exploiting human psychology" isn't in their 10k report or mission statement. Yeah, they care about the world being connected or whatever, so they can serve ads.
audiolion 9y ago
Hereis a great talk by Simon Sinek on how these dopamine hits and how technology are affecting the millennial generation https://youtu.be/hER0Qp6QJNU https://youtu.be/hER0Qp6QJNU
- known 9y ago
  Good one
ninegunpi 9y ago
I don't think that this leap of efficiency in "exploiting human psychology" is anything different from propaganda/marketing leaps of previous aeons. Reading the books of the past, they felt equally exploitative and novel back then. We've coped with that, our descendants will cope with social networks we've created, as well. Attention management and rapid critical thinking would become as crucial mental capacities as IQ and EQ are today. If, of course, smart people acquiring these skills over the next generations are still going to have descendants and the volume is significant enough, because typical "exploited" subjects are going to, you bet.
panabee 9y ago
does beyonce exploit human psychology to make addictive music? does j.k. rowling exploit human psychology to make addictive novels? does steven spielberg exploit human psychology to make addictive films? could downvoters explain why it's evil for facebook to present interesting content but not for the individuals above or publishers like the NY Times, who tweak headlines and article content?
- fluxic 9y ago
  This comment is pretty disingenuous. It's one thing to create a compelling piece of art; it's another thing entirely to create a platform with no real intention beyond sucking in eyeballs for advertisers.
  - panabee 9y ago
    facebook allows people to connect and communicate with friends across the world. profiting from ads is one intent, but it feels biased to say it is the only real intention.
deleted 9y ago
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deleted 9y ago
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chiefalchemist 9y ago
1) It's not just children's brains. 2) That said, when parents use technology as a pacifier, baby sitter, etc. why is that acceptable? 3) Let's say Parker is correct. What are the long term implications? Is The Matrix closer than we hope?
systematical 9y ago
This guy just comes off as really full of himself. With the amount of money and success he has had he can be that all he wants, he earned it I guess. But he still comes off as a pompous bitch.
frogpelt 9y ago
Sean Parker has a knack for making billions of dollars off of unethical behavior.
edwina 9y ago
Name recognition is not important in Presidential elections anymore as a way to predict who will win. In the days of massive social media, all candidates have name recognition.
deleted 9y ago
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1290cc 9y ago
"Because I'm a billionaire, I'm going to have access to better health care so ... I'm going to be like 160 and I'm going to be part of this, like, class of immortal overlords." Not really an 'immortal overload' but closer to a vampire seeing all of your friends & family pass away while you never age and only those that you decide to keep are allowed to continue living until they arent.

603 points by jbuild 9y ago

Paul Graham wrote a great piece on this in 2010 http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html > As far as I know there's no word for something we like too much. The closest is the colloquial sense of "addictive." That usage has become increasingly common during my lifetime. And it's clear why: there are an increasing number of things we need it for. > The next 40 years will bring us some wonderful things. I don't mean to imply they're all to be avoided. Alcohol is a dangerous drug, but I'd rather live in a world with wine than one without. Most people can coexist with alcohol; but you have to be careful. More things we like will mean more things we have to be careful about. > You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly. We'll have to worry not just about new things, but also about existing things becoming more addictive. That's what bit me. I've avoided most addictions, but the Internet got me because it became addictive while I was using it. Sounds pretty eccentric, doesn't it? It always will when you're trying to solve problems where there are no customs yet to guide you. > And unless the rate at which social antibodies evolve can increase to match the accelerating rate at which technological progress throws off new addictions, we'll be increasingly unable to rely on customs to protect us. That means there's going to be a market for products to manage addiction. My bet would be driven by parents and schools

amelius 9y ago
> As far as I know there's no word for something we like too much. There is an expression that could be relevant: Supernormal stimulus, [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus
- 0xADADA 9y ago
  NAILED IT
  - amelius 9y ago
    Yes, the wikipedia article also mentions: > Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett argues that supernormal stimulation govern the behavior of humans as powerfully as that of animals. In her 2010 book, Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose, she examines the impact of supernormal stimuli on the diversion of impulses for nurturing, sexuality, romance, territoriality, defense, and the entertainment industry’s hijacking of our social instincts.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]

darepublic 9y ago

There's many people out there, myself included, who signed up with Facebook years ago and don't use it today. I don't like FB personally but don't understand the steady stream of criticism about -- that it's too addictive, that the site should be curating content in the wake of the last election? Pretty sad if you ask me. FB is not responsible for verifying the truth of every FB news post, nor helping its users to live productive meaningful lives. If you are addicted to FB you should do some soul searching.

deleted 9y ago
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a3n 9y ago
Social media will have their "cigarette moment," after enough time has passed to do the studies.
- snomad 9y ago
  These statements + the 60 minutes piece awhile back (https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/brain-hacking-2/ https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/brain-hacking-2/) make this a very likely outcome. I wonder what the equivalent warning label + restrictions will look like.
  - ashark 9y ago
    Removing much of the motivation for this crap by outlawing exploitation of user data, and making even having it very expensive and/or risky, through huge bond or insurance requirements to cover data breaches for anyone who stores such things, would be a good place to start. And yes, that should absolutely apply to more traditional data-mining companies (credit card companies, for example).
Super_Jambo 9y ago
Because facebook is a handy label for all forms of malicious capitalism. And the excesses of malicious capitalism are becoming sufficiently extreme that people are starting to notice. It's much easier to notice this in new technologies rather than old ones you're already comfortable with. So facebook gets the flak, which is deserved but lots of other people avoid it. Take soft drinks which are terrible for peoples health. Your profit comes from: 1) Convincing people that buying your drink will make them popular & happy. 2) Convincing the government to keep corn subsidies. 3) Convincing everyone that calories in calories out and self control are the _real_ method to health. Our sugar water isn't at fault it's your personal weakness! We're in a situation where powerful companies use their economic clout to buy off the government and convince the population of falsehoods so they can make more profit. This isn't new but since we've gotten pretty optimised on at solving genuine human needs (companies vs entropy) is much harder to profit from than fooling suckers into bad choices (companies vs irrational monkey brains). So now all our most profitable companies largely work to create little anti-competitive fiefdoms and to fool people into harming themselves. So of course people are going to point out that this is terrible and we should probably do something to regulate it's excess.

dalbasal 9y ago

For a big enough digital product, "hacking psychology" happens by default, more than intentionally. First, it happens through competition. Good psychology hacks are things like tinder's fast paced swiping. Out of the squillions of dating apps, the one with a good hack won. I think Facebook used an identical hack for its first version, the hot-or-not version. Twitter's basic concept. Snapchat's. Lots of examples. All good "psych-hacks" that formed a core of successful products, arrived at through a sort of natural selection process. I suspect that almost any app which does not "solve a problem" leverages some hack instead. Second, psych-hackers FB actually employ are not psychlogists. They're data scientists doing split tests. If this works like that, will you like more posts. A/B testing is really behavioural psychology expirementation, weaponized. I think both of these are quasi-inevitable. But, constant optimization towards viral drek is not. Where I think FB should be sheepish about is allowing the optimization to go on directionless. The only goals are quantitive. Quality is a foreign concept. No one has asked the question "what should FB be." The answer is simply "popular." This isn't inevitable. Applied to businesses as a whole, you could replace "popular" with profitable. All businesses are under this imperative. But, that doesn't mean directionless. Businesses can strive to be all sorts of things in addition to (or preferebly as a path to) profitable. FB is itself an example of this. What I want from FB (and Google) is a recognition that they are media companies, the biggest media companies. After that, they need to start dealing in quality. If you only optimize for quantity of reactions, shares and such while disregarding quality you become a shitty tabloid. No taste. No integrity. Just clickbait. FB need to ask themselves "is the content (eg news) on FB of good quality?"

splittingTimes 9y ago
> For a big enough digital product, "hacking psychology" happens by default, more than intentionally... Totally agree. > ..arrived at through a sort of natural selection process. I am not so sure. This all well-known stuff and employed methodically. There is an interesting article where a Google design ethicist explains how technology hijacks your mind [1]. TL;DR: Hijack 1: If You Control the Menu, You Control the Choices. Ask yourself: What’s not on the menu?, Why am I being given these options and not others? Do I know the menu provider’s goals? Is this menu empowering for my original need, or are the choices actually a distraction? Hijack 2: Make apps behave like Slot Machines - give a variable reward. If you want to maximize addictiveness, link a user’s action (like pulling a lever) with a variable reward. You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing. Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable. Hijack 3: Fear of Missing Something Important (FOMSI). If I convince you that I’m a channel for important information, messages, friendships, or potential sexual opportunities — it will be hard for you to turn me off, unsubscribe, or remove your account — because there is a 1% chance you could be missing something important. Hijack 4: Social Approval. When you get tagged by my friend, you think s/he made a conscious choice to tag you, when actually s/he just responds to Facebook’s suggestion, not making an independent choice. Thus Facebook controls the multiplier for how often millions of people experience their social approval on the line. Hijack 5: Social Reciprocity (Tit-for-tat). You follow me — it’s rude not to follow you back. When you receive an invitation from someone to connect, you imagine that person making a conscious choice to invite you, when in reality, they likely unconsciously responded to LinkedIn’s list of suggested c ontacts. Hijack 6: Bottomless bowls, Infinite Feeds, and Autoplay Hijack 7: Instant Interruption vs. “Respectful” Delivery. Messages that interrupt people immediately are more persuasive at getting people to respond than messages delivered asynchronously. Hijack 8: Bundling Your Reasons with Their Reasons. When you you want to look up a Facebook event happening tonight (your reason) the Facebook app doesn’t allow you to access it without first landing on the news feed (their reasons), so Facebook converts every reason you have for using it, into their reason which is to maximize the time you spend consuming things. In an ideal world, apps would always give you a direct way to get what you want separately from what they want. Hijack 9: Inconvenient Choices. Businesses naturally want to make the choices they want you to make easier, and the choices they don’t want you to make harder. NYTimes.com claims to give you “a free choice” to cancel your digital subscription. But instead of just doing it when you hit “Cancel Subscription,” they force you to call a phone number that’s only open at certain times. Hijack 10: Forecasting Errors, “Foot in the Door” strategies. People don’t intuitively forecast the true time cost of a click when it’s presented to them. Sales people use “foot in the door” techniques by asking for a small innocuous request to begin with (“just one click”), and escalating from there (“why don’t you stay awhile?”). Virtually all engagement websites use this trick. === [1] http://www.tristanharris.com/2016/05/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds%E2%80%8A-%E2%80%8Afrom-a-magician-and-googles-design-ethicist/ http://www.tristanharris.com/2016/05/how-technology-hijacks-...

untilHellbanned 9y ago

Social media companies are cigarette companies. They should be taxed and frowned upon accordingly. Remember way back when when cigarettes were cool? Well fast-forward 70 years and that’s social media now.

mbrock 9y ago
An interesting dual to that is "cigarettes are a social network."
dbmikus 9y ago
That's a very hyperbolic statement. Facebook still has merit as a way to organize and communicate with your social group, even if there are some negatives. For cigarettes, I don't know what positives people can claim with a straight face. That you get to go outside at work for a smoke break?
- riot504 9y ago
  70 years ago no one viewed cigarettes in the negative.
- pdkl95 9y ago
  The analogy works surprisingly well. I really wish I didn't have to breath the Facebook's (and Google's) secondhand smoke every time when I interact with other people (or websites). Just like smoking, putting a "like" button on your website or using any of their services to chat with someone inflicts causes "secondhand" damage on people that choose to people that chose not to "inhale". > I don't know what positives Nicotine is a drug. It should be obvious that some people enjoy its effects and/or find it useful. The tolerance effect may reduce those benefits for some (most?) people, but that doesn't change that it had (or continues to have) positive effects. > claim with a straight face Maybe you should ask the doctors at the Harvard Medical School[1] et al about the benefits nicotine seems to have for several mental health issues? Now that we are finally moving oast the taboos on any nicotine-related research, these discoveries might lead to entirely new types of medication. [1] https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/Nicotine_It_may_have_a_good_side https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/Nicotine_I... (paywall - google cache bypass: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:t8ekKUjkJosJ:https://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/Nicotine_It_may_have_a_good_side+&cd=26&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:t8ekKU... )

glitcher 9y ago

> When Facebook was getting going, I had these people who would come up to me and they would say, 'I'm not on social media.' And I would say, 'OK. You know, you will be.' I think the tide has been steadily turning on this. I never did use social media beyond creating an account for work or curiosity, quickly getting bored and abandoning. Sure there may have been a time where I felt a little less connected, but those feelings have diminished over time. The "workarounds" available for those not on social networking are abundant, and more importantly to me, much simpler and time effective for me to use.

ben_jones 9y ago
As someone who "left" social media I still frequently feel a void from it. Recently I moved back to my hometown and realized I had completely lost touch with anyone I knew in high school. Different phone, didn't port contacts. I know they all live nearby but I feel like I lost them forever. The bottom line is there is no connection.
- dublinben 9y ago
  Is that really so bad? You moved away so they were no longer in your life. Now you have the opportunity to run into them at a reunion or a bar and authentically catch up. Alternatively, you could have both been passively observing eachother's lives online, and you'd have nothing to talk about.
- ravenstine 9y ago
  Before social media, those are people we forgot about and moved on from. And for good reason. Social media, especially Facebook, seems engineered to create this illusion that we're more connected with our "friends"; while those people may have been our friends in another time, that doesn't mean they're our friends now just because we have Facebook connections with them. If it only takes not having a Facebook profile to not exist to people, they're not really our friends to begin with. I can say this about the vast majority of people who are my "friends" on Facebook; I know for sure that 99% of them will never contact me unless Facebook prods them to post "Happy Birthday" on my timeline. This isn't to say that my connections are bad people, but it's to say that social media has distorted what friendship and human bonding actually mean in order to profit on peoples' loneliness. It's not difficult for a truly lonely person to come to that conclusion, but that perspective solidified in me when I became real-life friends with a neighbor of mine. It had been several years since I made a non-superficial friendship. And no social medium was required. I was reminded that real friends are actually interested in seeing you, talking to you, and coming to you first when they've got news about something. Just one friend like that is far more valuable than all the "friends" I ever had on Facebook. You may still feel a void from it, but I do hope you eventually make some real-life connections like I have and forget about your old "friends" entirely. I abstained from Facebook for 9 months, and even near the end I was feeling the void. Going back to it was starkly different and I realized how much of a waste of time it is. I do still use Facebook, but only as a photo repository since I do have some semblance of friends and family on there. Though I'm sure they wouldn't bother with me if I wasn't there to bolster their friend-count.

mindlessmarty 9y ago

The thing is...by nature humans are a group species. If the group is using facebook, you will be compelled to use this too, either for social validation,feeling of belonging or whatever. You will always be weakened even if you don't need facebook. This is the hack. Even if you don't use it because "I value my real-life interactions. I value the moment. I value presence. I value intimacy.' you as an individual will always lose power in the group and will always be looked as weak, because in nature, humans are a group species. Sean Parker seems to know this and these guys abuse of this power

nine_k 9y ago
Of course, if you are a leader, you can sway your entire group to use something else as a primary medium. I've seen a few examples. The catch is twofold. Leaders, by definition, are few and far between. Moreover, for a leader, FB offers tools and prospects to gain an ever-expanding audience. The leader must have a strong aversion to FB to ignore this lure.

malloreon 9y ago

Then spend the billions you made off fb taking it down, Sean.

kyledrake 9y ago
I think cancer immunotherapy research is a far better use of his money than "taking down" a social network (with what, guns?) I've got plenty of critical things to say about social panopticons, but perspective, please.

ChanningAllen 9y ago

It's such an interesting discussion to me because it's kind of an open question: is the problem really with exploiting human psychology per se? Or is it with exploiting human psychology to achieve non-constructive ends? The time investment that Facebook exacts from its users far outweighs the benefits it provides — e.g. social cohesion. So we feel much less comfortable with the platform's effective psychological hooks. But take an app like stickK[1], which cleverly recruits social and financial pressure to incentivize user-defined good behavior, and the effectiveness of the hooks don't make us so uneasy. Nir Eyal recently discussed this distinction on the Indie Hackers podcast[2]. I suppose a part of this is due to consent; stickK users consciously sign up to be manipulated. But consent can't be the entire equation, or else we'd let modern-day cigarette companies off the hook. It's 2017 — smokers know what they're signing up for, and yet they sign up. [1] http://www.stickk.com/ http://www.stickk.com/ [2] https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/023-nir-eyal-of-hooked#1153.017 https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/023-nir-eyal-of-hooked#...

ihaveahadron 9y ago
"exploiting human psychology" what a shitty way of describing "hes doing something i dont like" the level of psychology education of "the people" and the level needed for me to communicate with them is apparently out of whack

deleted 9y ago

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jstewartmobile 9y ago

"The inventors, creators — it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway." All of the recent social media handwringing looks more like dismay over alt-right shitposters co-opting their psyops weapon than a moral awakening.

bobsil1 9y ago

Setting aside addictiveness, it’s way too spammy, trying to get you to do work to juice some PM’s engagement #s. Deleted my acct.

jstewartmobile 9y ago

"Because I'm a billionaire, I'm going to have access to better health care so ... I'm going to be like 160 and I'm going to be part of this, like, class of immortal overlords. [Laughter] Because, you know the [Warren Buffett] expression about compound interest. ... [G]ive us billionaires an extra hundred years and you'll know what ... wealth disparity looks like." After Peter Thiel's blood thing, and quotes like this, I think the French were a little too hard on Marie Antoinette.

vldx 9y ago
I think this was intended to be ironic? Thought it’s funny.
- jstewartmobile 9y ago
  From this other quote and the way he delivered it, I think he is a sociopath, and the longevity quote is only half joking. "The inventors, creators — it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway."
  - jhiska 9y ago
    A sociopath wouldn't be open about what the harm they did because they don't care to help others heal. He talks about it because he feels guilt but knows he won't be punished. He understood it was immoral. He still did it, because morality doesn't have the power to stop actions. Now he feels guilt for doing evil. But at least now he's ultra-rich and powerful. He understood what he was trying to achieve.
    - jstewartmobile 9y ago
      How does 'fessing up long after you've been caught red-handed "help others heal"?
      - jhiska 9y ago

Lich 9y ago

I went to a hackathon a few years ago. At the end of the hackathon, my team member (about 10+ years older than me, I am in my early 30s) asked to contact her on Facebook. I told her I didn't have one, because I didn't. Not even an account that I didn't log-in to. She gave me a weird look, then frowned, as if I was shunning her. My other team member looked shocked as well. I thought it was weird that if you don't have a Facebook account you're kind of looked at weird now.

dogruck 9y ago
I’ve also never opened a FB account. I also used to receive those surprised reactions. For whatever reason, nobody ever reacts that way anymore. To me, that’s one strong indicator that FB doesn’t actually matter.
- tspike 9y ago
  There was a marked shift at the beginning of this year. I think everyone got political fatigue and Facebook was a channel for exacerbating the overexposure.
  - jf 9y ago
    For me, I'd been wanting to leave for a while, political fatigue was "the straw the broke the camel's back".
karllager 9y ago
Met a guy in his twenties recently. He wanted to share something with me on FB. Told him I had no account. He replied politely: Oh, yes. I believe the many people in tech do not have one. He was a smart guy.
Vinnl 9y ago
Ha, try WhatsApp. I see more and more people cancelling their Facebook accounts (mostly because they feel like it's become too much of a time-waster), but WhatsApp is the normal way of communication now. The advantage is that I can still give my number and people will see that I don't have WhatsApp, so at least nobody feels like I'm dissing them.

ChuckMcM 9y ago

And the scarier quote is this one: "Because, you know the [Warren Buffett] expression about compound interest. ... [G]ive us billionaires an extra hundred years and you'll know what ... wealth disparity looks like." Having a large ranch of data cows is one of the ways of getting there.

nostrademons 9y ago
It's worth noting that a hundred years ago, people were saying that about Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Carnegie. Today the phenomena is exactly the same but the people are different. Compound interest only works if you can maintain your returns without going negative. Even ignoring death & family members, the world changes around you and your mental models become outdated. A hundred years ago, investing in steel, oil, and automobiles was a sure path to riches. Now, not so much.
- groby_b 9y ago
  Yeah, no. Money tends to stay around. https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-1427-are-still-the-richest-families-in-florence/ https://qz.com/694340/the-richest-families-in-florence-in-14... The Rockefellers are still the 24th-richest family in the US: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2016/06/29/billion-dollar-clans-americas-25-richest-families-2016/#3984cb3232f5 https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2016/06/29/billion-... Sure, it takes work keeping up - the Vanderbilts are a great example of what not to do - but money does usually beget money. Carnegie is, I think, the most interesting example: He gave away almost all his money. His belief was summed up with "The man who dies rich, dies disgraced". The Carnegie Corporation (a foundation), however, held on to the money neatly - their current endowment is $3 bln.
  - nostrademons 9y ago
    24th richest with $11B spread across 174 surviving heirs doesn't seem all that rich to me. That averages out to about $60M/heir, which is about what you get for selling a medium-sized technology company with cofounders & investors, or a relatively small one you own yourself, or owning 0.01% of Facebook or Google (roughly first 50-100 employees, if my equity experience with other startups is any guide).

ihaveahadron 9y ago

in psychology, at the top your brain has two modes, exploit and explore. some people stop doing one of them. in physics we describe this as what happens when people die.

eanzenberg 9y ago

It's fine.. in 10 years when Mark leaves FB and starts philanthropy he will be hailed as a tech savior in a similar vein to Bill Gates

ng-user 9y ago
I'm going to assume he will never leave FB by choice

dang 9y ago

pg "unloaded" on this ten years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=77173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=77173. The submission can be read here: https://web.archive.org/web/20071109094843/http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html https://web.archive.org/web/20071109094843/http://ycombinato... Surprisingly to no one, a year later the issue hadn't gone away: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=372593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=372593

hammock 9y ago
Is this the equivalent of "Android had it first" anytime there's an iPhone feature announcement?
- dang 9y ago
  For me it is more like "Crack used to be addictive; it still is, and it used to as well."

overgard 9y ago

I have to admit, sometimes I worry about the ethics of capturing peoples attention given all we know about psychology now, whether it's through social media or video games or other things where optimizing for people's attention is important. I work in video games, and on the one hand I'm pretty proud of the work I do, but on the other hand you see people get a little bit over-invested in these things and it's easy to wonder if it's totally a good thing to be able to push people's buttons like that. Once you're past the naivety of like "is this fun", and you start thinking in terms of like intermittent reward schedules and ways to monetize players it starts feeling... weird? I don't know what you can do about it though. I can't imagine any company willingly dumbing down engagement with their product for the common good. I'm guessing that as all these psychological techniques become more prevalent, cultural norms will probably shift to counter.

ravenstine 9y ago
Social climate is really the most reliable way to temper the effect of social media. If the mainstream media wasn't paid for years to repeat the words "Facebook" and "Twitter", it's possible our present would be significantly different. People should not feel as if they must be on some company's advertising platform in order to maintain friendships with people. It's pretty sick that a lot of people feel this way. Messages about the damaging effects of social media need to be promoted in society, just as we hammered home the cancer-causing effects of tobacco. In fact, it would be great if there was a counter-advertising campaign against social networks that told people how they worsen depression, how many hours/days/years you're wasting on Facebook, and that you can put down your phone and actually do things with your friends. If Facebook has any real value, it can fight negative press. But they won't because they have very little value; just with big tobacco, they'd spend a bunch of money on misinformation and slander, which would come out and make them look worse than when they started.

avenoir 9y ago

Wanted to share something that I think is relevant to this discussion. I'm an avid listener of Rogan's podcast and I found his recent interview [1] with Sebastian Junger very insightful. Junger is a journalist who spent a lot of time with American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. He talks a lot about how social media makes us asocial and how a lot of people who experienced war and turmoil oddly miss the experience because it brought everyone closer together and gave everyone purpose, much like what used to happen when societies were tribal. It's a long interview but I would highly recommend giving it a listen. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iurXFfNriyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iurXFfNriyg

anocendi 9y ago

"Make them drop their "brains." It's cleaner."

o_____________o 9y ago

> exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with The hubris! Napster wasn't his idea or tech, Facebook wasn't his idea or tech. This man is the most undeservedly rewarded person in tech history. The commentary that we're dissecting here is tepid and late.

tryingagainbro 9y ago

Facebook cares about EARNINGS, every quarter. The same thing that made Sean Parker super rich. Not "exploiting human psychology" isn't in their 10k report or mission statement. Yeah, they care about the world being connected or whatever, so they can serve ads.

audiolion 9y ago

Hereis a great talk by Simon Sinek on how these dopamine hits and how technology are affecting the millennial generation https://youtu.be/hER0Qp6QJNU https://youtu.be/hER0Qp6QJNU

known 9y ago
Good one

ninegunpi 9y ago

I don't think that this leap of efficiency in "exploiting human psychology" is anything different from propaganda/marketing leaps of previous aeons. Reading the books of the past, they felt equally exploitative and novel back then. We've coped with that, our descendants will cope with social networks we've created, as well. Attention management and rapid critical thinking would become as crucial mental capacities as IQ and EQ are today. If, of course, smart people acquiring these skills over the next generations are still going to have descendants and the volume is significant enough, because typical "exploited" subjects are going to, you bet.

panabee 9y ago

does beyonce exploit human psychology to make addictive music? does j.k. rowling exploit human psychology to make addictive novels? does steven spielberg exploit human psychology to make addictive films? could downvoters explain why it's evil for facebook to present interesting content but not for the individuals above or publishers like the NY Times, who tweak headlines and article content?

fluxic 9y ago
This comment is pretty disingenuous. It's one thing to create a compelling piece of art; it's another thing entirely to create a platform with no real intention beyond sucking in eyeballs for advertisers.
- panabee 9y ago
  facebook allows people to connect and communicate with friends across the world. profiting from ads is one intent, but it feels biased to say it is the only real intention.

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chiefalchemist 9y ago

1) It's not just children's brains. 2) That said, when parents use technology as a pacifier, baby sitter, etc. why is that acceptable? 3) Let's say Parker is correct. What are the long term implications? Is The Matrix closer than we hope?

systematical 9y ago

This guy just comes off as really full of himself. With the amount of money and success he has had he can be that all he wants, he earned it I guess. But he still comes off as a pompous bitch.

frogpelt 9y ago

Sean Parker has a knack for making billions of dollars off of unethical behavior.

edwina 9y ago

Name recognition is not important in Presidential elections anymore as a way to predict who will win. In the days of massive social media, all candidates have name recognition.

deleted 9y ago

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1290cc 9y ago

"Because I'm a billionaire, I'm going to have access to better health care so ... I'm going to be like 160 and I'm going to be part of this, like, class of immortal overlords." Not really an 'immortal overload' but closer to a vampire seeing all of your friends & family pass away while you never age and only those that you decide to keep are allowed to continue living until they arent.