4 ms·

> In social media's early days, Mr. Williams said, "addiction was the goal." > "Not in the cigarette sense — it wasn't as cynical," he added. "It was just a ga

by jawns 8y ago

> In social media's early days, Mr. Williams said, "addiction was the goal." > "Not in the cigarette sense — it wasn't as cynical," he added. "It was just a game, like: 'This is fun. How do we make it more fun and addictive?'" > But he is not convinced that the problems with social platforms can ever be fully solved, nor does he believe it's entirely incumbent upon tech companies to solve them. Ultimately, Mr. Williams said, it will be up to users to choose, and stick to, their own information diets. Sounds a lot more like cigarette companies than Williams thinks. They, too, tend to operate under a philosophy of, "Hey, we're just giving people a CHOICE to smoke tobacco. Why blame us if people take us up on it?"

rhizome 8y ago
You can't make big money on the Internet by being honest.
- greymeister 8y ago
  Optimistically I'd like to think you can but there's always more to be made if you're not.
  - rhizome 8y ago
    We have 25 years of .com history to reflect upon, surely there should be some obvious examples by now.
- coldtea 8y ago
  Or anywhere else for that matter. Even the most honest people that make big money, just relegate the non-honest part to other people. A product company executive will relegate it to advertisers and marketeers to brain wash people with his products, honesty be damned. A musician will leverage the culturally bad copyright system to get their royalties. A clothes designer will outsource to cheap laborers, including children, in developing countries, treated like shit and paid the minimum they could get away with.
majormajor 8y ago
Most problems are optional ones. Lots of little choices that add up. Shaping those choices is a worthwhile discussion - how can we encourage people have healthier diets to trade some short term indulgence for fewer long term health problems, say - but if you see someone who's making money as a result of people still making the short-term choice, and they're talking about "it has to be up to the user," then yeah, they're probably being dangerously naive or (probably) worse.
mtgx 8y ago
Not to mention they used to run ads telling people how healthy cigarettes are for you. Meanwhile social media companies tell you how great it is to "engage with your friends and family as much as humanly possible" on their platforms.
derefr 8y ago
I don't think that's the most charitable reading of his statement—he's not saying that he personally, or any company he has control over is offering people that "choice." He's saying that in any market there will always be bad actors, so you also need to protect yourself. An analogy: you won't ever be able to stop all potential muggers. You can choose not to be a mugger, tell everyone you know not to assault and rob anybody, make PR campaigns about it, teach it in schools, create social programs to ensure people aren't poor enough to need to rob anybody, etc. But, no matter what you do, there are still going to be some people who choose to mug people anyway. Pretending you can 100% solve mugging through outreach to the muggers is just ignoring reality and leaving people vulnerable. You have to approach the problem from both ends: decreasing the number of muggers, but also teaching people self-defence so they're less vulnerable to whatever amount of mugging might still happen. (In the interests of avoiding politicizing the discussion, please do not reference the other assault crime that people usually argue about. Mugging works well-enough.)
trhway 8y ago
It is exactly in the cigarette sense as both affect the brain through the same dopamine machinery. And personally as a former heavy smoker I don't feel any difference between urge for the next cigarette and the urge to check email, HN comments/responses, etc.
- Yhippa 8y ago
  This makes me think that we know what the effects of cigarettes are; how long will it be until we see the effects of social media addiction?
  - BLKNSLVR 8y ago
    cough Brexit cough cough Trump cough cough Flat-earth conspiracies getting semi-mainstream airplay cough Whilst that's unfairly flippant, it's too deep and complex to attribute anything specific to social media addiction because it's just a magnification of existing human behaviours. Normalisation of behaviours on a 'global village' scale. But that's not limited to social media, that's "The Internet" allowing for relatively instant cross-global idea sharing (and included in 'ideas' are stupid things like product-unwrapping videos, video-game streaming with commentary, music, and all the other base shit that people seem to like only because other people seem to like it).
debt 8y ago
If people's attention is land, than Facebook pulled off the largest land grab in history. Facebook's value is derived from user attention thus it has literally zero incentive to make it less addictive. User's will never have a choice in the matter because it's impossible to add more time in the day.

by jawns 8y ago

rhizome 8y ago

You can't make big money on the Internet by being honest.

greymeister 8y ago
Optimistically I'd like to think you can but there's always more to be made if you're not.
- rhizome 8y ago
  We have 25 years of .com history to reflect upon, surely there should be some obvious examples by now.
coldtea 8y ago
Or anywhere else for that matter. Even the most honest people that make big money, just relegate the non-honest part to other people. A product company executive will relegate it to advertisers and marketeers to brain wash people with his products, honesty be damned. A musician will leverage the culturally bad copyright system to get their royalties. A clothes designer will outsource to cheap laborers, including children, in developing countries, treated like shit and paid the minimum they could get away with.

majormajor 8y ago

Most problems are optional ones. Lots of little choices that add up. Shaping those choices is a worthwhile discussion - how can we encourage people have healthier diets to trade some short term indulgence for fewer long term health problems, say - but if you see someone who's making money as a result of people still making the short-term choice, and they're talking about "it has to be up to the user," then yeah, they're probably being dangerously naive or (probably) worse.

mtgx 8y ago

Not to mention they used to run ads telling people how healthy cigarettes are for you. Meanwhile social media companies tell you how great it is to "engage with your friends and family as much as humanly possible" on their platforms.

derefr 8y ago

I don't think that's the most charitable reading of his statement—he's not saying that he personally, or any company he has control over is offering people that "choice." He's saying that in any market there will always be bad actors, so you also need to protect yourself. An analogy: you won't ever be able to stop all potential muggers. You can choose not to be a mugger, tell everyone you know not to assault and rob anybody, make PR campaigns about it, teach it in schools, create social programs to ensure people aren't poor enough to need to rob anybody, etc. But, no matter what you do, there are still going to be some people who choose to mug people anyway. Pretending you can 100% solve mugging through outreach to the muggers is just ignoring reality and leaving people vulnerable. You have to approach the problem from both ends: decreasing the number of muggers, but also teaching people self-defence so they're less vulnerable to whatever amount of mugging might still happen. (In the interests of avoiding politicizing the discussion, please do not reference the other assault crime that people usually argue about. Mugging works well-enough.)

trhway 8y ago

It is exactly in the cigarette sense as both affect the brain through the same dopamine machinery. And personally as a former heavy smoker I don't feel any difference between urge for the next cigarette and the urge to check email, HN comments/responses, etc.

Yhippa 8y ago
This makes me think that we know what the effects of cigarettes are; how long will it be until we see the effects of social media addiction?
- BLKNSLVR 8y ago
  cough Brexit cough cough Trump cough cough Flat-earth conspiracies getting semi-mainstream airplay cough Whilst that's unfairly flippant, it's too deep and complex to attribute anything specific to social media addiction because it's just a magnification of existing human behaviours. Normalisation of behaviours on a 'global village' scale. But that's not limited to social media, that's "The Internet" allowing for relatively instant cross-global idea sharing (and included in 'ideas' are stupid things like product-unwrapping videos, video-game streaming with commentary, music, and all the other base shit that people seem to like only because other people seem to like it).

debt 8y ago

If people's attention is land, than Facebook pulled off the largest land grab in history. Facebook's value is derived from user attention thus it has literally zero incentive to make it less addictive. User's will never have a choice in the matter because it's impossible to add more time in the day.