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This company is the drug dealer of Silicon Valley. They have consciously destroyed a generation attention span using psychological tricks. Hoping they start lo

This company is the drug dealer of Silicon Valley. They have consciously destroyed a generation attention span using psychological tricks. Hoping they start losing some of the good talent + the US implement something similar to GDPR.

Tloewald 8y ago
You should look into the career of B.J. Fogg. https://www.bjfogg.com/ https://www.bjfogg.com/ He literally teaches his students how to make psychologically addictive products and is proud of it (and rich). His disciples are the priests of "engagement".
- giantsloth 8y ago
  Reading his website makes him seem less like a master of anything serious and more a master at self aggrandizing douche baggery. B=MAP reads much like any self helpy gimmick, something so obvious and so useless you somehow feel smart for having had your obvious thoughts on a topic reworded and handed back to you in corny new configuration you can share with your vapid fake friend group.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    > Reading his website makes him seem less like a master of anything serious and more a master at self aggrandizing douche baggery. Sounds like 90% of the "business" books I've read
mancerayder 8y ago
But surely they're not the only villains. It began with pop-up ads in the old days, evolving to that interstitial nightmare. Mobile notifications of almost anything, combined with a snaring in of people's attention using human weaknesses: need for attention and validation, frailty with regards to gossip, need to find a way to procrastinate during difficult times (work) and much more that I'm missing. It's time for some serious scholarship in the psychological arena in this direction.
- hemantv 8y ago
  There is difference between passively consuming media for everyone. Or I can create a special dose for you based upon your data that get you most high.
  - mancerayder 8y ago
    I agree but Google has this with its news, and perhaps (I'm guessing because it's hard to imagine otherwise) Instagram. What makes Facebook vile is the news feed. But everyone is selling customer data. And my words are coming from the very unusual coincidence that I'm in a bar in Brooklyn and two data scientists are discussing 10 years of customer data needing to be parsed (and I heard the word verticalization). I'm not making this up (it's live).
qubax 8y ago
> They have consciously destroyed a generation attention span using psychological tricks. They did the same thing CNN, MTV and all media does. They do the same thing movies, music, tv, news, etc does. They do the same thing Google does, Twitter does, reddit does, snapchat does, like everyone does. What's with the organized and targeted hate towards facebook? I'll make a bet with anyone here. Once FB gives in to the mob like google did, like twitter did or reddit did, I guarantee you the outrage will magically disappear like it did for google, twitter and reddit. > the US implement something similar to GDPR. You want free speech curtailed in the US? You want more regulation of the internet? That's last thing you'd expect in a "hacker" news site. But like most social media, it's less tech people on tech forums and more political people with an axe to grind it seems.
- hluska 8y ago
  How does GDPR curtail free speech? Please give me citations from the text.
colechristensen 8y ago
Weren't people saying the same thing about MTV a generation ago?
- byebyetech 8y ago
  MTV was not watching you interactively. There was no data "dance" between your usage pattern and what shows MTV showed you. There was no Feedback Loop. This is much more sinister than passive consumption of media.
  - brazzledazzle 8y ago
    There was a dance but it was broad, clumsy and tailored towards demographics that were themselves broadly and clumsily lumped together. And the feedback loop was glacial. But comparing that to what they do today is like comparing cavemen banging stones together to an industrial laser cutter.
  - aylmao 8y ago
    I think it's crazy how the same narrative changes so much. I remember the internet and social media used to be so much better than TV. TV was controlled by big corporations who wanted to brainwash everyone. 1/3 of the time was ads that only stupefied you, and the rest were shows that did the same. They would do anything for ratings-- CNN was a bastion of treachery dividing the country by presenting politics as sports for the sake of viewership. People were glad Crossfire got canceled (now all of CNN is essentially Crossfire). But social media? What a tool for free speech and change! It was the breath of fresh air that fought away big corporations, that gave us the Arab Spring, that let anyone with something to say become famous and have a voice and an audience, for free! It provided a platform for critical thinking instead of passive consumption! This data "dance" was the 8th wonder of the world and news articles were being written about how clever Obama's campaign had been to use analytics and "research" to get the edge on the campaign. I'm not saying any one view is right and the other wrong but something I've noticed about Americans is that they are a very scared people and are very quick at painting things black or white (: The world is not so scary, and most things lie somewhere on a grayscale.
mrep 8y ago
Drug dealer is way too much of an exageration in my opinion. Nicotine vaping is a better analogy I think. While there have been some studies on the negatives of social media like nicotine vaping, it is not that bad as what we currently give people the choice to consume and I think we should swing even further towards more freedom of choice even if it negatively effects people long term.
- ikeyany 8y ago
  They have people who's sole job is to make sure Facebook users are on the platform for as long as humanly possible. The company goes out of its way to subvert your desires to make it hard to leave (such as changing sorting by most recent so that you have no idea what content you've seen before). That's as close as you can get to being a pusher.
  - mrep 8y ago
    Source?
    - ikeyany 8y ago
      For which part? Do you have a Facebook account? It's not exactly a secret.
      - mrep 8y ago
        Any sources for any part will do. Although, the whole "They have people who's sole job is to make sure Facebook users are on the platform for as long as humanly possible" part makes me the most skeptical.
        ikeyany 8y ago
        Sean Parker on maximizing engagement: https://slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2017/11/facebook_was_designed_to_be_addictive_does_that_make_it_evil.html https://slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2017/11/fac... Psychologists running studies on users: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook-manipulated-689003-users-emotions-for-science/amp/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook... Then of course there's this guy: https://theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/18/facebook-cambridge-analytica-joseph-chancellor-gsr https://theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/18/facebook-cambridge-...
dominotw 8y ago
If not Facebook they will go to Reddit, Twitter or watch reality TV .
sergiotapia 8y ago
100%. A whole generation grown on dopamine addiction and fake relationships with people they don't know. I hope they go down. Social networks were a net negative on the world at the end of the day.
- hemantv 8y ago
  I think they add some positive value being able to be in touch with distant friends and relative. But their business models depend upon getting people hooked up like a drug addict.
- nostalgeek 8y ago
  To me that award goes to Twitter, not Facebook. Facebook is actually useful to stay in touch with friends and family in a private fashion. Twitter on the other hand is constant pettiness, aggressiveness and bickering 24/7 from people looking for validation and internet points. The worst internet mobs came out of Twitter and my statement doesn't discriminate between political sides.
  - pbreit 8y ago
    Except Twitter has much higher quality content from original sources, experts, celebrities, etc.
    - aylmao 8y ago
      > Except Twitter has much higher quality content from original sources, experts, celebrities, etc. My comment is subjective, but yours is too, so what gives here it goes: I doubt this is the case. I think I just see people post "more" on Twitter. If I'm looking for quality content from experts I'd go to StackExchange, indpenendet websites/blogs or just go buy Nature magazine.
  - sergiotapia 8y ago
    Twitter is just a platform for idiots to yell at each other and marketers to sell their books/wares. However I haven't noticed people spend HOURS on twitter, like I have with facebook. Facebook is much much more insidious and poisonous.
marcrosoft 8y ago
I value privacy but GDPR is an overreaching government hand with consequences that you and I can't even imagine. Edit: We'll pass a law that protects your privacy while we ourselves don't abide by it.
- omeid2 8y ago
  Please stop this fear mongering. The essence of GDPR is transparency and accountability. Is there anything else there that you're afraid of?
  - marcrosoft 8y ago
    How about huge non compliance fines for reasons that need to be debated in court. Oh, did you interpret the law wrong? We'll take the greater of 20 million or 4% revenue kthanksbye.
    - omeid2 8y ago
      Regulation without teeth is child-talk.
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Rather than "afraid", I'm mildly annoyed by the regular posting to HN of various error messages that Europeans get when visiting various sites that DGAFAGDPR. Why don't they send those errors to the European regulators instead? Those people seem better-placed to do something about the errors.
  - mrep 8y ago
    From what I have read here on HN is that companies are forced to have users opt in to targeted advertising business models which will make almost all advertising business models unprofitable. Unsurprisingly, companies are deciding that EU users are not profitable customers without targeted advertising and thus not worth serving these users causing them to block all EU users even if some EU users would accept the previously agreed upon terms of targeted advertising in exchange for the content they wish to receive. This is a terrible precedence of anti-choice in my opinion since the EU has forced upon all EU people the inability to accept a business model of targeted advertising in exchange for content and thus causing many companies to leave the EU altogether.
_cs2017_ 8y ago
Judgmental much? Who are you to speak on behalf of everyone, a whole generation? I personally have enjoyed using FB and Instagram. If you don't like it, don't use it. And don't tell me and other users that we are stupid or drug addicts.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  This is not being judgemental, this is factual based on scientific research (Facebook has even admitted as much). You could Google “Facebook harmful effects research” for several pages of citations.
  - CamperBob2 8y ago
    Trouble is, every moral panic since the days of Aristotle has been accompanied by mountains of "harmful effects research." Video gaming, comic books, novels, TV, movies, any number of musical genres and trends... how much of this "research" ever pans out in the long run?
- jnwatson 8y ago
  Just like the opioid crisis, there is a point at which individual choices collectively impact society. I'm personally fine with someone shooting up in the privacy of their own home, but clearly something must be done when entire communities are affected. Facebook has shown a willingness to provide my country's adversaries a powerful tool to subvert the foundations of its society. Fomenting racial strife and spreading pernicious rumors is just the start of it. The country and the world would be a better place without Facebook.
  - existencebox 8y ago
    Honest question; Why is _facebook_ the powerful tool, and not our populations inability to recognize the threat (misdirection, targeted messages, biased sources, etc) within it/think critically about it? To dismiss the nonsense like most people used to dismiss tabloids. Facebook obviously scales this up, but that is the nature of a modern connected world, whether we like it or not, and I'd rather give people the tools to navigate that than try to build a padded room, since there will _always_ be another Facebook. (And to fully undermine my own point, I _don't know if it's possible_ to give enough people these skills, but from a philosophy of personal empowerment and freedoms, the alternatives seem far less preferable) It sounds a lot like the drug war. The approach that DRUGS are the problem, as opposed to situations that lead users to abuse them in destructive ways, has lead to a very demonstrable half-century of ineffectual policy and violent/sad outcomes. I have not so entirely given up on ones ability to tread a path through this insanity, and am more worried of an escalating trend to put that responsibility in the hands of some gatekeeper as opposed to ones own agency as a sentient human. I don't even disagree with your final statement; I'd just want to see it come from rejection by the individual than mandate from on high.
kowdermeister 8y ago
My attention span was already weak before social networks. Could it be that they helped me train it to resist cheap tricks?

Tloewald 8y ago

You should look into the career of B.J. Fogg. https://www.bjfogg.com/ https://www.bjfogg.com/ He literally teaches his students how to make psychologically addictive products and is proud of it (and rich). His disciples are the priests of "engagement".

giantsloth 8y ago
Reading his website makes him seem less like a master of anything serious and more a master at self aggrandizing douche baggery. B=MAP reads much like any self helpy gimmick, something so obvious and so useless you somehow feel smart for having had your obvious thoughts on a topic reworded and handed back to you in corny new configuration you can share with your vapid fake friend group.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  > Reading his website makes him seem less like a master of anything serious and more a master at self aggrandizing douche baggery. Sounds like 90% of the "business" books I've read

mancerayder 8y ago

But surely they're not the only villains. It began with pop-up ads in the old days, evolving to that interstitial nightmare. Mobile notifications of almost anything, combined with a snaring in of people's attention using human weaknesses: need for attention and validation, frailty with regards to gossip, need to find a way to procrastinate during difficult times (work) and much more that I'm missing. It's time for some serious scholarship in the psychological arena in this direction.

hemantv 8y ago
There is difference between passively consuming media for everyone. Or I can create a special dose for you based upon your data that get you most high.
- mancerayder 8y ago
  I agree but Google has this with its news, and perhaps (I'm guessing because it's hard to imagine otherwise) Instagram. What makes Facebook vile is the news feed. But everyone is selling customer data. And my words are coming from the very unusual coincidence that I'm in a bar in Brooklyn and two data scientists are discussing 10 years of customer data needing to be parsed (and I heard the word verticalization). I'm not making this up (it's live).

qubax 8y ago

> They have consciously destroyed a generation attention span using psychological tricks. They did the same thing CNN, MTV and all media does. They do the same thing movies, music, tv, news, etc does. They do the same thing Google does, Twitter does, reddit does, snapchat does, like everyone does. What's with the organized and targeted hate towards facebook? I'll make a bet with anyone here. Once FB gives in to the mob like google did, like twitter did or reddit did, I guarantee you the outrage will magically disappear like it did for google, twitter and reddit. > the US implement something similar to GDPR. You want free speech curtailed in the US? You want more regulation of the internet? That's last thing you'd expect in a "hacker" news site. But like most social media, it's less tech people on tech forums and more political people with an axe to grind it seems.

hluska 8y ago
How does GDPR curtail free speech? Please give me citations from the text.

colechristensen 8y ago

Weren't people saying the same thing about MTV a generation ago?

byebyetech 8y ago
MTV was not watching you interactively. There was no data "dance" between your usage pattern and what shows MTV showed you. There was no Feedback Loop. This is much more sinister than passive consumption of media.
- brazzledazzle 8y ago
  There was a dance but it was broad, clumsy and tailored towards demographics that were themselves broadly and clumsily lumped together. And the feedback loop was glacial. But comparing that to what they do today is like comparing cavemen banging stones together to an industrial laser cutter.
- aylmao 8y ago
  I think it's crazy how the same narrative changes so much. I remember the internet and social media used to be so much better than TV. TV was controlled by big corporations who wanted to brainwash everyone. 1/3 of the time was ads that only stupefied you, and the rest were shows that did the same. They would do anything for ratings-- CNN was a bastion of treachery dividing the country by presenting politics as sports for the sake of viewership. People were glad Crossfire got canceled (now all of CNN is essentially Crossfire). But social media? What a tool for free speech and change! It was the breath of fresh air that fought away big corporations, that gave us the Arab Spring, that let anyone with something to say become famous and have a voice and an audience, for free! It provided a platform for critical thinking instead of passive consumption! This data "dance" was the 8th wonder of the world and news articles were being written about how clever Obama's campaign had been to use analytics and "research" to get the edge on the campaign. I'm not saying any one view is right and the other wrong but something I've noticed about Americans is that they are a very scared people and are very quick at painting things black or white (: The world is not so scary, and most things lie somewhere on a grayscale.

mrep 8y ago

Drug dealer is way too much of an exageration in my opinion. Nicotine vaping is a better analogy I think. While there have been some studies on the negatives of social media like nicotine vaping, it is not that bad as what we currently give people the choice to consume and I think we should swing even further towards more freedom of choice even if it negatively effects people long term.

ikeyany 8y ago
They have people who's sole job is to make sure Facebook users are on the platform for as long as humanly possible. The company goes out of its way to subvert your desires to make it hard to leave (such as changing sorting by most recent so that you have no idea what content you've seen before). That's as close as you can get to being a pusher.
- mrep 8y ago
  Source?
  - ikeyany 8y ago
    For which part? Do you have a Facebook account? It's not exactly a secret.
    - mrep 8y ago
      Any sources for any part will do. Although, the whole "They have people who's sole job is to make sure Facebook users are on the platform for as long as humanly possible" part makes me the most skeptical.
      - ikeyany 8y ago
        Sean Parker on maximizing engagement: https://slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2017/11/facebook_was_designed_to_be_addictive_does_that_make_it_evil.html https://slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2017/11/fac... Psychologists running studies on users: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook-manipulated-689003-users-emotions-for-science/amp/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook... Then of course there's this guy: https://theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/18/facebook-cambridge-analytica-joseph-chancellor-gsr https://theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/18/facebook-cambridge-...

dominotw 8y ago

If not Facebook they will go to Reddit, Twitter or watch reality TV .

sergiotapia 8y ago

100%. A whole generation grown on dopamine addiction and fake relationships with people they don't know. I hope they go down. Social networks were a net negative on the world at the end of the day.

hemantv 8y ago
I think they add some positive value being able to be in touch with distant friends and relative. But their business models depend upon getting people hooked up like a drug addict.
nostalgeek 8y ago
To me that award goes to Twitter, not Facebook. Facebook is actually useful to stay in touch with friends and family in a private fashion. Twitter on the other hand is constant pettiness, aggressiveness and bickering 24/7 from people looking for validation and internet points. The worst internet mobs came out of Twitter and my statement doesn't discriminate between political sides.
- pbreit 8y ago
  Except Twitter has much higher quality content from original sources, experts, celebrities, etc.
  - aylmao 8y ago
    > Except Twitter has much higher quality content from original sources, experts, celebrities, etc. My comment is subjective, but yours is too, so what gives here it goes: I doubt this is the case. I think I just see people post "more" on Twitter. If I'm looking for quality content from experts I'd go to StackExchange, indpenendet websites/blogs or just go buy Nature magazine.
- sergiotapia 8y ago
  Twitter is just a platform for idiots to yell at each other and marketers to sell their books/wares. However I haven't noticed people spend HOURS on twitter, like I have with facebook. Facebook is much much more insidious and poisonous.

marcrosoft 8y ago

I value privacy but GDPR is an overreaching government hand with consequences that you and I can't even imagine. Edit: We'll pass a law that protects your privacy while we ourselves don't abide by it.

omeid2 8y ago
Please stop this fear mongering. The essence of GDPR is transparency and accountability. Is there anything else there that you're afraid of?
- marcrosoft 8y ago
  How about huge non compliance fines for reasons that need to be debated in court. Oh, did you interpret the law wrong? We'll take the greater of 20 million or 4% revenue kthanksbye.
  - omeid2 8y ago
    Regulation without teeth is child-talk.
- jessaustin 8y ago
  Rather than "afraid", I'm mildly annoyed by the regular posting to HN of various error messages that Europeans get when visiting various sites that DGAFAGDPR. Why don't they send those errors to the European regulators instead? Those people seem better-placed to do something about the errors.
- mrep 8y ago
  From what I have read here on HN is that companies are forced to have users opt in to targeted advertising business models which will make almost all advertising business models unprofitable. Unsurprisingly, companies are deciding that EU users are not profitable customers without targeted advertising and thus not worth serving these users causing them to block all EU users even if some EU users would accept the previously agreed upon terms of targeted advertising in exchange for the content they wish to receive. This is a terrible precedence of anti-choice in my opinion since the EU has forced upon all EU people the inability to accept a business model of targeted advertising in exchange for content and thus causing many companies to leave the EU altogether.

_cs2017_ 8y ago

Judgmental much? Who are you to speak on behalf of everyone, a whole generation? I personally have enjoyed using FB and Instagram. If you don't like it, don't use it. And don't tell me and other users that we are stupid or drug addicts.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
This is not being judgemental, this is factual based on scientific research (Facebook has even admitted as much). You could Google “Facebook harmful effects research” for several pages of citations.
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  Trouble is, every moral panic since the days of Aristotle has been accompanied by mountains of "harmful effects research." Video gaming, comic books, novels, TV, movies, any number of musical genres and trends... how much of this "research" ever pans out in the long run?
jnwatson 8y ago
Just like the opioid crisis, there is a point at which individual choices collectively impact society. I'm personally fine with someone shooting up in the privacy of their own home, but clearly something must be done when entire communities are affected. Facebook has shown a willingness to provide my country's adversaries a powerful tool to subvert the foundations of its society. Fomenting racial strife and spreading pernicious rumors is just the start of it. The country and the world would be a better place without Facebook.
- existencebox 8y ago
  Honest question; Why is _facebook_ the powerful tool, and not our populations inability to recognize the threat (misdirection, targeted messages, biased sources, etc) within it/think critically about it? To dismiss the nonsense like most people used to dismiss tabloids. Facebook obviously scales this up, but that is the nature of a modern connected world, whether we like it or not, and I'd rather give people the tools to navigate that than try to build a padded room, since there will _always_ be another Facebook. (And to fully undermine my own point, I _don't know if it's possible_ to give enough people these skills, but from a philosophy of personal empowerment and freedoms, the alternatives seem far less preferable) It sounds a lot like the drug war. The approach that DRUGS are the problem, as opposed to situations that lead users to abuse them in destructive ways, has lead to a very demonstrable half-century of ineffectual policy and violent/sad outcomes. I have not so entirely given up on ones ability to tread a path through this insanity, and am more worried of an escalating trend to put that responsibility in the hands of some gatekeeper as opposed to ones own agency as a sentient human. I don't even disagree with your final statement; I'd just want to see it come from rejection by the individual than mandate from on high.

kowdermeister 8y ago

My attention span was already weak before social networks. Could it be that they helped me train it to resist cheap tricks?