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I always disliked Facebook and still don't care much for it, but having worked on ranking there for a few months, comments like this just sound incredibly naive

I always disliked Facebook and still don't care much for it, but having worked on ranking there for a few months, comments like this just sound incredibly naive. Facebook is not "specifically designed to cause addiction". It's designed by a complicated process with many people trying to maximize many competing metrics, some of which might go up when people are "addicted". In fact the complete opposite is one of the main goal metrics for most teams (measures of well being) and only a small fraction of people are even trying to increase time spent.

dokein 7y ago
I don't think Facebook is "evil" by design, but the end result is the same. The framework is as follows: There were probably thousands of internet companies that competed to be the dominant sites in the 90s and 00s. By several orders of magnitude the predominant business model is ads for eyeballs, and the predominant network effect scales with number of users. Several factors influenced success but, on average, sites that captured user attention more effectively got more views and a larger userbase. Thus there was overall selective pressure for addictive properties, and sites like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram won over sites that were less able to hold attention like Blogger, Digg, MySpace, etc. We cannot know, for example, that Jack Dorsey was knowingly trying to maximize outrage with his character limit, which feeds into the "two-minutes-hate" emotional addiction. But we can be sure that he was trying to maximize several KPIs like # users, bounce rate, time on page, etc. The result? The dominant sites today == the sites that are best able to capture attention! How successful were they? Not only have they captured a huge portion of time people spend on the internet, the amount of time people are on the internet has itself increased! So they won over other websites and also grabbed attention away from traditional media, newspapers, random thoughts while standing in line, uninterrupted dinner, etc. time. What's the problem? I think the major challenge is that these sites feel more effective at shaping attention than many drugs (no reference for this yet)! This parallels the opioid crisis -- maximizing certain good pain relief characteristics (short onset, hits opioid receptors) just happens to be addictive. I doubt the Sacklers cackled during dinner and clinked glasses at the future misery they were causing, but it's pretty damn easy to convince yourself that you're doing the right thing when the money is rolling in. Jack Dorsey similarly thinks he's saving the world but he's probably the single most responsible person for the "populist politician" phenomenon.
- justaguyhere 7y ago
  We are all addicted to something or the other. There are people who spend insane amount of time on HN (including me) - sure it is billion times better than FB, but it is still an addiction. This is one of those things where no amount of regulation or blaming FB (or instagram or twitter or HN or whatever) is going to help much. It might be more fruitful to think about why people spend so much time online outside of productive work, instead of having person to person interactions, playing sports, playing music etc. Just a small example - there is not a single park within 10 miles of where I live, but there are at least 3 big malls (sprawling ones with dozens of stores).
  - reroute1 7y ago
    Exactly, people need to take some personal responsibility and stop calling a web app evil because people some donkey spends all their free time on it. Grow up and stop feeling outrage about something that doesn't even affect you, and the people that it does affect have every opportunity to do something about it.
  - justapassenger 7y ago
    > There are people who spend insane amount of time on HN (including me) - sure it is billion times better than FB, but it is still an addiction. Why is it billion times better? I spend a lot of time on Facebook talking to my family that lives on the other side of the world. Is spending time talking with other geeks more valuable? One site is owned by a huge corporation and other is owned by a company that tries to get rich by creating more corporations.
EGreg 7y ago
Actually, we are addicted because of the tragedy of the unmanaged commons, where the commons is human attention and the mechanisms are Notifications and Updates from Your Contacts. If Facebook doesn’t do it, then LinkedIn or Twitter will. So Facebook is like Microsoft - do whatever it takes to win.
- Nuzzerino 7y ago
  If you disable types of notifications or otherwise remove sources of notifications on Facebook, and those are the notifications that you normally get, Facebook will start giving you new notifications for things that you weren't getting notifications for before. Things like "We have a new friend suggestion for you". Facebook is engineered to give you a steady stream of notifications, and as far as I know, there's no way to disable them completely, despite the slew of options Facebook gives you. Why do you think that is? Notifications can be designed to be less addictive, but that's not what Facebook is doing.
  - EGreg 7y ago
    Well, you are right. I am simply pointing out that Facebook is not alone in this. Even small sites like Alignable spam you with notifications like “{{PersonYouNeverHeardOf}} has looked at your profile, you’re being noticed!” in an effort to try to get people, and it works! We have known this since 2011 when we started Qbix to build an open source alternative — see https://qbix.com/people https://qbix.com/people for a list of how it is different and more responsible. I hope other companies take on board these principles. Our tagline is “Empowering People. Uniting Communities”. So I feel passionate about this.
zentiggr 7y ago
If "well being" is a core metric for "most teams" why do we have investigative exposes of the horrible conditions content moderators are forced into? If well being were truly important, those moderators would be treated like valuable core metric maintainers, not barely paid, badly unsupported afterthoughts. And advertising performance and monetization would take a back seat as well, which is obviously not the case. Step out of your prior employee shell, and look at the whole picture of FB's interaction with its users. Not a net positive, and as others have said, no one but themselves (Zuck?) to blame.
everdrive 7y ago
I don't have the insight to disagree with you. I do worry that we're splitting hairs here: - People use Facebook in a way which is destructive to society, and this is partially due to how Facebook is built. vs. - Facebook planned on being this addictive (and destructive) on purpose.
PopeDotNinja 7y ago
It is designed to increase engagement. It ain't designed so you use it less and/or just enough.
josephg 7y ago
On what basis are you claiming that that most teams at FB are optimising the product for well being as opposed to ‘engagement’ (addiction)? Do you have first hand knowledge? Do you know the people involved? Do you have citations? I stopped using FB a few years ago after I had an argument with a friend on the platform. The algorithm decided to keep showing us one anothers’ content - I assume so we would both write more angry comments (“engagement!”). I ended up blocking the friend, then on reflection left the platform entirely, since as far as I can tell FB was optimising as intended to manipulate me. Has it changed since then?
- raziel2p 7y ago
  If facebook only shows content you agree with, it's creating social bubbles where everyone is cheering each other on and criticism is not allowed, and you end up with anti-vax groups. And if facebook emphasizes content you engage with (albeit negatively), you end up with anecdotes like yours. Facebook is a tool, use it as such rather than being entitled and feeling disempowered. You can hide people from your timelines, get "less messages like these" and more.
  - FriendlyNormie 7y ago
    Anti-vaxxers are relentlessly criticized everywhere. They don’t have a protective social bubble. The criticism they receive from people they assume are brainwashed idiots only strengthens their beliefs.
    - raziel2p 7y ago
      the reason they're able to dismiss criticism is because there's a bubble of people and content (blogposts, videos) that are being fed to them via social media, gradually convincing them that they are right. if social media like Facebook showed a more "objective" collection of content in your feed, you would end up with <1% anti-vax, flat-earth, climatechange-denial etc. content, and it becomes much harder to hold on to this conviction.
  - wolco 7y ago
sakisv 7y ago
It may very well be a naive sounding comment, but at the same time I think your comment reads at least as naive if not more. Think about it for a moment: First, as an employee there is a tendency to find and only focus on the good aspects of your employer. This is not a bad thing, it's what helps us get out of the bed in the morning and go to work. It can wrap your perception though and make you more biased. Second, you were part of a company and like any other company it wants to maximize its profits, i.e. maximize the engagement. I really want to believe you (and in some degree I actually do) that there are teams that focus on users' wellbeing (however this is measured) but in the end of the day, if it will come down to decide if I will be shown a post that has higher chance of generating profit VS a post that will make me feel better, in the vast majority of cases it will show me the first kind. You don't make money by being nice, unless you can combine the two. Facebook has done everything that it could to destroy any good will that we may have had to trust that it wants to combine the two (think about the experiment about influencing people's mood from a couple of years ago) A banner with a text similar to what blunderkid wrote would be not only fair and accurate but the least we could do. And Facebook has only itself to blame for it.
ptah 7y ago
it is actually intentionally designed to be habit forming i.e. "addictive" https://www.wired.com/2014/12/how-to-build-habit-forming-products/ https://www.wired.com/2014/12/how-to-build-habit-forming-pro...
TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
I like to imagine you wrote that comment while smoking a cigarette, you know, for dramatic affect.
claudeganon 7y ago
This is more an obfuscation than any kind of defense of Facebook. Here’s a better starting point for evaluating the company: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism
heinrichhartman 7y ago
I don't care if "addictiveness" is by design or emergent. Cigarettes were also not designed for cancer.
throwawayhhakdl 7y ago
Time spent isn’t the same as addiction though. The grossness of Facebook is not that people spend too much time on it (though they may), but what content they see, how they are encouraged to engage with it, and the effect it has on people’s world views and psychological health. The addiction component would be the constant concern with either how you are perceived on the platform or outrage with what others are saying. I see precisely nothing they’ve done to increase the well being of people who are constantly tilted by the dumbest political garbage.

dokein 7y ago

I don't think Facebook is "evil" by design, but the end result is the same. The framework is as follows: There were probably thousands of internet companies that competed to be the dominant sites in the 90s and 00s. By several orders of magnitude the predominant business model is ads for eyeballs, and the predominant network effect scales with number of users. Several factors influenced success but, on average, sites that captured user attention more effectively got more views and a larger userbase. Thus there was overall selective pressure for addictive properties, and sites like Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram won over sites that were less able to hold attention like Blogger, Digg, MySpace, etc. We cannot know, for example, that Jack Dorsey was knowingly trying to maximize outrage with his character limit, which feeds into the "two-minutes-hate" emotional addiction. But we can be sure that he was trying to maximize several KPIs like # users, bounce rate, time on page, etc. The result? The dominant sites today == the sites that are best able to capture attention! How successful were they? Not only have they captured a huge portion of time people spend on the internet, the amount of time people are on the internet has itself increased! So they won over other websites and also grabbed attention away from traditional media, newspapers, random thoughts while standing in line, uninterrupted dinner, etc. time. What's the problem? I think the major challenge is that these sites feel more effective at shaping attention than many drugs (no reference for this yet)! This parallels the opioid crisis -- maximizing certain good pain relief characteristics (short onset, hits opioid receptors) just happens to be addictive. I doubt the Sacklers cackled during dinner and clinked glasses at the future misery they were causing, but it's pretty damn easy to convince yourself that you're doing the right thing when the money is rolling in. Jack Dorsey similarly thinks he's saving the world but he's probably the single most responsible person for the "populist politician" phenomenon.

justaguyhere 7y ago
We are all addicted to something or the other. There are people who spend insane amount of time on HN (including me) - sure it is billion times better than FB, but it is still an addiction. This is one of those things where no amount of regulation or blaming FB (or instagram or twitter or HN or whatever) is going to help much. It might be more fruitful to think about why people spend so much time online outside of productive work, instead of having person to person interactions, playing sports, playing music etc. Just a small example - there is not a single park within 10 miles of where I live, but there are at least 3 big malls (sprawling ones with dozens of stores).
- reroute1 7y ago
  Exactly, people need to take some personal responsibility and stop calling a web app evil because people some donkey spends all their free time on it. Grow up and stop feeling outrage about something that doesn't even affect you, and the people that it does affect have every opportunity to do something about it.
- justapassenger 7y ago
  > There are people who spend insane amount of time on HN (including me) - sure it is billion times better than FB, but it is still an addiction. Why is it billion times better? I spend a lot of time on Facebook talking to my family that lives on the other side of the world. Is spending time talking with other geeks more valuable? One site is owned by a huge corporation and other is owned by a company that tries to get rich by creating more corporations.

EGreg 7y ago

Actually, we are addicted because of the tragedy of the unmanaged commons, where the commons is human attention and the mechanisms are Notifications and Updates from Your Contacts. If Facebook doesn’t do it, then LinkedIn or Twitter will. So Facebook is like Microsoft - do whatever it takes to win.

Nuzzerino 7y ago
If you disable types of notifications or otherwise remove sources of notifications on Facebook, and those are the notifications that you normally get, Facebook will start giving you new notifications for things that you weren't getting notifications for before. Things like "We have a new friend suggestion for you". Facebook is engineered to give you a steady stream of notifications, and as far as I know, there's no way to disable them completely, despite the slew of options Facebook gives you. Why do you think that is? Notifications can be designed to be less addictive, but that's not what Facebook is doing.
- EGreg 7y ago
  Well, you are right. I am simply pointing out that Facebook is not alone in this. Even small sites like Alignable spam you with notifications like “{{PersonYouNeverHeardOf}} has looked at your profile, you’re being noticed!” in an effort to try to get people, and it works! We have known this since 2011 when we started Qbix to build an open source alternative — see https://qbix.com/people https://qbix.com/people for a list of how it is different and more responsible. I hope other companies take on board these principles. Our tagline is “Empowering People. Uniting Communities”. So I feel passionate about this.

zentiggr 7y ago

If "well being" is a core metric for "most teams" why do we have investigative exposes of the horrible conditions content moderators are forced into? If well being were truly important, those moderators would be treated like valuable core metric maintainers, not barely paid, badly unsupported afterthoughts. And advertising performance and monetization would take a back seat as well, which is obviously not the case. Step out of your prior employee shell, and look at the whole picture of FB's interaction with its users. Not a net positive, and as others have said, no one but themselves (Zuck?) to blame.

everdrive 7y ago

I don't have the insight to disagree with you. I do worry that we're splitting hairs here: - People use Facebook in a way which is destructive to society, and this is partially due to how Facebook is built. vs. - Facebook planned on being this addictive (and destructive) on purpose.

PopeDotNinja 7y ago

It is designed to increase engagement. It ain't designed so you use it less and/or just enough.

josephg 7y ago

On what basis are you claiming that that most teams at FB are optimising the product for well being as opposed to ‘engagement’ (addiction)? Do you have first hand knowledge? Do you know the people involved? Do you have citations? I stopped using FB a few years ago after I had an argument with a friend on the platform. The algorithm decided to keep showing us one anothers’ content - I assume so we would both write more angry comments (“engagement!”). I ended up blocking the friend, then on reflection left the platform entirely, since as far as I can tell FB was optimising as intended to manipulate me. Has it changed since then?

raziel2p 7y ago
If facebook only shows content you agree with, it's creating social bubbles where everyone is cheering each other on and criticism is not allowed, and you end up with anti-vax groups. And if facebook emphasizes content you engage with (albeit negatively), you end up with anecdotes like yours. Facebook is a tool, use it as such rather than being entitled and feeling disempowered. You can hide people from your timelines, get "less messages like these" and more.
- FriendlyNormie 7y ago
  Anti-vaxxers are relentlessly criticized everywhere. They don’t have a protective social bubble. The criticism they receive from people they assume are brainwashed idiots only strengthens their beliefs.
  - raziel2p 7y ago
    the reason they're able to dismiss criticism is because there's a bubble of people and content (blogposts, videos) that are being fed to them via social media, gradually convincing them that they are right. if social media like Facebook showed a more "objective" collection of content in your feed, you would end up with <1% anti-vax, flat-earth, climatechange-denial etc. content, and it becomes much harder to hold on to this conviction.
- wolco 7y ago

sakisv 7y ago

It may very well be a naive sounding comment, but at the same time I think your comment reads at least as naive if not more. Think about it for a moment: First, as an employee there is a tendency to find and only focus on the good aspects of your employer. This is not a bad thing, it's what helps us get out of the bed in the morning and go to work. It can wrap your perception though and make you more biased. Second, you were part of a company and like any other company it wants to maximize its profits, i.e. maximize the engagement. I really want to believe you (and in some degree I actually do) that there are teams that focus on users' wellbeing (however this is measured) but in the end of the day, if it will come down to decide if I will be shown a post that has higher chance of generating profit VS a post that will make me feel better, in the vast majority of cases it will show me the first kind. You don't make money by being nice, unless you can combine the two. Facebook has done everything that it could to destroy any good will that we may have had to trust that it wants to combine the two (think about the experiment about influencing people's mood from a couple of years ago) A banner with a text similar to what blunderkid wrote would be not only fair and accurate but the least we could do. And Facebook has only itself to blame for it.

ptah 7y ago

it is actually intentionally designed to be habit forming i.e. "addictive" https://www.wired.com/2014/12/how-to-build-habit-forming-products/ https://www.wired.com/2014/12/how-to-build-habit-forming-pro...

TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago

I like to imagine you wrote that comment while smoking a cigarette, you know, for dramatic affect.

claudeganon 7y ago

This is more an obfuscation than any kind of defense of Facebook. Here’s a better starting point for evaluating the company: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialism

heinrichhartman 7y ago

I don't care if "addictiveness" is by design or emergent. Cigarettes were also not designed for cancer.

throwawayhhakdl 7y ago

Time spent isn’t the same as addiction though. The grossness of Facebook is not that people spend too much time on it (though they may), but what content they see, how they are encouraged to engage with it, and the effect it has on people’s world views and psychological health. The addiction component would be the constant concern with either how you are perceived on the platform or outrage with what others are saying. I see precisely nothing they’ve done to increase the well being of people who are constantly tilted by the dumbest political garbage.