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Doomscrolling caused by "engagement" metrics. When engagement is all that matters, the most engagement comes when people are divisive, mad/angry or even pushed

Doomscrolling caused by "engagement" metrics. When engagement is all that matters, the most engagement comes when people are divisive, mad/angry or even pushed to extremes. When you feel yourself getting bothered, angry and you have to prove someone wrong on the internet, step away. You are taking valuable time from your own projects and quality of life. People can have different opinions and that is ok, your ideas and opinions are what make you, see that as your unique tool to success. On top of that many "organic opinions" are actually astroturfing and PR designed to promote or get you to "engage".

pmg102 6y ago
But getting bothered, angry and proving someone wrong on the internet ARE my own projects. What would I do without them? :/
- edoceo 6y ago
  Go outside?
  - WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
    I think FL's 13 month summers drove all our boomers on to the internet.
colmvp 6y ago
Hear hear. For me at least it's been a vice for decades. First it was discussion/gaming forums, then it was Fark, then Digg, and then Reddit. It's just as detrimental as being addicted to alcohol/drugs/games to distract you from life. In controlled doses it's okay but when it starts to take over an entire day or periods of a day/week from doing other things that could be giving your mind/body some life, that's when you really have to check in and ask yourself is this worth it?
- yuppie_scum 6y ago
  Don’t forget slashdot
- jsz0 6y ago
  I find it helpful to go back and read my old content on social media and simply ask myself if this is the type of person I want to be.
  - cout 6y ago
    This is a great thing to do. I've found some old chat logs from 20 years ago, and I don't want to be the person who said some of those things. Why didn't I realize at the time that what I said was wrong to say? Life in an echo chamber warps us, and it's good to step away sometimes and see it from the outside.
    - kergonath 6y ago
      This is commendable. The rest of society also needs to be compassionate and understanding and not ostracise someone just for a couple of edgy tweets from a decade ago. But now such messages are a time bomb, and can be used against you at any point if you cross someone.
- phone8675309 6y ago
  One of the forums that I post on has a thread specifically designed for requesting a suspension of your account to either take a break or cool down. It's recorded as a requested suspension, and moderators do not use it when factoring any future suspensions for breaking rules. I generally take a three month break twice a year, several months apart, when I find myself too sucked into what is going on there. Sure, I miss some of the "drama", but those sabbaticals are what makes sure that my side projects are productive. One of these days, I'm going to ask that they upgrade the suspension into a full on ban, but we're not quite there yet. There's too much nostalgia in that place for me to be ready to completely let go.
  - 6y ago
quotemstr 6y ago
Sure. But what do you do about it when people make a free choice to use engagement-optimized platforms? The problem of doomscrolling and outrage addiction is just a special case of the problem of superstimuli hijacking our savanna-derived ancestral social instincts and directing them in a profitable and maladaptive direction. What do you do about it? Ban this algorithm here or that UI pattern there? Impossible. You can't blunt the desires (even the harmful desires) of billions of people through some kind of centralized rulemaking. Look at the total shitshow that emerged after NYC tried to impose a tiny tax on sugary soft drinks, which are obviously bad for you. Why would an attempt to control engagement optimized platforms work when the soda tax didn't even the harms of engagement metrics are much less clear and the product more universally desirable? The only thing that's going to help us deal with the problem of internet outrage wireheading is giving society time to develop cultural antibodies naturally. Eventually, one way or another, spending your days arguing with strangers will become low status and shameful --- just like drinking a big gulp with 32768 calories per cup is low status now. (Not that status fully solves the problem.) In the meantime, well, we just have to hold on. The problem isn't engagement metrics. The problem is human nature. We are literally the dumbest possible primate that could form a civilization: keep that in mind.
- derefr 6y ago
  1. Ensure there are non-engagement-optimized alternative platforms on offer — or even platforms that specifically avoid recommending inflammatory content. (If we don’t even have this much done, there’s very little we can recommend for effective change. What are you going to tell people who live their lives indoors—as we’re all mostly doing right now? Don’t be social at all?) 2. Once we have non-engagement-optimized platforms, promote them as healthful, the way new diet fads get promoted. Get therapists/psychiatrists in on it. Run Public Service Advertisements that don’t mention a specific platform by name but just encourage the use of “healthy platforms.” Lobby for laws preventing depiction of use of engagement-optimized platforms in children’s media (i.e. treat depictions of Facebook the same as depictions of smoking.)
  - quotemstr 6y ago
    Yeah. I can see a niche for a platform that uses engagement targeting for good. "Use our platform, not Facetube. We have an engagement optimization target of 30 minutes per day. Our competitors want to be your life. We want you to have a life." Bootstrapping will be very hard however.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jfengel 6y ago
The internet has magnified it but outrage had been driving American culture for decades before social media. At least since 24 hour news, and that too was just expanding an old playbook for new tech (cable television). Unplugging is a good tool for all of us but the real problem is that outrage is ruining all our lives, not just those who indulge it.
- arwhatever 6y ago
  Recently watched a Simpsons episode from the mid-90s with the quote “Anger is what makes America great,” so other people had the same notion quite a while back.
  - eterm 6y ago
    Going back further Network (1976) is all about this.
    - drawkbox 6y ago
      Nightcrawler is also about this. Both excellent movies and observations of what drives content that gets attention. Both were about TV, with the internet, this is even more of a competition since it is worldwide so they push to the extremes because the extremes sell. Everyone is now competing with the world.
  - cout 6y ago
    That puts a completely different spin on MAGA than I've heard anyone talk about...
- jandrese 6y ago
  What we call “engagement metrics” on the internet is called “ratings” in the TV world. One network in particular discovered the way to maximize their ratings decades ago and has been at the top of the ratings ever since. The problems we have with social media are the same we’ve had with Fox News and AM talk radio for decades, but now people want to fight it because the social media companies started banning their worst offenders.
harles 6y ago
This (both the article and the comment) makes me think of David Allen’s concept of “appropriate engagement”. Outrage is how to end up with a growing todo list each week.
spoonjim 6y ago
When you’re feeling the angriest, Zuckerberg is cackling the loudest.
madrox 6y ago
> When you feel yourself getting bothered, angry and you have to prove someone wrong on the internet, step away. You are taking valuable time from your own projects and quality of life. The insidious problem is that, by the time you have that feeling, it is too late. It takes more time to let it go than it took to have that experience. Sometimes, responding feels like the only way to get closure. Better to never put yourself in a situation where having that experience is possible...unless you choose to have it.
- cgriswald 6y ago
  I think this is more of a conditioned response. If you continually engage, walking away will be difficult. If you regularly avoid or walk away, it’s easy.
  - madrox 6y ago
    As someone who does not engage, that has not been my experience.
- blaser-waffle 6y ago
  Spot on -- that's the point. Spew BS and any sort of race / gender / class / whatever bating and then have the hoards of folks rush in to clarify, argue, pushback, and fight for nuance. After a year or two of that, no one feels a need to do it. It's exhausting, and eventually leads to disengagement.
randomsearch 6y ago
Or. As I prefer to put it, and will probably die on the hill of popularising this phrase: “Enragement is engagement.”
hooande 6y ago
Everything is driven by engagement metrics. When was the last time you set out to read something or have an experience that wasn't engaging in some way? I can assure you that every good author of both fiction and non-fiction is constantly thinking "how can I make this story more engaging?" Clicks provide an empirical method to measure that, for better or worse. Trying to improve metrics is the path of least resistance in most situations. Should all writing be more informative, thought provoking and rewarding? Yes, but that's hard af. By comparison it's pretty easy to see what got clicks and try to do that again.
- 0xcde4c3db 6y ago
  I'm not even a tiny bit convinced that "engagement metrics" are actually a useful measure of the experiences that people typically care about when they use the word "engaging" in a positive light. In fact, I'm not sure how much I believe that such metrics even represent an attempt at such a measure.
- skohan 6y ago
  Yes exactly, the problem is in how engagement is measured, which is clicks/retweets/upvotes etc. These are cheap measures of whether or not you have been moved to act in the moment. If I'm engaged by a piece of content in the way that I think about the next day in the shower, no algorithm is going to measure this. I think that's part of the reason podcasts are so much more nuanced and edifying than most digital content. With podcasts, at least in my experience, the main discovery method is word-of-mouth. In order for a podcast to be discovered, it has to be interesting enough to come up in conversation.
WalterBright 6y ago
> Doomscrolling caused by "engagement" metrics. And then they ban the comment section because people engage.
closeparen 6y ago
I can’t square this conventional wisdom with the observation that ML-curated Facebook can hold my attention for a few minutes at most, while I have lost a good chunk of my youth to community-curated HN and Reddit. Engagement optimizations pale in comparison to simple popularity contests.

pmg102 6y ago

But getting bothered, angry and proving someone wrong on the internet ARE my own projects. What would I do without them? :/

edoceo 6y ago
Go outside?
- WarOnPrivacy 6y ago
  I think FL's 13 month summers drove all our boomers on to the internet.

colmvp 6y ago

Hear hear. For me at least it's been a vice for decades. First it was discussion/gaming forums, then it was Fark, then Digg, and then Reddit. It's just as detrimental as being addicted to alcohol/drugs/games to distract you from life. In controlled doses it's okay but when it starts to take over an entire day or periods of a day/week from doing other things that could be giving your mind/body some life, that's when you really have to check in and ask yourself is this worth it?

yuppie_scum 6y ago
Don’t forget slashdot
jsz0 6y ago
I find it helpful to go back and read my old content on social media and simply ask myself if this is the type of person I want to be.
- cout 6y ago
  This is a great thing to do. I've found some old chat logs from 20 years ago, and I don't want to be the person who said some of those things. Why didn't I realize at the time that what I said was wrong to say? Life in an echo chamber warps us, and it's good to step away sometimes and see it from the outside.
  - kergonath 6y ago
    This is commendable. The rest of society also needs to be compassionate and understanding and not ostracise someone just for a couple of edgy tweets from a decade ago. But now such messages are a time bomb, and can be used against you at any point if you cross someone.
phone8675309 6y ago
One of the forums that I post on has a thread specifically designed for requesting a suspension of your account to either take a break or cool down. It's recorded as a requested suspension, and moderators do not use it when factoring any future suspensions for breaking rules. I generally take a three month break twice a year, several months apart, when I find myself too sucked into what is going on there. Sure, I miss some of the "drama", but those sabbaticals are what makes sure that my side projects are productive. One of these days, I'm going to ask that they upgrade the suspension into a full on ban, but we're not quite there yet. There's too much nostalgia in that place for me to be ready to completely let go.
- 6y ago

quotemstr 6y ago

Sure. But what do you do about it when people make a free choice to use engagement-optimized platforms? The problem of doomscrolling and outrage addiction is just a special case of the problem of superstimuli hijacking our savanna-derived ancestral social instincts and directing them in a profitable and maladaptive direction. What do you do about it? Ban this algorithm here or that UI pattern there? Impossible. You can't blunt the desires (even the harmful desires) of billions of people through some kind of centralized rulemaking. Look at the total shitshow that emerged after NYC tried to impose a tiny tax on sugary soft drinks, which are obviously bad for you. Why would an attempt to control engagement optimized platforms work when the soda tax didn't even the harms of engagement metrics are much less clear and the product more universally desirable? The only thing that's going to help us deal with the problem of internet outrage wireheading is giving society time to develop cultural antibodies naturally. Eventually, one way or another, spending your days arguing with strangers will become low status and shameful --- just like drinking a big gulp with 32768 calories per cup is low status now. (Not that status fully solves the problem.) In the meantime, well, we just have to hold on. The problem isn't engagement metrics. The problem is human nature. We are literally the dumbest possible primate that could form a civilization: keep that in mind.

derefr 6y ago
1. Ensure there are non-engagement-optimized alternative platforms on offer — or even platforms that specifically avoid recommending inflammatory content. (If we don’t even have this much done, there’s very little we can recommend for effective change. What are you going to tell people who live their lives indoors—as we’re all mostly doing right now? Don’t be social at all?) 2. Once we have non-engagement-optimized platforms, promote them as healthful, the way new diet fads get promoted. Get therapists/psychiatrists in on it. Run Public Service Advertisements that don’t mention a specific platform by name but just encourage the use of “healthy platforms.” Lobby for laws preventing depiction of use of engagement-optimized platforms in children’s media (i.e. treat depictions of Facebook the same as depictions of smoking.)
- quotemstr 6y ago
  Yeah. I can see a niche for a platform that uses engagement targeting for good. "Use our platform, not Facetube. We have an engagement optimization target of 30 minutes per day. Our competitors want to be your life. We want you to have a life." Bootstrapping will be very hard however.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jfengel 6y ago

The internet has magnified it but outrage had been driving American culture for decades before social media. At least since 24 hour news, and that too was just expanding an old playbook for new tech (cable television). Unplugging is a good tool for all of us but the real problem is that outrage is ruining all our lives, not just those who indulge it.

arwhatever 6y ago
Recently watched a Simpsons episode from the mid-90s with the quote “Anger is what makes America great,” so other people had the same notion quite a while back.
- eterm 6y ago
  Going back further Network (1976) is all about this.
  - drawkbox 6y ago
    Nightcrawler is also about this. Both excellent movies and observations of what drives content that gets attention. Both were about TV, with the internet, this is even more of a competition since it is worldwide so they push to the extremes because the extremes sell. Everyone is now competing with the world.
- cout 6y ago
  That puts a completely different spin on MAGA than I've heard anyone talk about...
jandrese 6y ago
What we call “engagement metrics” on the internet is called “ratings” in the TV world. One network in particular discovered the way to maximize their ratings decades ago and has been at the top of the ratings ever since. The problems we have with social media are the same we’ve had with Fox News and AM talk radio for decades, but now people want to fight it because the social media companies started banning their worst offenders.

harles 6y ago

This (both the article and the comment) makes me think of David Allen’s concept of “appropriate engagement”. Outrage is how to end up with a growing todo list each week.

spoonjim 6y ago

When you’re feeling the angriest, Zuckerberg is cackling the loudest.

madrox 6y ago

> When you feel yourself getting bothered, angry and you have to prove someone wrong on the internet, step away. You are taking valuable time from your own projects and quality of life. The insidious problem is that, by the time you have that feeling, it is too late. It takes more time to let it go than it took to have that experience. Sometimes, responding feels like the only way to get closure. Better to never put yourself in a situation where having that experience is possible...unless you choose to have it.

cgriswald 6y ago
I think this is more of a conditioned response. If you continually engage, walking away will be difficult. If you regularly avoid or walk away, it’s easy.
- madrox 6y ago
  As someone who does not engage, that has not been my experience.
blaser-waffle 6y ago
Spot on -- that's the point. Spew BS and any sort of race / gender / class / whatever bating and then have the hoards of folks rush in to clarify, argue, pushback, and fight for nuance. After a year or two of that, no one feels a need to do it. It's exhausting, and eventually leads to disengagement.

randomsearch 6y ago

Or. As I prefer to put it, and will probably die on the hill of popularising this phrase: “Enragement is engagement.”

hooande 6y ago

Everything is driven by engagement metrics. When was the last time you set out to read something or have an experience that wasn't engaging in some way? I can assure you that every good author of both fiction and non-fiction is constantly thinking "how can I make this story more engaging?" Clicks provide an empirical method to measure that, for better or worse. Trying to improve metrics is the path of least resistance in most situations. Should all writing be more informative, thought provoking and rewarding? Yes, but that's hard af. By comparison it's pretty easy to see what got clicks and try to do that again.

0xcde4c3db 6y ago
I'm not even a tiny bit convinced that "engagement metrics" are actually a useful measure of the experiences that people typically care about when they use the word "engaging" in a positive light. In fact, I'm not sure how much I believe that such metrics even represent an attempt at such a measure.
skohan 6y ago
Yes exactly, the problem is in how engagement is measured, which is clicks/retweets/upvotes etc. These are cheap measures of whether or not you have been moved to act in the moment. If I'm engaged by a piece of content in the way that I think about the next day in the shower, no algorithm is going to measure this. I think that's part of the reason podcasts are so much more nuanced and edifying than most digital content. With podcasts, at least in my experience, the main discovery method is word-of-mouth. In order for a podcast to be discovered, it has to be interesting enough to come up in conversation.

WalterBright 6y ago

> Doomscrolling caused by "engagement" metrics. And then they ban the comment section because people engage.

closeparen 6y ago

I can’t square this conventional wisdom with the observation that ML-curated Facebook can hold my attention for a few minutes at most, while I have lost a good chunk of my youth to community-curated HN and Reddit. Engagement optimizations pale in comparison to simple popularity contests.