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FB may try to maximize whatever appeal they have, but does persuasive design really stack up against persuasive friends? What is the fundamental ammo behind FB'

FB may try to maximize whatever appeal they have, but does persuasive design really stack up against persuasive friends? What is the fundamental ammo behind FB's ability to manipulate FOMO? Isn't it friendship and social delight?

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
Except that many FB friends aren't really friends. We don't have a word for "People we don't talk to about anything important but who also enjoy cat videos." If we did, that's where FB would live. It's a kind of friendship surrogacy - noisy and occasionally entertaining, but facile and shallow. And that's the definitive effect of ad tech. It makes everything facile and shallow. Politics becomes polarised and infantile and hostile to nuance. Social interactions become gamified ("Follow me and I'll follow you back to help both of us reach 1,000/10,000/100,000/millions!") Clicking Like becomes a displacement activity which avoids real political change. Relationships become performative. Businesses become all about engagement and persuasion - using the same old template of techniques and page designs - and not about social value. I think it's naive to expect Apple to push against this, because Apple are part of the problem. Apple World is a shiny place which includes exactly the correct number of minorities and age demographics all living the officially approved clean, smiling, sunny, fit, healthy, efficiently organised, and brightly decorated middle class consumer lifestyle that Apple products try to personify. This isn't even about technology. FAANG (and Microsoft) have created a shockingly undiverse collection of overlapping online worlds which define too many elements of work time and personal space - and all with a 1950s tone of optimised conformist consumption, mandated self-improvement, and transactional time trading.
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- travisgriggs 5y ago
  Facebook/messaging app/etc creates a sense of friendship that minimizes risk. It allows us to control the level of engagement so that it optimizes our own personal Goldilocks zone of immediate comfort. Because it wasn't an issue yet, our mothers didn't put an arm around our shoulders and say "aw honey, the ingredients of friendship include awkward movements, inconvenience, sacrifice, vulnerability. You can't do it without those essential ingredients."
Applejinx 5y ago
No, it is not. It is panic and fear of something harmful just out of sight. That drives WAY more engagement than 'friendship'.

TheOtherHobbes 5y ago

Except that many FB friends aren't really friends. We don't have a word for "People we don't talk to about anything important but who also enjoy cat videos." If we did, that's where FB would live. It's a kind of friendship surrogacy - noisy and occasionally entertaining, but facile and shallow. And that's the definitive effect of ad tech. It makes everything facile and shallow. Politics becomes polarised and infantile and hostile to nuance. Social interactions become gamified ("Follow me and I'll follow you back to help both of us reach 1,000/10,000/100,000/millions!") Clicking Like becomes a displacement activity which avoids real political change. Relationships become performative. Businesses become all about engagement and persuasion - using the same old template of techniques and page designs - and not about social value. I think it's naive to expect Apple to push against this, because Apple are part of the problem. Apple World is a shiny place which includes exactly the correct number of minorities and age demographics all living the officially approved clean, smiling, sunny, fit, healthy, efficiently organised, and brightly decorated middle class consumer lifestyle that Apple products try to personify. This isn't even about technology. FAANG (and Microsoft) have created a shockingly undiverse collection of overlapping online worlds which define too many elements of work time and personal space - and all with a 1950s tone of optimised conformist consumption, mandated self-improvement, and transactional time trading.

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travisgriggs 5y ago
Facebook/messaging app/etc creates a sense of friendship that minimizes risk. It allows us to control the level of engagement so that it optimizes our own personal Goldilocks zone of immediate comfort. Because it wasn't an issue yet, our mothers didn't put an arm around our shoulders and say "aw honey, the ingredients of friendship include awkward movements, inconvenience, sacrifice, vulnerability. You can't do it without those essential ingredients."

Applejinx 5y ago

No, it is not. It is panic and fear of something harmful just out of sight. That drives WAY more engagement than 'friendship'.