23 ms·

This for me is key, these sorts of problems cannot just be solved on an individual level. They are systemic. "Individual abstinence is “not the solution, for t

by jmfldn 5y ago

This for me is key, these sorts of problems cannot just be solved on an individual level. They are systemic. "Individual abstinence is “not the solution, for the same reason that wearing a gas mask for two days a week outside isn’t the answer to pollution. It might, for a short period of time, keep certain effects at bay, but it’s not sustainable, and it doesn’t address the systemic issues.” He said that our attention is being deeply altered by huge invasive forces in wider society. Saying the solution was to just adjust your own habits – to pledge to break up with your phone, say – was just “pushing it back on to the individual” he said, when “it’s really the environmental changes that will really make the difference”."

mypastself 5y ago
Except I have no choice but to walk through an area which might be polluted. I do have a choice to not read news sites for four hours a day. The article fails to define both the problem and the solution. How exactly this “attention theft” causes significant negative societary consequences is defined extremely vaguely, and almost exclusively through personal anecdotes. The offered solutions, forcing employers to respect working hours and forcing social media companies to change their business models, are borderline non-sequiturs to the article’s thesis. There is a comment about this possibly being a new “moral panic”, which the author dismisses out of hand. Yet in the same article, he implies his son dropped out of school at 15 because of WhatsApp.
- sascha_sl 5y ago
  "Choice" really needs to be well-defined here. We know you can influence people to change their behavior because we invented the term "attention hacking". Sheer willpower will not overcome this on anything but an individual level. And just like obesity has other dependents like the cost of food, there is also cost/disincentives to "disconnecting". Social interaction is almost exclusively happening online now, especially during a pandemic. There is a very limited set of circumstances in which individual action will not have other severe consequences to your life - so while it might work for you, there's no way it'll work for everyone. Systemic issues require systemic solutions.
  - mypastself 5y ago
    The article describes a far broader group of culprits than just social media. However, the author only calls for forcing social media companies to change their business models and not, say, news sites that publish articles trigger-happy about declaring crises and emergencies.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      And they never will. There is just too much money in it. That's why ultimately the responsibility lies with us.
  - thegrimmest 5y ago
    I'd say "choice" in the conventional sense - the exercise of voluntary control over one's body. If sheer willpower can overcome this on an individual level then it can overcome it on a societal level, society being nothing more than a collection of individuals. It seems as though you're suggesting that we use authority to "solve" these "systemic" issues - which really are just individual issues for a subset of the population. This suggests that you are comfortable deciding what's good for others. How would you respond to obese or social-media-obsessed people who are content with their lives and not interested in your "solutions"?
    - sascha_sl 5y ago
      You're acting like corporations aren't enacting control over large populations right now either. Everything the market does as a byproduct of maximizing profits is fine, but all other intervention with provably better mental and physical health outcomes is authoritarian. Did I get that right?
      - thegrimmest 5y ago
        > provably better First we have to all agree on what this means, which I'm quite sure is impossible. Everything the free market does is voluntary by definition. Every "intervention" is by definition not. That is exactly the basis for my opposition to authoritarian paternalism. Also I disagree that corporations are "enacting control" - they are merely exerting influence. There is a world of difference.
- moffkalast 5y ago
  Sure you have a choice. But much like with wearing a gas mask, people will think you're weird and you'll end up alone.
  - mypastself 5y ago
    I’m not sure I see a connection with doomscrolling, which is what I used as an example in my comment, referring to the article.
tomjen3 5y ago
> It might, for a short period of time, keep certain effects at bay, but it’s not sustainable And yet we have worn masks for months at least. If the price of a free internet is the equivalent of wearing a gasmask then I would rather do that, at least until we we have the equivalent of the nano-robot immunesystem from the Diamond Age. If we let the government make the rules here we will lose the last place where we can play freely, and will almost certainly not solve the problem we wanted to be solved.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Regardless if the solution is government intervention, it seems rather funny to say the modern internet is a place that all entrants can play freely. It’s changed quite a bit since when The Diamond Age was first written.
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    We can play freely, invent new solutions and approaches without having the government test their safety, without having to get special approval by anybody. I am aware of the bias of large companies that stops certain people from building, which is why I wrote play.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      The antitrust left says large companies prevent people from building freely, but doesn’t the free speech right also claim that large companies are preventing from playing- or rather, speaking- freely? Seems like different activities are falling under corporate purview.
jacquesm 5y ago
The only way that you can solve it is on an individual level unless you are in a position of power. You have far less agency over the systemic issues than you have over your individual choices.
37 5y ago
Correct. It is baked into their business model, to monetize your attention. And they have gotten very good at it. A "race to the bottom of the brain stem" as Tristan Harris likes to put it[0] is the correct way to look at it, AFAICT. To me, it's also a problem of "Moloch does it". Scott Alexander describes it well and gives a handful of great examples in Part I of his Meditations on Moloch.[1] [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-10-01/why-social-media-may-be-in-race-to-bottom-of-brain-stem https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-10-01/why-social-... [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditations-on-moloch https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditation...
- neuronic 5y ago
  Of all the examples, reddit is the scariest to me. People think it's a bunch of nerds talking about geeky topics (or whatever) but as soon as a subreddit has a sizable user base it will be targeted by PR firms posing as normal users. More political subs are likely subject to propaganda ops bu8t Im not even going there. Some things on the frontpage are clear advertisments, there has been evidence of shilling about certain topics by using post templates etc etc. but still somehow the impression persists that some dude from Idaho just posted his awesome BBQ recipe and the perfectly framed and well-lit tech equipment in the background is just coincidence.
  - 37 5y ago
    In my eyes, the worst is probably Facebook or Instagram or TikTok (none of which I use) but yes, I also understand the Reddit example as well (which I do use). And yes, even without speaking to the larger politicized subs like T_D, I do completely agree. Quite scary. And it scares me 'PR firms' exist and are named as such because the term 'propaganda' started to take on a negative connotation. Kinda like how Google became Alphabet, or Facebook became Meta. Advertising, marketing, public relations, propaganda, manipulation.... where does the distinction lie? Do you care to give a couple cases/examples on the Reddit front? Like proven scandals where people or groups have conspired to deceive? You mention a dude from Idaho, but I'm not in-the-loop enough to get the reference.
telxosser 5y ago
I just don't agree really. That analogy is pretty absurd. It is hugely powerful to not get caught up in all this nonsense at the individual level. I know so much more than what I knew in early January 2021 because I spend my time reading books, doing tutorials or taking MOOCS instead of wasting my time watching TikTok. I literally don't even know what the user interface to TikTok looks like and never will. If anything the exact problem is people are giving up agency at the individual level. As if there is absolutely no choice other than to be helplessly addicted to your phone. That implies then that it is not your fault that you check your phone or txt while driving.
- 37 5y ago
  It's both. Yes it is good that you spent early 2021 not mindlessly scrolling TikTok, and yes it is true that as individuals we do have some agency in the matter. But, it is also true that in this 'attention economy' the large companies are hiring psychologists to try to break your agency, to try to take it away from you. And they are doing a pretty damn good job, and aren't going to stop any time soon. "Stolen" in the title of the OP is not really an exaggeration. >It is hugely powerful to not get caught up in all this nonsense at the individual level. I mostly agree with this, but in the same token think we should be aware of "this nonsense". >As if there is absolutely no choice other than to be helplessly addicted to your phone. Don't think anyone is saying that. Think what we are saying is more along the lines of something like 'the problem is systemic, essentially baked into the business model of advertising/marketing, and it should be addressed'
  - shukantpal 5y ago
    > “Stolen" in the title of the OP is not really an exaggeration. Theft can happen only when it’s involuntary. > the problem is systemic, essentially baked into the business model of advertising/marketing, and it should be addressed That’s not the root cause. It is just a choke point for blame. The root cause is the choice people make, which we’ve established exists. If people want help, there are plenty of mitigations for social media, like alternative front ends.
    - 5y ago
parkingrift 5y ago
How are those two examples even remotely comparable? Uninstall social media from your phone, delete your social media accounts, put your phone in a box when you get home, etc, etc, etc. These “problems” are trivially easy for an individual to solve. They are so easy to solve that I disagree with the basic premise that we even have a problem. I think we could rewrite this article from the perspective of any generation. Just replace the phone with whatever hysteria was happening in that era. Music, video games, comics, or whatever. The author of this article seems to just throw her hands up without having tried even a single thing. “No, I cannot manage my own behavior. It is society that must change!”
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  Well, in same vein, you can tell addict to 'just drop that needle', yet few do. Or cigarettes. Addictive behavior is, well, addictive, and few in population have the mental will to shed it off themselves once they get hooked. Tobacco clearly kills you (and people around), ruins you and make you stink like pile of old crap. We still allow it, but regulate it heavily since bad effects are out there, everywhere. TBH I don't mind some regulation on too-powerful social media, they've enjoyed their free pass for way too long and so far they definitely didn't make the world a better place, in contrary.
  - jdgoesmarching 5y ago
    HN and many tech-minded forums struggle the most with arguments that require empathy. For people who probably don’t consider themselves religious, their outlook is extremely Puritanical. “I see you explaining why x is difficult for most people, but I don’t struggle with it so the difficulty is invalid.”
    - parkingrift 5y ago
      It’s not an empathy gap. It’s collectivism vs individualism.
  - parkingrift 5y ago
    Do you have any links to share that would corroborate your suggestion that social media is as addictive or hard to quit as heroin or tobacco? That’s quite a statement. I find these two examples particularly interesting because the regulations have done absolutely nothing. Heroin has never been more popular or more regulated. Tobacco is lightly regulated and the declines in usage are almost completely attributed to campaigns against smoking, not the regulations themselves.

by jmfldn 5y ago

mypastself 5y ago

Except I have no choice but to walk through an area which might be polluted. I do have a choice to not read news sites for four hours a day. The article fails to define both the problem and the solution. How exactly this “attention theft” causes significant negative societary consequences is defined extremely vaguely, and almost exclusively through personal anecdotes. The offered solutions, forcing employers to respect working hours and forcing social media companies to change their business models, are borderline non-sequiturs to the article’s thesis. There is a comment about this possibly being a new “moral panic”, which the author dismisses out of hand. Yet in the same article, he implies his son dropped out of school at 15 because of WhatsApp.

sascha_sl 5y ago
"Choice" really needs to be well-defined here. We know you can influence people to change their behavior because we invented the term "attention hacking". Sheer willpower will not overcome this on anything but an individual level. And just like obesity has other dependents like the cost of food, there is also cost/disincentives to "disconnecting". Social interaction is almost exclusively happening online now, especially during a pandemic. There is a very limited set of circumstances in which individual action will not have other severe consequences to your life - so while it might work for you, there's no way it'll work for everyone. Systemic issues require systemic solutions.
- mypastself 5y ago
  The article describes a far broader group of culprits than just social media. However, the author only calls for forcing social media companies to change their business models and not, say, news sites that publish articles trigger-happy about declaring crises and emergencies.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    And they never will. There is just too much money in it. That's why ultimately the responsibility lies with us.
- thegrimmest 5y ago
  I'd say "choice" in the conventional sense - the exercise of voluntary control over one's body. If sheer willpower can overcome this on an individual level then it can overcome it on a societal level, society being nothing more than a collection of individuals. It seems as though you're suggesting that we use authority to "solve" these "systemic" issues - which really are just individual issues for a subset of the population. This suggests that you are comfortable deciding what's good for others. How would you respond to obese or social-media-obsessed people who are content with their lives and not interested in your "solutions"?
  - sascha_sl 5y ago
    You're acting like corporations aren't enacting control over large populations right now either. Everything the market does as a byproduct of maximizing profits is fine, but all other intervention with provably better mental and physical health outcomes is authoritarian. Did I get that right?
    - thegrimmest 5y ago
      > provably better First we have to all agree on what this means, which I'm quite sure is impossible. Everything the free market does is voluntary by definition. Every "intervention" is by definition not. That is exactly the basis for my opposition to authoritarian paternalism. Also I disagree that corporations are "enacting control" - they are merely exerting influence. There is a world of difference.
moffkalast 5y ago
Sure you have a choice. But much like with wearing a gas mask, people will think you're weird and you'll end up alone.
- mypastself 5y ago
  I’m not sure I see a connection with doomscrolling, which is what I used as an example in my comment, referring to the article.

tomjen3 5y ago

> It might, for a short period of time, keep certain effects at bay, but it’s not sustainable And yet we have worn masks for months at least. If the price of a free internet is the equivalent of wearing a gasmask then I would rather do that, at least until we we have the equivalent of the nano-robot immunesystem from the Diamond Age. If we let the government make the rules here we will lose the last place where we can play freely, and will almost certainly not solve the problem we wanted to be solved.

Apocryphon 5y ago
Regardless if the solution is government intervention, it seems rather funny to say the modern internet is a place that all entrants can play freely. It’s changed quite a bit since when The Diamond Age was first written.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  We can play freely, invent new solutions and approaches without having the government test their safety, without having to get special approval by anybody. I am aware of the bias of large companies that stops certain people from building, which is why I wrote play.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    The antitrust left says large companies prevent people from building freely, but doesn’t the free speech right also claim that large companies are preventing from playing- or rather, speaking- freely? Seems like different activities are falling under corporate purview.

jacquesm 5y ago

The only way that you can solve it is on an individual level unless you are in a position of power. You have far less agency over the systemic issues than you have over your individual choices.

37 5y ago

Correct. It is baked into their business model, to monetize your attention. And they have gotten very good at it. A "race to the bottom of the brain stem" as Tristan Harris likes to put it[0] is the correct way to look at it, AFAICT. To me, it's also a problem of "Moloch does it". Scott Alexander describes it well and gives a handful of great examples in Part I of his Meditations on Moloch.[1] [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-10-01/why-social-media-may-be-in-race-to-bottom-of-brain-stem https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2021-10-01/why-social-... [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditations-on-moloch https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/TxcRbCYHaeL59aY7E/meditation...

neuronic 5y ago
Of all the examples, reddit is the scariest to me. People think it's a bunch of nerds talking about geeky topics (or whatever) but as soon as a subreddit has a sizable user base it will be targeted by PR firms posing as normal users. More political subs are likely subject to propaganda ops bu8t Im not even going there. Some things on the frontpage are clear advertisments, there has been evidence of shilling about certain topics by using post templates etc etc. but still somehow the impression persists that some dude from Idaho just posted his awesome BBQ recipe and the perfectly framed and well-lit tech equipment in the background is just coincidence.
- 37 5y ago
  In my eyes, the worst is probably Facebook or Instagram or TikTok (none of which I use) but yes, I also understand the Reddit example as well (which I do use). And yes, even without speaking to the larger politicized subs like T_D, I do completely agree. Quite scary. And it scares me 'PR firms' exist and are named as such because the term 'propaganda' started to take on a negative connotation. Kinda like how Google became Alphabet, or Facebook became Meta. Advertising, marketing, public relations, propaganda, manipulation.... where does the distinction lie? Do you care to give a couple cases/examples on the Reddit front? Like proven scandals where people or groups have conspired to deceive? You mention a dude from Idaho, but I'm not in-the-loop enough to get the reference.

telxosser 5y ago

I just don't agree really. That analogy is pretty absurd. It is hugely powerful to not get caught up in all this nonsense at the individual level. I know so much more than what I knew in early January 2021 because I spend my time reading books, doing tutorials or taking MOOCS instead of wasting my time watching TikTok. I literally don't even know what the user interface to TikTok looks like and never will. If anything the exact problem is people are giving up agency at the individual level. As if there is absolutely no choice other than to be helplessly addicted to your phone. That implies then that it is not your fault that you check your phone or txt while driving.

37 5y ago
It's both. Yes it is good that you spent early 2021 not mindlessly scrolling TikTok, and yes it is true that as individuals we do have some agency in the matter. But, it is also true that in this 'attention economy' the large companies are hiring psychologists to try to break your agency, to try to take it away from you. And they are doing a pretty damn good job, and aren't going to stop any time soon. "Stolen" in the title of the OP is not really an exaggeration. >It is hugely powerful to not get caught up in all this nonsense at the individual level. I mostly agree with this, but in the same token think we should be aware of "this nonsense". >As if there is absolutely no choice other than to be helplessly addicted to your phone. Don't think anyone is saying that. Think what we are saying is more along the lines of something like 'the problem is systemic, essentially baked into the business model of advertising/marketing, and it should be addressed'
- shukantpal 5y ago
  > “Stolen" in the title of the OP is not really an exaggeration. Theft can happen only when it’s involuntary. > the problem is systemic, essentially baked into the business model of advertising/marketing, and it should be addressed That’s not the root cause. It is just a choke point for blame. The root cause is the choice people make, which we’ve established exists. If people want help, there are plenty of mitigations for social media, like alternative front ends.
  - 5y ago

parkingrift 5y ago

How are those two examples even remotely comparable? Uninstall social media from your phone, delete your social media accounts, put your phone in a box when you get home, etc, etc, etc. These “problems” are trivially easy for an individual to solve. They are so easy to solve that I disagree with the basic premise that we even have a problem. I think we could rewrite this article from the perspective of any generation. Just replace the phone with whatever hysteria was happening in that era. Music, video games, comics, or whatever. The author of this article seems to just throw her hands up without having tried even a single thing. “No, I cannot manage my own behavior. It is society that must change!”

saiya-jin 5y ago
Well, in same vein, you can tell addict to 'just drop that needle', yet few do. Or cigarettes. Addictive behavior is, well, addictive, and few in population have the mental will to shed it off themselves once they get hooked. Tobacco clearly kills you (and people around), ruins you and make you stink like pile of old crap. We still allow it, but regulate it heavily since bad effects are out there, everywhere. TBH I don't mind some regulation on too-powerful social media, they've enjoyed their free pass for way too long and so far they definitely didn't make the world a better place, in contrary.
- jdgoesmarching 5y ago
  HN and many tech-minded forums struggle the most with arguments that require empathy. For people who probably don’t consider themselves religious, their outlook is extremely Puritanical. “I see you explaining why x is difficult for most people, but I don’t struggle with it so the difficulty is invalid.”
  - parkingrift 5y ago
    It’s not an empathy gap. It’s collectivism vs individualism.
- parkingrift 5y ago
  Do you have any links to share that would corroborate your suggestion that social media is as addictive or hard to quit as heroin or tobacco? That’s quite a statement. I find these two examples particularly interesting because the regulations have done absolutely nothing. Heroin has never been more popular or more regulated. Tobacco is lightly regulated and the declines in usage are almost completely attributed to campaigns against smoking, not the regulations themselves.