This is not specific to technology and can essentially be traced back to capitalism for every industry. Businesses have nothing to gain by making product decisions around "will this help the customers well being". If it does not help them sell more, do more, make more it does not matter. All consumer facing companies apps, games, food, travel they are all gamified to grow the business regardless of whether there is a government agency to influence them. I'm all for making product and business decisions around these ideas but these psychological tricks have been applied to consumers for decades long before the Internet.
How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
101–110 of 443 posts
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#102The bit about choices reminds about the soda cup debacle from when Bloomberg proposed limiting the size of soda containers that some venues could sell. Everyone griped about how it limited their "freedom of choice", but nobody asked about why those particular sizes were the choices available in the first place. 7-11 and others decided that they could add a $0.05 more soda and charge $0.25 more and make more money. Pe…
> Meanwhile the choice of buying less was never presented as an option. What do you mean here? There were always multiple sizes of soda. Bloomberg was the one who was introducing the restriction, requiring someone who wanted more than a particular size to buy it in two separate cups. I must be parsing this incorrectly.
The small size for a movie theater soda often starts at about 24oz. Getting less than that is not an option. There's been studies that when you put more food or drink in front of someone, they'll consume, even if they aren't particularly hungry or thirsty. Hence, the inflated soda sizes were adding thousands of extra calories that people otherwise wouldn't have wanted.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#103Some of the design anti-patterns he's describing smell a lot like the broken window fallacy [1]. Sure, apps can get big on getting users addicted and "engaged", but there's no actual economic benefit being produced by such design - just tons of opportunity cost to users. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
I'm not sure I follow why the fallacy applies. But for lots of smartphone apps there is an economic benefit. Making your app mildly addictive increases your weekly active users as well as the amount of time they spend in the app. These are two gold star metrics used by lots of VCs.
The broken window fallacy isn't concerned with the local economic benefit for the app developer but the total economic benefit of society. A user who is addicted to an app may be using that app far past the actual utility they are deriving from it -- the app developer is encouraging them to mismanage their opportunity costs and in aggregate creates negative productivity across the total body of all users. It might be good for the VCs, but is it good for society?
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll give you an example. I live in Ithaca, NY, not far from some of the richest shale gas deposits in the United States. This town is also ground zero for fracking hatred. Post something awful about fracking, and people will eat that shit up whether it's true or not. I know, because I was one of them. Then I started dating a hydrogeologist. As luck would have it, her very MS thesis was on fracking. She dispelled rum…
The only real problems arise when people refuse to reconsider their opinions in the face of facts. But your fact is just another one's opinion. We have had ample examples in the last fifty years where "science" has been abused with a for-profit motive (tobacco and nutrition are useful examples, as is this article). It's not fair to blame "hippies" for ignoring "science", unless you're also willing to blame media, pol…
It is quite fair to blame hippies for ignoring science. Propaganda works on everyone. It is nobody's job but your own to do due diligence.
Yes, the media, politicians and so on has a tendency to proclaim falsehoods as facts - nutrition advice and policy being a great example - but our legal system requires a modicum of intent to assign liability, just as society accepts that requirement for blame. (Blah blah criminal negligence other exceptions I fucking hate how defensively I have to write on the internet these days just to get a point across without leaving a tiny detail open for someone to slam for karma).
>But your fact is just another one's opinion.
That is a very dangerous perspective. Our understanding of the universe is always changing. But eschewing accepted science without a compelling alternative because it could be wrong is a path to nowhere but President Trump.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#105He had me until the end.
"People’s time is valuable." True
"And we should protect it with the same rigor as privacy and other digital rights." LOLOLOLOL
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#106It's not "technology" that is hijacking people's minds, it's specific companies who are doing it. You don't blame the magician's hat for fooling you.
The problem, as usual, is that technology is slave to the boring, insipid demands of capital to get us to click on ads and purchase more snow-pants.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heh, yeah. It's like talking to climate "skeptics" - people who believe climate change is real but disagree on the level of human agency. You can show them graph after graph of greenhouse gas emissions being pumped into the atmosphere at alarming rates and they'll say "I'm not that alarmed, we don't know how much of an impact it will have." Meanwhile, coral reefs are bleaching, Florida is flooding, and we are experie…
But what? The problem with the constant doom is that we get exhausted. At least in the US all we truly care about is war and old people (looking at where the money goes; http://whatwepayfor.com/ ). The problem with the doom sayers is they have no solutions or actionable items that we can say yes or no to. Its just lions and tigers and bears 24/7.
Sure we do. Cap and trade. Boom.
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#108First world problems. This post was really disgusting. "Oh, no, I have to look at pictures of bars...Manipulation!", "Oh, no, they are offering me to tag myself on a picture - systemic oppression and manipulation!" "Nooo... Fuck, now have to say 'You're welcome' " Fuck this author. A spoiled, rich cunt complaining that someone will auto-play a video after a countdown on his newest iPhone. ... In the meantime, slaves…
Have you considered that the manipulation of people's minds in consumer societies might actually be part of the reason why there is so much exploitation of people in more vulnerable communities?
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#109timewellspent.io contains a perfect example of indirectly hijacking our agency: the video play button.
That little triangle has almost become impossible to resist. My two-year-old can spy it from across the room and he runs over and begs me to click it.
What if we stopped using icons that have programmed our brains?
Re: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds
#110Wow, I'm glad this was posted. I think the way we use technology today will be looked back on the same way we look back at naive cigarette smoking in the 1950s. Modern app design isn't about creating things that are good for the user, but about creating want in the user. This is a problem. For example, there are several studies showing that using Facebook in general makes people less happy. User happiness just happen…
I'm glad you posted this. It is all about trying to drive habits just like cigarettes which are specially engineered.