Comment by 4cao
5 years ago
Some of the most interesting excerpts (although it's worth reading in its entirety):
> My path in technology started at Facebook where I was the first Director of Monetization. [...] we sought to mine as much attention as humanly possible and turn into historically unprecedented profits. We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset.
> Tobacco companies [...] added sugar and menthol to cigarettes so you could hold the smoke in your lungs for longer periods. At Facebook, we added status updates, photo tagging, and likes, which made status and reputation primary and laid the groundwork for a teenage mental health crisis.
> Allowing for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake news to flourish were like Big Tobacco’s bronchodilators, which allowed the cigarette smoke to cover more surface area of the lungs.
> Tobacco companies added ammonia to cigarettes to increase the speed with which nicotine traveled to the brain. Extreme, incendiary content—think shocking images, graphic videos, and headlines that incite outrage—sowed tribalism and division. And this result has been unprecedented engagement -- and profits. Facebook’s ability to deliver this incendiary content to the right person, at the right time, in the exact right way... that is their ammonia.
> The algorithm maximizes your attention by hitting you repeatedly with content that triggers your strongest emotions — it aims to provoke, shock, and enrage. All the while, the technology is getting smarter and better at provoking a response from you. [...] This is not by accident. It’s an algorithmically optimized playbook to maximize user attention -- and profits.
> When it comes to misinformation, these companies hide behind the First Amendment and say they stand for free speech. At the same time, their algorithms continually choose whose voice is actually heard. In truth, it is not free speech they revere. Instead, Facebook and their cohorts worship at the altar of engagement and cast all other concerns aside, raising the voices of division, anger, hate and misinformation to drown out the voices of truth, justice, morality, and peace.
This bit of dialog should be the smoking gun in my opinion. Big Tobacco got taken to the woodshed over this very thing: making the product as addictive as possible. This should be the club that is used to beat Social Media platforms over their heads. As with Big Tobacco I'm sure it rings true with Social platforms as well in that not just one of them is doing it they all are.
One problem with this is that it's easy to conflate "addictive" with "people like to use it". Should television shows been punished for cliffhangers because they hook people into seeing the next episode? Breaking Bad had an interesting plot and character progression that made me want to keep watching - are they addicting me?
One person might say "We created all these statuses and features to be addictive" but it seems just as true to say "We created this stuff because people liked it and we are trying to make something people like."
> Should television shows been punished for cliffhangers because they hook people into seeing the next episode?
Does this significantly negatively impact the lives of viewers or of those around them? Addiction doesn't just mean "want to have it". Addiction means "want to have it so bad it messes up other aspects of my life".
(For what it's worth, I do personally avoid cliff-hanger shows because I find the anxiety and frustration of being left hanging is rarely sufficiently well compensated by the quality of the show.)
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Facebook is definitely addictive. It took me more than a year of trials to be able to break the cycle and get off the platform. The thing is, it gets harder over time to take a pause from it.
But now that it has been one month since I last used it, and I noticed that all I did was to replace my Facebook time with Hacker News, I can't but wonder: Does the addiction problem lie with the user, or in the platform? Or is it, more generally, in the way the internet serves us content?
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Different words with different definitions. Who cares if people like to use it if it's addictive?
"Addiction is a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli despite adverse consequences." Wikipedia
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> Should television shows been punished for cliffhangers because they hook people into seeing the next episode? Breaking Bad had an interesting plot and character progression that made me want to keep watching - are they addicting me?
Honestly, this is a super interesting question. I would say anything designed to succeed by hijacking human brain chemistry instead of providing superior or novel quality is probably worth regulating at some level.
From that standpoint, Breaking Bad would not have an issue - it's superior and novel. Shows that succeed in making a viewer binge with a combination of (effectively) mid-episode endings and autoplay, are somewhat hacky. You can't regulate cliffhanger endings, so autoplay should probably not be legal - Netflix already asks you if you want to continue watching, they should simply do so after every episode. Shows with good content like Breaking Bad would still be easy to binge (just press yes once an hour), and poor quality shows would have a harder time taking advantage of brain chemistry by requiring an affirmative act.
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I agree. It's difficult to determine where the line is drawn. I think the primary considerations should be the methods used and the potential harm caused.
Yes, TV shows can be made to be "addicting" but what is the potential harm? Someone sits around watching too much TV? That's not a very big drain on society at the end of the day. Sure it's not great, but the negative outcomes for the society as a whole don't seem to be too impactful.
Now look at gambling. It's certainly addictive because of various techniques used by casinos to get people hooked. It seems that much of society agrees that it also has some negative impact on society as a whole. It drags people into impossible debts which can have a variety of negative externalities... loan sharks, violence, evaporation of wealth, financial crimes, etc.
It seems clear to me that not only is social media addictive but it is also having a net-negative impact on society and that is why people are concerned. If the impact was just people are spending their evenings glued to the screen but not going out and causing societal issues then I don't think anyone would be too concerned.
> Should television shows been punished for cliffhangers
The moment when Netflix execs openly says their competition is sleep, yes.
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TV shows have a definitive end, cliffhanger or otherwise, infinite scrolling through Facebook does not.
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Tobacco use as a percentage of the population has consistently declined by .5% since data started to be gathered the 1960s [0].
The Master Settlement Agreement in 1998 [1] had no statistical impact on the rate reduction of smoking - the rate of decline of smokers is the same now as it was in 1965.
The tobacco industry is more profitable than ever and they are diversifying into nicotine delivery vehicles like vapes, gum [2]. So the underlying goal - increase nicotine dependence across the global population and capture the nicotine consumption market is still going strong.
Much like the desire to be intoxicated, the desire to influence people will never go away. It's baked into our biology. Everyone in this thread interacting with each other is trying to influence everyone else. Facebook etc... is just doing successfully what Bernays dreamed of.
You can beat these platforms all you want - just like the tobacco industry was beat. The problems will just surface elsewhere in a different form.
Attack the root issue - ban advertising. oh and do it in a way that allows for "free speech." The challenge of the century.
[0]https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-disease/tobacco...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...
[2]https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tobacco-industry-rebounds-f...
I tend to agree with this line of thinking, but I wonder if banning advertising wont have similar difficulties. There will be more sneaky product placement, anonymous donations to podcasters who tend to promote certain products/beliefs/etc.
I say this not because I think we should just give up and not ban advertising but because I'm curious how it might be done effectively.
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In order for the decline in smoking to remain linear, you must convince people who are increasingly less likely to quit. Consistent .5% decline is (weak) evidence for the effectiveness of efforts to combat smoking, not the opposite.
I don't know if that impacts your larger point with regards to nicotine addiction in general, but I think it's worth noting.
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I disagree somewhat. The addiction argument is merely an extreme.
Suppose someone offered to mow your lawn for free. Great offer, so you take them up on it. Turns out they're also using the access you give them to mine gold you didn't know was in your backyard. Whether or not you were addicted to their mowing services is irrelevant, they're stealing from you.
The problem with Facebook is that they're taking your attention and monetizing it. There's no serious argument against requiring them to disclose their actions - particularly who is buying your attention. It doesn't make any difference if you're addicted or a mere user of their product, they're still using your attention without telling you. They simply know more about science.
I think it’s more than just making it addictive. It’s making choices that make the product more harmful in order to make it more addictive. Even that bar, though, hasn’t triggered action against food producers for sugaring things up. I think there also must be a critical mass of cultural anger.
They really didn't; cigarettes were allowed to flourish for decades and legal action was only taken once their popularity started to wane. Don't expect any meaningful action from your govt
Sure, Big Tobacco is still a thing. However, their actions of targeting kids/teens were curtailed. The money they were forced to spend on ad campaigns informing teens of "smoking is bad" appears to have worked. Current reports show smoking in teens has dropped significantly, including current downward trends in vaping as well.
The biggest thing you go do to hurt the likes of FB,IG,Twitter would be to brand them as lame and uncool. If people don't want to use it, then it effects their bottom line. Gov't action isn't require for this, but the right campaign attacking the cool factor will motivate people away from it. (I'm currently wearing my positive thinking cap)
> Big Tobacco got taken to the woodshed
And then nothing really happened in that woodshed other than some lousy warnings on a toxic product for the consumer and its surroundings.
Taxes made them pretty expensive.
Re: the comments about incendiary content and maximizing attention.
This is what every news outlet tries to do. The only difference is that FB is better at it. It reminds me of the controversy about targeting ads towards protected categories (age, gender). This is something all media buys do as well, based on location, event type, but FB just has a better way.
I'm not saying its right, or necessarily wrong, just that this seems to be more about them being good at something than it is about them operating in moral territory that is different than any other business.
Many news outlets try to do this, but not all of them. There are some that strive to be fair and prioritize informing rather than inflaming their audience. The problem is that there is more money in the latter and many investors are greedy.
> There are some that strive to be fair and prioritize informing rather than inflaming their audience.
Name three.
It's been a while since I saw one. Even BBC sometimes succumbs to clickbait, and the inverted pyramid is all but forgotten in the journalism world.
It is new to run targeted ads at protected classes. And it is new moral territory.
Example: The government of Iran use pizza ads targeted towards gay people to track down their identities. Still the same as other media?
The guy is complaining about incendiary content whilst repeatedly comparing Facebook to "Big Tobacco"...I think there is a lot of bombastic nonsense being thrown about.
And I agree Facebook is not the first company in the world to maximise attention with this kind of content. Go back to when political pamphlets started appearing in the 16th century, it was mostly salacious bullshit about well-known public figures being possessed by the devil or drinking the blood of orphans.
I am not even sure what the problem is anymore, let alone what the solution is...but this is not going to stop with Facebook, this is just a reflection of human nature (and yes, everyone has complained about this kind of "content", it ignores the fact that most humans enjoy consuming it).
(I think the most problematic part of Facebook is just that so many people get their news from there and, like every human that has ever existed, they have been unable to deal with that responsibility in an even-handed way...I don't know though. They are basically a dead platform anyway, it is mainly used by old people to keep up to-date with their grandchildren afaik...I don't really know anyone who uses it, and I have never used it myself).
They are basically a dead platform anyway, it is mainly used by old people to keep up to-date with their grandchildren afaik...I don't really know anyone who uses it, and I have never used it myself
This is terribly myopic; you don't have to like FB or want to use it to recognize its influence. Consider the possibility that you just haven't really wrapped your head around it yet. Also, I'm gonna guess you don't know a whole lot of older people, and may be falling into the cognitive trap of thinking your experience of social demographics is reflective of the population at large.
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> like Big Tobacco's bronchodilators
I used to smoke, and I also have (very mild) asthma that was diagnosed prior to me starting to smoke. I always said that I could breath better after a cigarette and people would laugh at me. It never occurred to me that of the thousands of chemicals in a cigarette some of them might be geared specifically to "help" you take in more smoke, and by extension, more air after.
There were actual "medical cigarettes" sold in the past.
https://www.pharmacytimes.com/contributor/timothy-aungst-pha...
> misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake news
It's amazing to see people casually use these words as if they still have universally meaningful definitions. Not anymore. What one half of the country considers misinformation another half of the country considers the truth. Not to mention that social media operates internationally.
You can't have a meaningful discussion without admitting this and doing something to escape the semantic trap of perfect ambiguity. In other words, you first need to establish some sort of information processing principle that is unambiguously defined and everyone (or at least the wast majority of people) agrees with.
You don't need to fund wars or drugs, just use Facebook PS: The devil };)
I learned more about Big Tobacco here than fb.
Sure after fb made this guy a multimillionaire he grows a heart. Don't work for these dweebs in the first place next time...