> I'd like to think that's not true

Facebook insiders have admitted that it is. Mike Allen, Facebook's first president, said this in an interview:

“The thought process was all about, ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’,” he said. “And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever, and that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you more likes and comments. It’s a social validation feedback loop. … You’re exploiting a vulnerabilty in human psychology.”

So that underscores their general attitude towards user behavior. The 'every once in a while' piece applies to the newsfeed too - it's designed to keep you searching for things you care about, and they carefully mix in things you don't, so that you're never too satisfied or unsatisfied, just constantly craving more.

I couldn't believe this quote, so I had to dig it up. It's real, but from Sean Parker. Mike Allen was the interviewer.

Source (a slightly clickbaity-looking place, go at your own risk): https://www.axios.com/sean-parker-unloads-on-facebook-god-on...

Why is it hard to believe the quote? This has been the MO of mass entertainment since the gladiators fought the lions.

It's just so bald. I hadn't seen anyone at Facebook so openly describing things like "exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology." They usually say stuff like "bringing people together," "connecting the world," etc.

Sean Parker wasn't at Facebook during that interview. This was after his unamicable separation.

He isn't the only person who talks about the dopamine driven feedback loops. Chamath Palihapitiya, who was one of the first engineers at facebook, talks about how they all used to gather in meeting rooms and have intense back and forth discussions on how they actually build this thing so that the entire world wouldn't be able to resist adopting it.

He talks about how at the time they really didn't foresee the foreboding future implications of what they were trying to build at the time.

That's a little like talking about how you didn't foresee the foreboding implications of designing a self-sustaining chain reaction involving neutrons.

Although I think the reaction continues and we can't tell exactly what's happening even now.

Yeah, I see lots of early hires of the tech giants bemoaning the monsters they've created. They are very concerned about the negative societal impacts of their former employers, but not quite concerned enough to give back the millions of dollars they earned peddling these products.

They will use those millions (or at least part of one of those millions) to create "An Initiative" along with an app or two to somehow combat the monsters. Of course that will fail but their conscience will be cleared. But more importantly, they will be able to think that their blood money is now normal money and they can live and die peacefully.

Give it back to who? Facebook? Their shareholders? Doesn't seem to help the situation in any sense. In the videos linked the early FB engineer says the only thing he can do now is to try use the capital he has earned to combat the ills he created, which is a sensible approach in my view.

  not quite concerned enough to give back the
  millions of dollars they earned

Do you have a way to undo the social harm done by facebook for a few million dollars?

Or do you think they should just get rid of the money, K Foundation style, regardless of whether doing so would reverse the effects of the work they did to earn it?

Well they could start by planting trees.

I tend to think Facebook is more like a slot machine than anything else, where you are constantly putting in something of value (your posts, pics, etc) in hopes of getting something of greater value back (likes/shares, friend requests, heated debates, etc).

And just like a Slot Machine you are always left wanting to come back to play some more and even if you do your best to quit facebook, you are always being constantly reminded that of its existence everywhere you go.

If so they're doing a really bad job. The only ones in my friends list that is contributing anything except comments are the typical conspiracy nuts and racists. Every one else contributes next to nothing. Maybe a picture at major life events.

Seems like the disbelief was more related to the quote's candor than content. Not surprising that this was the thought process, but pretty surprising to hear it straight up without a thick layer of "we're saving the world" to coat it.

Yeah. I'd defy anybody to think critically about Facebook for five minutes and not come to that conclusion.

> This has been the MO of mass entertainment since the gladiators fought the lions.

Absolutely.

Lots of early proto-social media companies were already doing things like that back in the 90s. Like when AOL was king and "You've Got Mail!" was a household catchphrase and featured in their marketing. They knew that people were thrilled to get stuff from other people.

Probably the most obvious and recent antecedent to gamefied social media would be, uh, well, games. There were a few decades of ideas to cherry pick from the game world.

Right. It's basic. Let me assure you that the future will make it a laughing matter.

Edit: brevity

Chamath Palihapitiya also talks about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J54k7WrbfMg

I actually find Axios to be a pretty great news source. Lots of solid, insightful analysis on categorized topics delivered as regular newsletters that don’t take up all your time.

> It's real, but from Sean Parker.

Does that give it less weight or more weight? It's hard to see what you were going for here.

It seems like a simple clarification of a source, not a judgment in either direction.

Doesn't change the weight, I was just making a correction.

Oh I see, okay thanks!

> "so that you're never too satisfied or unsatisfied, just constantly craving more."

That quote reminds me of Louis CK's interview with Conan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c) where he says about mobile phones:

"You never feel completely sad or completely happy, you just feel kinda satisfied with your product... and then you die."

It doesn't even have to be intentional. Imagine endless ABX testing to increase ad views and session time, cycling through countless feed algorithms. The winners could very well end up being the ones that are most frustrating for the user, but with product and engineering just thinking they are running some tests and reaching goals.

I strongly believe stuff like this doesn't happen by accident. It's easy to write pieces about how a soulless algorithm is determining stuff and we can all be sad about it, but in my experience, that's rarely true.

There's almost always at least a software developer (or technical person of some sort) calling out "Hey, are you sure we should rank by $X? It will have this edge case in situations $Y and $X?". Usually they get steamrolled by a "product" person who's invented some new terminology for whatever shady shit they are pushing now. "It's just growth hacking" "complimentary contextually relevant ads will improve the user experience".

People know. They always know. They just choose to feign ignorance when they get busted.

Even if we grant them the benefit of doubt, it certainly isn't an accident to keep using the same algorithm once you know its consequences.

There's been hand-wringing about Youtube funnelling users to extremist content, and it always comes to down to "the algorithm" as if there's nothing that can be done about it.

Someone had to choose to implement the algorithm. Someone had to choose the metrics it was optimized to meet. Someone had to go, "Children are being drawn to extremist videos after watching PewDiePie and that's okay."

I view facebook's newsfeed and youtube's list of suggestions like entering into a popular reddit thread about something dividing the community that has lots of posts.

You enter into the comment section and it's automatically sorted by Controversial. At least that's how I see it.

People don't necessarily know. I can, or there was a time when I could, code a Mandelbrot set generator from memory. Yet that doesn't mean I can draw it myself in its infinite detail. Algorithms have unintended results, in general or in detail.

Why would people intentionally use an ad-hoc solution that is less effective than the one determined by machine learning?

> I'd like to think that's not true, but it wouldn't be the first time such a technique has been used, apparently successfully.

It's also why Twitter wants to 'curate' your timeline, instead of simply displaying tweets from people you follow in temporal order.

Twitter have recently re-introduced a chronological timeline as an option.

Does it work like it did in the past?

I've given up every platform that forwent the chronological timeline because other feed algorithms are just frustrating, and Twitter is the only one I miss.

I never realized Twitter curated timeslines because I don't follow enough people for it to cut anything out. It is effectively a chronological order of posts by people I follow.

My big problem with Twitter's timeline is showing me things that people I follow have liked. In every case, those posts are political and divisive, i.e., the "red meat" of social media. They're just throwing those into my feed to get a reaction from me, hoping that I'll "engage" with whatever stupid topic comes up, as though Twitter were a good place for having a discussion about anything.

I've turned off the "show best tweets first" option, and I stick with using Tweetbot. But, like most people seem to indicate here, about Facebook (which I don't use at all), my continued use hangs by a thread. It wouldn't take much for me to cancel my account. Again.

I follow around 500, have around 1500 followers.

As far as I can tell, Twitter doesn't hide anything from, instead showing me tweets from people I don't follow.

I believe this is why recently Twitter reverted the change and now allows you to browse in chronological order.

Our local station started doing this where they would list the stories coming up on the right hand side of the screen. They held to it for about two weeks. Then they kept it, but then continually shifted the stories during commercial breaks. After many, many complaints, they finally got rid of it.

Other networks I watch, they still do the same thing. On the NHL Network, you'll see a story about a big trade coming up and they will continue to shuffle it down during commercial breaks until its one of the last stories they cover before the end of the broadcast. It's the same thing with highlights. You'll see your team's game in the left hand column like they're about to show the highlights. Come back from a commercial break and suddenly two more stories have shifted above your local team's highlights. Same thing with several ESPN shows like PTI (Pardon the Interruption).

It can be incredibly frustrating to watch sometimes.

Why do you watch and wait if you can get the headlines from websites?

I hadn't watched broadcast TV for a while (lack of time), but when I did I'd just google whatever the teaser was, to see if it was worth waiting for. Very seldom would they have an exclusive breaking story that wasn't already all over the internet.

Just like grocery stores putting milk and bread way in the back so you have to walk by all those high margin items.

There's a practical reason for this. Temperature and where they unload (and the perishable nature). Not saying there couldn't be a manipulative reason too, but I wouldn't assume so by default.

Everything in business happens to increase sales. For retail, there’s even a name and occupation for it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planogram

You always want dairy and fruits/vegetables on opposite sides of the store since they’re perishable, hence they get purchased the most often, and you want people to walk past all the other aisles every time.

It seems to me that a sensible person buying a lot of groceries gets refrigerated and frozen items last so they have the least amount of melting/warming up on the way home. So the positioning of them after everything else is in the interest of the customer.

the perishables could be closer together, vs having people traipse across a store to get the basics (conveniently seeing hundreds of other opportunities to load up their cart along the way). "interest of the customer" (saving money) doesn't align with "interest of the business" (maximizing rev/profit)

Completely and obviously false (the part about everything in business is about sales). It's not as sexy, but often policies are about reducing costs. Like changing suppliers to save a few pennies per item.

If it were all about sales, then I could buy widgets for $100 a unit, sell them for $50 a unit, and call it a success.

Obviously positioning matters too (hence all the garbage food at checkout), but I wouldn't by default assume that this is the case, and especially not the only driver, behind dairy placement.

No you don't. You can can walk around the outside so you only see the cheap raw produce, bakery, and dairy. There are also plenty of low margin items in the middle (canned beans) and high margin items in the back (meat and fancy dairy)

Yes.. and just like trying to get out of Ikea

Ikea is funny because it has "shortcuts" all over the place where you can bypass larger chunks of the full path. You just need to look for doorways outside the main path. Also because most (all?) it's stores follow a very similar layout, so once you've been to one, you'll find the shortcuts in the others very easily and know pretty much exactly where you'll end up. They've just made the obvious path simple enough to mindlessly follow that most people do.

I agree this is generally true, but isn’t the case with my current grocery store shockingly enough. Both are essentially at the front of the store. I’m not sure why they are the exception to the rule, but I love it none the less.

This is the same strategy as news sites where you have to go to the "next page" fairly often within the article (what does that even mean) so the ads reload, or there's a dumb slideshow where every 5 images it's an ad. Or when sourceforge had its full on transition to a money sucking machine and they made the UI worse and everything multiple page reloads away just to show more ads.

I don't watch the news, but if that is true, why don't you just tune in for the last 5 minutes?