- I can't easily delete old posts
- I can't easily control who or what I am exposed to
- In some cases, I have no control at all. For example, on the rare occasion I go to FB, the red dot on the video icon is still begging me to watch FB's 4th-rate YouTube full of random terrible videos. There is no way for me to turn this off, to my knowledge.
- Everything is defaulted to the most intrusive, attention-sucking settings. I am never asked if I want something new. It is shoved in my face and then I have to go figure out how to turn it off. As a willful, tech-savvy person I can manage this, but I imagine that many people just go with the flow and get swept into unhealthy patterns by the relentless tide of nudges.
I don't know if it's feasible or desirable to ban a service like FB categorically, but imposing minimal standards of user control could be a step up from where we are now.
And if FB/Twitter/etc can't be profitable when users are in control... well, maybe that tells us everything we need to know about the true human value of today's social media matrix.
And things like Youtube have honed it to a fine degree. They're a single source for certain kinds of content and using a roku, you CAN'T skip some adds. The Ad delivery is 'well, you can skip some, but you have to watch this Liberty commercial, and hey, skip now skips both ads, but since you've done that, now you're doing to sit through both of the next ads.
Not to mention the video producers have sponsors, and the small ones are forced to shill theirselves through patreon to stand a chance of making a living at it...or at least breaking even on the costs of the content.
If you go to the "Menu" tab you can long press on any of the categories and you'll get the option to turn off notification dots.
I didn't know about this until reading your post and poking around in the app to see if it was possible.
But holy F is the business model, when scaled to $130+ billion yearly revenue, an absolute disaster. Google has taken upon itself to turn the entire internet into an ad-laden funhouse designed to trap you and suck all of your time.
Google is not solely to blame, but they are uniquely delusional and uniquely successful at monetizing other people's contributions, knowledge, talent, and businesses to their own benefit. Google set the standard model for monetization at every stage of the internet's development. Google set up everything to be the central clearing house for information and normalized the expectation that everything you do would come with some kind of advertising interruption.
As far as I am concerned, Facebook and social media and all the other bad things on the internet just followed in the wagon ruts, then paved highways that Google created.
We've accepted the internet and the web as they are because Google wanted to be big.
Now, if Google had wanted to stay small, maybe grow at 5% per year, instead of 23% per year--that's doubling every 4 years btw--, then the internet would not be so full of ads. The internet would not be so much in your face. Datacenters would be smaller, tracking would be less, webpages would be lighter, faster, with more long-form content, etc.
The internet is the way it is because it has been a giant pie-eating contest where the winners have to eat 23% more pie than they did last year. No wonder it's so fucked up.
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Even if ads aren't useful (getting leather belt ads after buying a leather belt... even ads for the same product), the incentive is to continue serving them because the company trying to sell shit is still winning to target all "belt searchers"
Reddit is absolutely in the family of conscious manipulators-- even if it is somewhat less effective at it than facebook or twitter.
Particularly many of the characteristics of the 'new' interface were designed specifically with the intent of increasing "engagement" and they use those usage metrics to drive their further optimizations.
(e.g. infinite scroll, inlining images in the scroll to reduce clicking, aggressively pushing the mobile app and/or login to improve tracking. They've also recently started half-logging-out users who've opted out of 'new', so you have to click login to get your preference honored).
A healthier habit?? The problem may be there's no defined end. What did people in the past who didn't smoke do? Newspaper? Magazines?
Web2.0 introduced more addicting and stimulating sites and apps, but Web 1.0 still allowed me to kill time (on my computer) searching rudimentary message boards, games, and news sites.
The introduction of smart phones gave us a 24/7 portal to the internet world and facilitated the building of these mechanisms.
This goes far beyond Facebook, IG, Twitter, and the other “big name offenders”. The pervasiveness of texting and email deserve a similar finger pointing.
Smartphones are dopamine machines and they allow us to enter that world at any time. Spotify, email, texting, Facebook, Snapchat, games, slack, hackernews, cnn, etc… ALL become instantly accessible on our smart phones and keep our brains chasing more rewarding stimulus.
The issue is not "the problem", whose fault it is, blame. It is responsibility. Who shoulders the cost for the issue of smoking? As it turns out: all of them. Cigarette companies have to put health warnings on their packs. Lighters cannot be sold to those under 18. Cigarettes are highly taxed to discourage smokers from buying them. All three are "negatively" impacted because we, as a society, agreed that smoking is bad and should be discouraged.
Similarly with Facebook, smartphones, and end users.
I mean, this article says as much:
> While there is nothing inherently addictive about smartphones themselves, the true drivers of our attachments to these devices are the hyper-social environments they provide. Thanks to the likes of Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and others, smartphones allow us to carry immense social environments in our pockets through every waking moment of our lives.
The article even opens with a former executive at Facebook talking about how how guilty they feel for making addictive feedback loops that are damaging to society.
The problem is simply the fact that there's always something new to see. It doesn't require evil masterminds. It's a magic rectangle in your pocket that shows you something new every time you look at it. Of course it's addictive.
Your example is funny because I think you are saying these things (lighter, generic cylinder) are NOT addictive and focusing on them misses the point- but in my mind, even as a nonsmoker, there IS something primordially satisfying about flicking a lighter and the sound it makes, or holding and rolling a cylinder between my fingers, like a pen or a cigar. That feeling has to be a contributing factor, in my mind.
Things that have amplified my internet addiction I think are access to unfiltered internet, online games, social media and porn at a very young age (since around 6 years old - I am gen Z for reference, so I've grown up with normalised smartphone/social media/gaming addiction), as well as how normal it is to be addicted to these things. The fact that I now (subconsciously) associate using a computer with the aforementioned vices means that I have come to _expect_ the dopamine hit when I use them makes doing actual work (because my job is mostly computer based) even harder.
It has got to the point to where I now do not have internet in my house because if I do, I'll just use it all day (despite having various commitments). I now only use the internet in public spaces, on public wireless. This combined with planning my days/weeks/quarter (this is essential for overcoming internet addiction IMO) seems to have solved my addiction. I still have a dumb phone for receiving calls and texts (SIM card is super-glued in) and a smartphone without a SIM card for navigation - the point is, access to information is limited.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/691462
When you have a market niche - then sooner or later it will be filled. It does not make much sense to blame "concrete companies" - because once you close them they will be replaced by others. You need to make laws that would close the niche of providing the 'particular types of services that are problematic' entirely. And making those laws is difficult - because forbidding something always limits the freedom. There are lots of people here who believe that drugs should be legal.
And it is internet and smartphones that created these market niches putting us into that awkward position. It is also practical to focus talk on them - because there are concrete advice on how to configure your (or your children) smartphone (or internet connection) to make it less addictive. It is something that can be done without any collective action problems.
Like you can say people spend too much time on TikTok, but if it wasn't TikTok, it'd be Twitch, or YouTube, or Netflix, or Instagram, or Reddit, etc.
Right, because they're pretty much the same category of service, addressing the same niche.
To both yours and GP's points: it is true that "what is addictive to someone is harmless for someone other". This is true for alcohol, tobacco and gambling too. Yet we know that unchecked, these three cause tremendous social problems - and so we've adjusted both regulations and culture to find a balance between freedom and protecting the vulnerable.
In particular with social media, I don't like the framing of it as "what is addictive to someone is harmless for someone other". The addictive-ness is baked into the product whether or not an addiction is manifest in any individual user. Viewing the addictive-ness of say, Facebook, as a problem only "for some people" rather than as a property of Facebook, shifts blame away from the engineers and execs who purposefully make their product addictive, onto users who find themselves (somewhat innocently) addicted to an the addictive thing.
Don't want to be pedantic but I think it's an important point.
Where is the line? I don't like murder. Is banning murder totalitarian? I don't like unfair elections. Is banning election tampering totalitarian?
Every law and rule in all of society exists to prevent something that someone (or lots of people) don't like. We usually draw abstractions on top of these likes and dislikes - things like "rights" and "morals". Everyone has to draw the line somewhere, so deriding someone for drawing that line "because you don't like it" is reductionist and silly.
One exception might be children since they aren't developed enough to make logical decisions on their own.
IMO government restrictions should be a last resort, not the first option you consider. Additionally, they tend not to work as well as you might think on many things (e.g. drug war, prohibition)
Strange since it's currently an epidemic.
> If you don't want to spend time on a smartphone, don't spend time on a smartphone.
My stance is that is not the appropriate measure.
>Youre right. If you dont like heroin just stop using it. Its easy and just a personal decision nothing more, right?
Show me where either of these comments say this please...
>Have you read the parent comment? Not the smartphone needs regulation but services applying behavioural psychology to foster use time which imply addiction risks.
You're missing the point. There's no difference in regulating the smartphone vs. the apps. My point still stands. Either way you're putting regulation in place for the few that are unable to handle themselves and punishing the people that have self control. It is not the role of a democratic government to inhibit personal choice and force morals on people. Unless, of course, you prefer the authoritarian style of government.
I'm not the OP, but when I suggest that someone walk away from FB or whatever is causing them problems at the moment and let them know that I did the same, it's supposed to let them know that they do have choices and that it is possible for some people to be able to do that, so maybe they should try it? It's not a lack of empathy, it's a suggestion on how to get out of a problem I very much empathize with.
Of course not everyone can. I have my own problems I consistently fail to nope out of, too.
Everybody wants safety. But nobody wants their smartphone taken away. It's an unpopular move. That's why it doesn't happen.
Anyway, I think that we should take away the incentive of social media companies to be so addictive by banning ads on these platforms.
Take away social media and Youtube, and you might as well go back to a Nokia dumbphone.
Not to mention, the browser, giving access to everything on the Internet - not just social media. This is doubly important for people on the go, and people who can't afford to also own a laptop or a desktop computer at home (assuming they have one).
It's not the Internet itself that is the problem. It's not the devices - even extremely convenient ones, like always-connected smartphones. There are particular types of services that are problematic, provided by concrete companies, who optimize their addictive and distracting potential on purpose, advertise them heavily, and make money off the problems they cause. These are well-thought business decisions, made by well-known people. And yet, as a society, we shrink away from talking about them, preferring instead to put blame on incidental topics: the Internet, the smartphones, the engineers building the hardware and software[0].
I wish for a day when we collectively wake up and focus on the actual root cause, when we come to the conclusion that some business models just shouldn't exist. We've done it in the past, and because of that we[1] enjoy physically safe food, toys, medicine, appliances. But either we've lost our way in the last decades, defaulting to an asinine view that "all is fine as long as there is demand", or the process of understanding and mitigating threats to society takes too damn long. Maybe it's the latter - but that's not good, because the kind of abuse we throw at each other is following the economic and technological growth curves.
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[0] - Or, a related favorite of mine, "the AI". As if wild machine learning algorithms frolicked in the forest, and occasionally came out of the woods on their own, to take over some business or governmental decision process. No human making a self-serving decision to involve an unsuitable ML model in a system it doesn't belong in was ever involved.
[1] - People in wealthier countries, at least.