Former Google/Facebook/Mozilla Employees Will Fight Addictive Technologies (qz.com) 121
An anonymous reader quotes Quartz:
A new alliance made up of former Silicon Valley cronies has aseembled to challenge the technological Frankenstein they've collectively created. The Center for Humane Technology is a group comprising former employees and pals of Google, Facebook, and Mozilla. The nonprofit launches today (Feb. 4) in the hopes that it can raise awareness about the societal tolls of technology, which its members believe are inherently addictive. The group will lobby for a bill to research the effects of technology on children's health... On Feb. 7, the group's members will participate in a conference focused on digital health for kids, hosted by the nonprofit Common Sense.
The group also plans an anti-tech addiction ad campaign at 55,000 schools across America, and has another $50 million in media airtime donated by partners which include Comcast and DirecTV.
The group's co-founder, a former Google design ethicist, told Quartz that tech companies "profit by drilling into our brains to pull the attention out of it, by using persuasion techniques to keep [us] hooked." And the group's web page argues that "What began as a race to monetize our attention is now eroding the pillars of our society: mental health, democracy, social relationships, and our children."
The group also plans an anti-tech addiction ad campaign at 55,000 schools across America, and has another $50 million in media airtime donated by partners which include Comcast and DirecTV.
The group's co-founder, a former Google design ethicist, told Quartz that tech companies "profit by drilling into our brains to pull the attention out of it, by using persuasion techniques to keep [us] hooked." And the group's web page argues that "What began as a race to monetize our attention is now eroding the pillars of our society: mental health, democracy, social relationships, and our children."
Re: You helped create it (Score:1, Troll)
This is more BS social justice warrior stuff. Who gets to say how people spend their time anyway? If people use these technologies a lot, it's because they want to. Who are we or they to criticize? If they want to use the technologies less, they are free to do so.
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I have to agree here. This is the usual anti-tech can't-we-just-get-in-touch-with-our-human-side-again stuff.
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I don't have to disagree but I certainly do.When an addictive substance or technology is developed you need to develop the insight and the tools to allow people to control it, independent of possible policy decisions.
What you are saying is 'I don't have a clue so I'll dismiss it as emotional anti-tech'. If research shows that allowing yourself to be drawn into this or that technology leads to an inability to read a book or inability to just sit and think without visual or auditive stimuli, and the inability
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When an addictive substance or technology is developed you need to develop the insight and the tools to allow people to control it...
Making a substance or technology "addictive" is a major goal of just about every marketed technology and service.
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A goal which can be tolerated as long as it cannot be achieved.
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Other people wilt start to spend all the money on slot machines.
HAving a technology that is highly addictive could be dangerous to some people, and a thing done mainly to serve ads an make people stay
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Re: You helped create it (Score:3)
The victims. But these people are using technology, not infringing on anyone else's freedom.
Re: You helped create it (Score:3)
Nope, thank goodness I have the freedom to not want to. But it's a shame others here can't if they wanted to. Also, fuck off.
Re: You helped create it (Score:3, Insightful)
An addiction is something someone wants so much, that it affects their ability to lead a normal life. Don't presume to lecture me on addiction. I've been addicted to many things. But to call me righteous for saying that the assists value proposition is not up to you..... that's pompous and arrogant. They get to decide for themselves, addiction, fetish, whatever's in their minds and rights to want, so long as they aren't directly harming another person by their choices, or violating anyone else's freedom, I
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Your posts are incoherent. Other people, associations, and companies can also do whatever they want, as long as they harm no persons, and that certainly includes fighting against internet addiction or other forms of addiction.
Re: You helped create it (Score:5, Insightful)
They get to decide for themselves, addiction, fetish, whatever's in their minds and rights to want, so long as they aren't directly harming another person by their choices, or violating anyone else's freedom, I'm ok with.
It's pretty damn obvious for the family who lost a loved one due to an addict who couldn't put the phone down and drive that this IS directly harming others. The freedom to live a long and joyful life was taken in that scenario, and it's a scenario that seems to be playing out more and more these days. Addiction affects ones ability to make rational and safe decisions, which quite often creates innocent victims.
I no longer fear the drunk driver on the road. I fear the distracted social media junkie, because there's a shitload more of those addicts on the road, and driving a car is something that the overwhelming majority of us have to do on a daily basis. It's likely the most dangerous activity you do on a regular basis in your life, and 40,000 people in the US lose their life every year doing it.
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I told one date that when we went to dinner if she answered or made a call I would walk out of the restaurant and stick her with the bill.
I also like to threaten my dates as soon as we sit down. It helps set the mood. "You're allowed ONE bathroom trip during dinner. ONE. Go twice and YOU can pay for my steak."
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Considering most states have outlawed texting and driving [wikipedia.org]. Why would you use that as an example since it is already against the law in most states?
Drinking and driving has been outlawed in every state for decades, and yet how many people die every year? "We made a law, problem solved!" isn't the way this works, and I used it as an example because it's a rather big fucking problem. Damn near every licensed driver on the road carries a distraction device with them in the car. That's a considerable difference when comparing it to any other type of distraction (drunk, drugged, etc.)
Do the punishments for texting and driving need to be increased?
Uh, no, I'd say they need to be established first. Preferably somethin
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Perhaps a dopamine addiction?
Keywords: Skinner box, dopamine, Facebook.
Maybe they can ask... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Great (Score:4, Interesting)
Bill Maher asks an interesting question here on ethics, and I don't think it was properly answered. How can you even be ethical when what you're doing is manipulating people?
Is it unethical to manipulate people away from eating laundry detergent pods?
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Im addicted To Coding (Score:1)
Re: Im addicted To Coding (Score:2)
I'm sure this will become common practice (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like with the banks. You've got these talented and nerdy characters that first work for a big bank, ripping off people in legal ways, and then when they've made a lot of money they purify themselves by going to work for an organisation which monitors the banking system. I don't know if I should condemn them, they're not less moral than other people, but they're certainly no moral guides.
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Maybe you watched the 'Wolf of Wall Street' or 'Wall Street' ? Gordon Gecko (or these days the heirs of Gordon Gecko) is not the problem with bankers, those are the few excesses. The problem is that the banking world is organized as a cutthroat competition where you have to be successful at the expense of everything else. A lot of these sharks can be quite ethical once they're out of their suits. That does not make them less damaging.
The problem with banks is not that they are such bad people. We need drast
schmesign schmethicist (Score:5, Funny)
A fucking what? Is that what people do when they fail the exam to be UX facilitator?
Re:schmesign schmethicist (Score:5, Insightful)
A fucking what? Is that what people do when they fail the exam to be UX facilitator?
Sounds more like soviet political comissar to me
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A fucking what? Is that what people do when they fail the exam to be UX facilitator?
An design ethisist is slightly more useful than a UX designer, he's the one that points out calling it the Nazi Bum Rape SS edition might be a bad idea. UX just fucks up the interface.
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You know how some ads try to look like the download button or make you swipe with a fake hair on the display? Or how some online shops sneak stuff into your basket or sign you up for a subscription that looks like a one off payment?
Or how they offer multiple spam sign ups, some opt in and some opt out so that you can't just untick/tick everything?
Have you ever heard of the power of default?
That's the thin end of the design ethics wedge.
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If they cause those things, shouldn't they be called design unethicists?
If they're supposed to prevent them then they aren't doing a very good job.
It has zero reason to even be a thing, let alone a thing people get paid for.
Re: schmesign schmethicist (Score:2)
I believe it's a euphemism for "slime bag".
Re:Winy posers. (Score:5, Insightful)
Having an option to do something, in this case something very trivial like posting in Facebook, does not make that something addictive.
It's trivial to get up and walk away from a card game, and yet thousands of addicts are sitting in Las Vegas right now unable to do just that.
And if this is a "trivial" problem in society, then it should be trivially easy to tell a social media junkie to quit cold turkey. Try that on a handful of your adult friends or their teenage children and see how that works out.
Collective IQ? (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember Douglas Engelbart? Apart from the famous "mother of all demos" there was his philosophy which loosely says that technology should help boost IQ not subvert or replace it, as has largely happened.
Not just addictive! HARMFUL addictiveness! (Score:1)
Addiction is not itself the entire problem. We are addicted to many things that are good. Like oxygen. Or food. Or love.
I'm all for not getting people hooked on things that harm them (like Facebook or Reddit etc). But in the process we should not ruin the good parts of technology either! Otherwise we have created harm to fight harm, as is so typical for us still-in-the-dark-ages humans.
Nowadays, it has become far too fashionable, to obsess over a nostalgic view of a better past (that never existed) and over
My Markey Index strikes again (Score:3)
Whenever Sen. Ed Markey (D-Salem 1680) lets fly on some science/tech subject, he is invariably dead wrong, and the best course of action is to do the opposite on whatever issue he is spouting about this time. I have never known my personal Markey Index to fail.
First of all, the headline on this article is silly. What are Silicon Valley manufacturers supposed to do - intentionally make their products less attractive to consumers? The linked article focuses on 'tech addiction' as being the problem, and we have been here before. I have been around long enough to remember when tech addiction was phrased in the press as "teenagers" talking for hours on the old black plug-in wall telephone. Young people were offered this new mechanism for keeping in touch when they were not physically together, and they embraced it. Over time, telephony was integrated into the general culture and became part of the human background.
Then there was the time when television was going to make zombies of us all, with nobody stepping outside ever again, and the rise of cars not just as competition for public transit, but as a place for "teenagers" to Have Sex. Note the theme developing here?
So now that "teenagers" have discovered the smartphone this time, it has enabled a fad for social media. Though the idea that we would all drop everything to become addicted to Facebook is already dated, pearls are still being clutched over the possibility that some social medium will become mental Fentanyl. But now that Markey is involved, I know that can't happen.
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Free to play games are designed to be additive so you pay. One common technique is to dangle rewards in front of the player but make them wait a long time if they don't pay.
Say what you like about the players, but the companies developing these games put a huge amount of effort into making them addictive. Like gambling sites do a lot of R&D figuring out how to be more addictive.
Addiction is a business model.
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First of all, the headline on this article is silly. What are Silicon Valley manufacturers supposed to do - intentionally make their products less attractive to consumers?
As someone who worked at one of those companies, IMHO the problem is not that they need to go against capitalism, the problem is that the people within the company often quite literally believe they are helping users with this stuff. If someone thinks they are taking advantage of people, you can plausibly reason with them to change their behavior. If someone believes they are helping, then it is REALLY HARD to work with them to fix what they're doing wrong.
The linked article focuses on 'tech addiction' as being the problem, and we have been here before. I have been around long enough to remember when tech addiction was phrased in the press as "teenagers" talking for hours on the old black plug-in wall telephone. Young people were offered this new mechanism for keeping in touch when they were not physically together, and they embraced it. Over time, telephony was integrated into the general culture and became part of the human background.
Then there was the time when television was going to make zombies of us all, with nobody stepping outside ever again, and the rise of cars not just as competition for public transit, but as a place for "teenagers" to Have Sex. Note the theme developing here?
So now that "teenagers" have discovered the smartphone this time, it has enabled a fad for social media. Though the idea that we would all drop everything to become addicted to Facebook is already dated, pearls are still being clutched over the possibility that some social medium will become mental Fentanyl. But now that Markey is involved, I know that can't happen.
Maybe, maybe not. At this point, we have the com
How about good parenting? (Score:1)
How about encouraging good parenting? Lot of the problems these people created was a direct result of addictive technology. But it also created a connection for bullying, and other bad behavior. But a lack of parenting to monitor this behavior and limit technology addiction is more about bad parenting. Giving kids a Facebook user account in grade school or even a $800 smartphone that you do not monitor as a parent is certainly a prime contributor to kids abusing technology. How about the other gorilla in th
Re:How about good parenting? (Score:4, Funny)
How about encouraging good parenting?
I'm going to go way out on a limb here and suggest that good parenting requires good parents. Does this mean we should prevent people from having kids if they are unable to demonstrate that they would be good parents? Try getting elected on that platform and see how far you get.
Re: Yeah, Hyperbolics (Score:2)
So instead of good parenting we need more quasi-penal bureaucrats and institutions. Brilliant!
Keep your kids away from the internet! (Score:2)
remove all traces of internet from your home, cancel your mobile internet subscriptions, shutdown your router and wifi access points!
now enjoy your new addictive-free life and go watch some TV.
MeToo (Score:1)
So is this the start of the tech #metoo movement? Spend years agreeing to doing things to get ahead in your career, then once you get established now turn around and complain about how you were used?
aseembled (Score:2)
Aseembled? We don't need to steenkin' aseemble!
Patronization by people "who know what's best" (Score:2)
Going to be interesting to see... (Score:2)
.... how these kids that grew up with an ipad glued to their face turn out.
Social media is cancerous BY DESIGN (Score:2)
Re: If only Hillary Clinton had won! (Score:3, Informative)
The discussion about the addictive and manipulative effects of social media has started long before Clinton considered (officially) becoming president. The topic was hot in 2014 (if I recall correctly) and may have been before that.
Re: If only Hillary Clinton had won! (Score:2, Informative)
If you check Google scholar the first research in that area is from 2010. So this started with Obama.
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Actually no, there is tons of evidence this goes back to the 50's or before.
Re: Yeah (Score:3)
Re: Yeah (Score:2)
You mean CNN?
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And didn’t a large number of people from the tech industry work for the Obama administration, or at least were consultants?