How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

https://medium.com/@tristanharris/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3

by lxm • 10 years ago

1612 420 10 years ago

medium.com

wslh2• 10 years ago

I was really interested in the article until I read: "I spent the last three years as Google’s Design Ethicist...". In the article he is focusing at the application level but the issue is at the form factor level.

One simple example: if you give to a child a Simon game app based on the original Simon game [1] he/she will probably end up switching to YouTube and watching stupid videos but if you give him/her the "limited" form factor version of the game the child will have more fun.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_(game)

nerdponx• 10 years ago

Limited how?

Jtsummers8• 10 years ago

I had to reread the OP a couple times but I finally got it.

Give a child a smartphone with Simon, even opened to the app, and they'll wander off to YouTube or something else.

Give a child the game Simon which only functions as the game, and they'll be enthralled.

wslh2• 10 years ago

Limited because your mobile phone is a generic computer while Simon is a specific game.

gukov3• 10 years ago

Simon the app will have to compete with other installed apps for attention. Simon the physical game, once in hands, is not as easily replaceable.

whatsreal2• 10 years ago

I think that's another article. I would be interested in seeing someone think through different form factors for mobile computing that could go hand in hand with the application level ideas presented here.

have_faith2• 10 years ago

Technology doesn't hijack our minds, people do. It's an age old practice of blaming the tools.

The logical next step might be to ask well then how do we fix people? (aka, society). Maximum freedom in society means maximum freedom to be manipulated by others.

Perhaps ironically, the closer we get to solving world hunger and eradicating diseases and so on the closer we become to overpopulation and overcrowding our little planet that once seemed so large. Our ineptitude at cooperating with each other and our ability to manipulate each other so easily is probably the only thing stopping highly accelerated human progress, and thus our own demise.

Absurdism looks more appealing every day.

emodendroket• 10 years ago

Did you read the article? The whole point is that there is a design intended to encourage "people" to act in ways they didn't really intend.

have_faith2• 10 years ago

I read the article. The first line of my reply was in response to the title, the rest was in response to the rest of the article.

Did you read my post?

frogpelt3• 10 years ago

I have an overarching theory about people: their solutions create problems.

e.g., According to some, Norman Borlaug saved a billion lives by developing semi-dwarf wheat. But according to some, semi-dwarf wheat is killing our guts and making us generally unhealthy.

Jtsummers8• 10 years ago

Kind of interesting idea about how our tools (generic) present us with limited menus, and effectively restrict our options.

Facebook has expanded (barely) the options for basic responses to posts (no longer just like, but also a handful of emoticons to express laughter, anger, sadness, etc.). Not as full an option as when using the comment box, but for quick responses it allows for greater expressiveness. At least people don't have to "like" the tragic news of their friend's family deaths anymore.

But then look at Allo, announced from Google yesterday, with its @google bot that will help people decide how to make basic, trivial responses to pictures posted to threads. (I'll try to find the link later, but the demo was with a graduation photo, and a few suggested responses like "You look great!" "Congratulations, so happy for you" or something similar).

By pushing the job of coming up with options to tools, like the choice of restaurants and bars to Yelp, we narrow our worlds. We limit our expressiveness and creativity.

I don't know that I have a point, just some thoughts.

notduncansmith2• 10 years ago

George Orwell felt similarly. https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

Jtsummers8• 10 years ago

Really good essay, thanks for reminding me of that one. I believe it's been posted to HN before (I read it from a link here), but it may have been another comment suggesting it.

  But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

(about 3/4 down)

ecdavis• 10 years ago

Related to this essay is the appendix from 1984, containing a discussion on the principles of Newspeak.

http://orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/en_app

btbuildem• 10 years ago

This started with multiple-choice tests in schools, ages ago.

TeMPOraL5• 10 years ago

By pushing the job of coming up with options to tools, like the choice of restaurants and bars to Yelp, we narrow our worlds. We limit our expressiveness and creativity.

And the sad thing is, those same tools could help us significantly extend our expressiveness and creativity. Instead of narrowing available options they could be expanding them. Think about this every time you see someone saying it's good to remove features because "99% of users don't need it" or "more features = more work for developers".

pmlnr• 10 years ago

A long time ago, when MMORPG was a new thing, I was still playing regular, "paper based" RPG. When someone asked me why am I not jumping on the shiny bandwagon I told them it's because I cannot make the decision to, in case I have the strength for it, pick up a random log of tree in the forest and kill the attacking giant with it in the game, because the choices there are limited to whatever the programmers decided to add.

Jtsummers8• 10 years ago

Yep. I play some video games. But tabletop will always be better for me and my friends because of this freedom.

greendestiny_re• 10 years ago

The exact response I have to people that badgered me about joining their WoW guild. I was thankfully playing D&D in the years prior and that inoculated me against the MMO genre...

Nearly a decade later, I was leveling a WoW hero to lvl 20 in order to get a Liadrin hero portrait in Hearthstone. Though I think the UI is fantastic and the music score is superb, every game mechanic just seems watered down and the world seems to have all key points curiously spaced out, as if to waste your time on traveling.

When I got repeatedly bullied by the Snapping Turtles in an oasis where you're meant to plant some dried seeds, I just gave up and went back to Teleglitch. Now that's a great game!

ljk8• 10 years ago

the demo was with a graduation photo, and a few suggested responses like "You look great!" "Congratulations, so happy for you" or something similar).

Don't know why anyone would actually use features like this. It's very impersonal and insincere

Splines3• 10 years ago

It makes for a cool demo, but impractical for real-world use.

It might be good for some laughs to have bot-only conversations.

Jtsummers8• 10 years ago

People already just like photos like that. Or say simply "happy birthday" to everyone when Facebook tells them it's time. It's a small step from this state to a slightly extended set of canned responses to pick from.

qrendel• 10 years ago

So are greeting cards but those are huge, for many people receiving one is a requirement for every Hallmark holiday.

Splines3• 10 years ago

I wonder how much uptake Allo is going to have. Personally I'm going to stay away from it - why should I need to compete with a robot to provide authentic responses?

People are going to pick apart what you say on Allo. "Did he just click on the bot response, or did he really mean that?"

gukov3• 10 years ago

This means Facebook's trending topics list is, essentially, the news.

majewsky8• 10 years ago

Eventually we will have a bunch of bots commending each other on their autogenerated graduation photos, and we can go outside and have actual human interactions again.

tacos• 10 years ago

Novelty, not technology. The same cognitive behavior is exploited on restaurant menus.

lilcarlyung• 10 years ago

Sooo... These are the things that I need to do to build a successful app?

quadrangle• 10 years ago

If by "successful" you mean unethical, manipulative, and popular, yes. I happen to define success as providing actual positive value to the world because those are my aims. If your goal is to be an asshole but not get recognized as the source of the assholery, then you now know how to succeed at doing that.

joslin01• 10 years ago

Yes, but if you don't align well-enough with a genuine human desire/need, your brand will slowly but surely rot away. See Buzzfeed.

AlexandrB2• 10 years ago

Some 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

bognition• 10 years ago

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.

AngrySkillzz2• 10 years ago

He is implying there is no economic benefit to the users, not for the app in general but for engaging with particular bits of offensive design. If a user actually sat down and consciously decided whether or not to take a particular action, they likely would have gone the other way. See autoplaying videos. You probably didn't want to watch that next video, but if Google/Netflix gets their way you'll do it anyway for any number of psychological reasons. But that next video was not something you wanted, potentially it's value to you is zero or negative because of opportunity cost. That won't stop you from watching it though, if they can manipulate you and distract you from making that decision consciously.

knowaveragejoe3• 10 years ago

That's just the basic, innate value of increased activity time, too; not to mention other things like the more time people spend in the app the more likely they are to generate some other form of economic activity.

bowlich• 10 years ago

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?

zeroxfe2• 10 years ago

The ads intermittently injected into the user's stream benefits the company.

AlexandrB2• 10 years ago

Cigarette sales benefitted cigarette companies. That doesn't mean they benefitted the economy because the costs of smoking were eventually passed on to health insurance and/or taxpayers. Money that could have been spent elsewhere.

fsiefken• 10 years ago

Snow Crash

Dowwie2• 10 years ago

L. Bob Rife is behind all of it.

guard-of-terra• 10 years ago

When people are given a menu of choices, they rarely ask:

    “what’s not on the menu?”
    “why am I being given these options and not others?”
    “do I know the menu provider’s goals?”
    “is this menu empowering for my original need, or are the choices actually a distraction?” (e.g. an overwhelmingly array of toothpastes)

It's so much more about politics (elections of all levels) rather than about technology!

Aissen• 10 years ago

It's actually more about philosophy: free-will and the illusion of choice.

imgabe3• 10 years ago

The 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. People would buy it because look, you get 50% more for only a quarter!

Meanwhile the choice of buying less was never presented as an option.

Jtsummers8• 10 years ago

And nevermind that most places have free refills on drinks anyways. So the total quantity of soda you consume isn't restricted unless it's take-away.

aethos• 10 years ago

That's true, but I would assert that if you gave two people a small cup and big cup, the one with the larger would still drink more, even with free refills. More refills needed for the same amount if soda, more distance to walk, more time, etc.

pessimizer3• 10 years ago

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.

Nav_Panel3• 10 years ago

In NYC, most soda drinkers are stopping by their corner bodega/deli and buying a bottle, then walking/taking the subway somewhere. I feel like in this particular case, the goal was to force soda manufacturers to sell 16oz bottles rather than 20oz bottles, thus reducing the amount most people consume in a single purchase.

EDIT: I'm wrong, a reply below clarified the intent and also that bottles were exempt.

Back when I drank soda regularly, I often felt like 20oz was a little bit too much. A 12oz can felt about right, but in NYC it's a lot less convenient because you must finish it immediately upon opening.

imgabe3• 10 years ago

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.

_lce0• 10 years ago

I have joked many times that I would gladly pay more to have less food served.

I find most served dishes are too big for me, and end up sharing w someone.. but sometimes that's not an option, so it will be good not to waste half of the food, even of it cost more to me.

rcfox• 10 years ago

There was an amusing parody of that in an episode of Parks and Rec: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNLUwBot8B0#t=13s

AngrySkillzz2• 10 years ago

This is what everyone means when they say "the medium is the message."

danr42• 10 years ago

I enjoyed the article.

The most important takeaway for me was " now companies have a responsibility to reduce these effects by converting intermittent variable rewards into less addictive, more predictable ones with better design"

I think most of the techniques listed actually cause pain for users, the same way addictions do. I think a lot of people are aware at some level that they are giving up to temptation and it makes them feel worse about themselves.

On the contrary, when an app makes a prediction and nails it, I tend to appreciate it much more, and feel it helped me rather than lured me. My only gripe with predictability is it usually entails giving up a big portion of my privacy.

In my idealist mind somewhere in the future, personal privacy will be a default state of mind for service providers. Total self privacy combined with life analytics (Lifelytics?) which empower streamlining ones routine is a dream I hope I witness come true.

majewsky8• 10 years ago

Exactly. I have wondered for a while why I find predictive AI services frightening and even disgusting.

I realized that it is through apparent unpredictability of my actions that I perceive my own free will (or at least the illusion of it, depending on one's philosophy). If a computer can acurately predict my actions, it feels like my free will is taken away from me. And free will is one of the few things that truly sets us apart from mere automatons. (At least IMHO.)

anchpop• 10 years ago

If your free will can be taken away by a machine predicting what you'll be interested in, you never really had it in the first place

bikamonki3• 10 years ago

Does anyone else feel the slot machine effect here on HN is the karma displayed on the top-right? After a submission or comment, is that number the first thing you check when you come back to the site?

6stringmerc• 10 years ago

Often, yep. Sometimes watching it go down is quite a trip too.

It's something an article I came across used as a conclusion while looking into how commenting communities can become friendly, turn into cliques, and then into "Join the Consensus or Die" cesspools:

Numerous comment sections and message boards and forums probably have ups and downs between Community, Clique, and Cesspool outside of this example — I know I’ve seen it on Ars Technica as well. It looks to me like a general extension of human social habits, like an evolutionary necessity where feeling part of a group is comforting. Experience makes me believe getting upvote currency is a pathway to the pleasure center of the brain.

https://medium.com/@LongTimeLurker1stTimePoster/the-av-club-...

bikamonki3• 10 years ago

Yes, the "unlike-button" is the means to police the crowd and just have everyone behave on a consensual manner. Interesting enough, it only works on anonymous crowds b/c on social networks where you actually know the person, a downvote can actually have real-live consequences.

JoeAltmaier2• 10 years ago

Only looking for a change - which means somebody may have replied, and I'll want to be polite and check that out. I don't remember anything but the last 2 digits short-term.

Raphmedia• 10 years ago

Same here with the exception of arbitrary milestones I try to reach out of geeky habits like 42, 69, 1337, etc.

Mendenhall2• 10 years ago

Pretty much this, I find some of the best internet conversations can be had on this website and there are very intelligent people here so I check a few times to see if someone responded more than for karma. I don't think my ideas fit into the mainstream too often so the karma doesn't do much for me lol I also drop accounts and start new ones.

tdaltonc6• 10 years ago

So based on what this author is saying, what is a more ethical design pattern for karma? or is there no ethical karma design pattern?

bikamonki3• 10 years ago

Hard to tell, my first guess is that hiding the karma points will help. Perhaps replacing it with a comment reply alert.

curun1r• 10 years ago

What Slashdot did comes to mind...replacing the actual number with an enumerated set of descriptions. It was fairly easy to get to the top classification of 'Excellent', so once you achieved that, there was no reason to check it. It also cut down on the 'karma whoring' that led them to make the change in the first place, so it was a positive in multiple ways.

dharma1• 10 years ago

Dopamine is a hell of a drug

itsfunny• 10 years ago

I've always just created a new account for any comment I make here. In the beginning this was simple privacy consciousness. Paranoia, if you like. I just didn't want a long-lived trail of comments, however apparently benign, to be trivially associated with my actual persona.

As the years went by, though, I found that the lack of score consciousness was itself a noticeable relief of cognitive load from my earlier status-conscious state. The actual feeling was similar to when I desynced my work email account from my smartphone and disabled all but SMS and incoming call notifications.

anexprogrammer• 10 years ago

I used to do that, for similar reasons, but stopped and stuck with the random account I happened to be using at the time.

The reason? Nothing more than HN has the least solvable captchas going and I was tired of a dozen attempts every time I create a new one.

I still think of it as a throwaway though, so don't care about the karma or pay heed to it. Ironically the comments I expect to go heavily negative often attract the highest positive response.

ljk8• 10 years ago

almost every "social news" site is guilty of this.

reddit even has two types of imaginary internet points: link and comment karma. reddit also has endless scrolling, a bar that shows daily "reddit gold" goals, and oranged envelope to see unread messages(slot machine)

orbitur• 10 years ago

I don't make submissions, only comments, but I like that no one else comment score is displayed for me, and I only feel the need to check my own comments page to see if anyone's replied to me.

On reddit I'm much more likely to check how my comments are doing.

petercooper• 10 years ago

Nope. However, I used to be addicted to /leaders when it was in the header (and made efforts to post and comment here every day) but points mean absolutely zero to me unless they place me in a ranking compared to someone else's so I don't care much now.

hypertexthero2• 10 years ago

https://blog.codinghorror.com/because-reading-is-fundamental...

If I have learned anything from the Internet, it is this: be very, very careful when you put a number next to someone's name. Because people will do whatever it takes to make that number go up.

zymhan• 10 years ago

Coming from one of the founders of Stack Exchange, no less.

On Reddit, HN, and SE, I'm always checking to see if I have any more points and any replies first.

zatkin• 10 years ago

Or, conversely, they'll do whatever they can to make it go down. I'm guilty of buying a small ICQ number.

userhacker• 10 years ago

I will add to the comment I posted on the articles website and incoming shameless plug. I am usually logged out when I read HN so the karma thing is not that big of a deal but I tend to open multiple articles in new tabs, problem is I feel like I missed out if I don’t finish reading them that’s why I designed a reading time estimator as a chrome extension. I think if you put the true cost upfront and the user knows how much of their time it will take they will be hesitant to start reading the article. Its open-Source and you can contribute here https://github.com/usergit/read-time and the extension link https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/read-time/nccohhim...

greggman2• 10 years ago

I have wished for a way to turn that number off. (yes, I could make an extension to hide it I guess)

arh68• 10 years ago

You could set your topcolor to #222222.

tsunamifury• 10 years ago

It's called "railroading" and it's been around forever. The only new trick is to add more options that still railroad you in the same general direction.

The problem is human minds are smarter than you think and they tend to disengage when they sense this and they strongly want to get off the rails. The user does this by quitting and/or deleting the service. Over time you realize it's best to give the user all their options and they are more likely to stay using your product.

dredmorbius4• 10 years ago

I've certainly been railroaded out of specific retailers, away from specific products, and off of specific Internet / tech sites or concepts on account of this behavior.

I draw attention to the negatives and expressly flag, block, or otherwise mark the antipattern.

HN's increasing practice to deprecate anti-ad-blocking, clickbait, and the like is a positive counter-signal.

lars• 10 years ago

Wow, 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 happens to not be be necessary for Facebook to be a successful business.

Go to a developer conference by one of the big tech companies, and speakers generally aren't talking about doing good things for the user. They'll use euphemisms like "increasing engagement". There's concepts like "permission priming", psychological tricks to get the user to do what you want. There's books written about how to maximize app addictiveness. It's stuff that mildly screws over the user, and it guides the product designs that affect the lives of billions of people. It's not good.

rm_-rf_slash16• 10 years ago

I think the more apt metaphor is lead in Roman pipes. They knew lead exposure made you crazy but they still used it in their pipes, on their plates - and it drove them mad.

After the planet has warmed beyond a point of no return, after antibiotic resistant bacteria make routine surgery a life-or-death decision, after we have squandered away our resources and used what little we had left to wage futile wars, we will find ourselves looking back at these Bernaysian psychological tricks of mass consumerism...and I wonder if we will use the same excuse then as we do today:

"But it was good for GDP!"

reasonattlm• 10 years ago

The lead hypothesis for Roman decline is disputed.

http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2014/04/lead-pipes-pollute...

The demise of antibiotics is much overwrought. It won't happen, since researchers have basically solved the problem of cost-effectively finding an unlimited supply of new ones.

https://www.edge.org/response-detail/26701

In general people like seeing doom everywhere. To the extent this motivates some of them to do something about it, this is probably good. But it is very irritating when the doomsayers don't adjust their doomsaying based upon current scientific work.

y0ast• 10 years ago

Actually, the Roman pipe store is a bit of an urban legend.

According to this PNAS [0] paper: "Lead pollution of “tap water” in Roman times is clearly measurable, but unlikely to have been truly harmful."

[0] http://www.pnas.org/content/111/18/6594.full

TeMPOraL5• 10 years ago

Besides actual lead concentration in water being disputed (per comments in the parallel subthreads), I think this analogy isn't good for another reason - Roman aqueducts were meant to solve a problem, to get fresh water into towns, improving comfort as well as sanitation. Most apps made today are not about solving problems, they're about bundling a minimum amount of features that would trick the users into doing something (paying with money, paying with daya) that profits the app creators.

Analemma_• 10 years ago

My favorite New Yorker cartoon ever: http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/Yes-the-planet-got-destroy...

"Yes, the planet was destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders."

mrleiter• 10 years ago

What a beautiful comment, thanks.

andrepd• 10 years ago

Have you a source on that avoid the Romans?

djsumdog• 10 years ago

I'm so glad you mentioned Edward Bernays. It's interesting how he was very helpful in promoting his uncle's book in the US, bringing Freud some much needed cash. At the same time, Sigmund hated Bernays, and Anna, for using a lot of his psychological work to change the face of advertising into what it is today.

Bernays created the very first _Public Relations_ office (he made up the term because "Propaganda" was a bad word). He helped get more women smoking (torches for freedom!). I'm sure if it wasn't him and Anna, someone else would have come along and made these discoveries anyway.

Capitalism, Consumerism and Planed Obsolescence will be what brings down the current world.

hueving3• 10 years ago

How is incorrect antibiotic usage related to anyone claiming it's good for GDP? Seems like a pretty weak strawman.

andrei_says_• 10 years ago

By definition, profit is the only thing that matters to corporations. A moral corporation is a profitable one, and vice versa. Everything else is a lower priority than profit and growth.

Thus, we turn everything that exists into what we measure as profit.

We are the indigenous people selling our lives and attention and time and land/planet for shiny trinkets without value.

ArkyBeagle8• 10 years ago

Lead pipes work just fine for most water chemistries. It was the salts of lead used as sweeteners that were much more of a problem. As they say, "the dose is the poison".

If our behavior renders us extinct, then we had a good run.

kordless• 10 years ago

User happiness just happens to not be be necessary for Facebook to be a successful business.

All that is necessary for Facebook to be successful is to make money for their shareholders. User happiness is only important if it impacts that particular line item.

jflatow3• 10 years ago

I was about to post the same sentiment re: smoking.

Given that we see this type of behavior in all industries (not just tech), it seems to me it's actually a systemic problem. People / organizations are incentivized universally to optimize for their own selfish interest, because they do not incur the cost of their decisions on everyone else. In this case, designing your product to maximize e.g. addictiveness or time spent per user makes sense if the downside of that is paid by the user.

I think taxing wealth / property instead of (primarily) income actually solves this problem, but that's another story...

facetube• 10 years ago

I'd wholeheartedly support wealth taxes if I trusted the social safety net and health care system in my country. Until then, I'll hoard money out of fear: I don't have anything I'm intending to spend it on and hopefully never will. Fix health care and there'd be a high probability of the chains coming off off, at least for me.

swiley• 10 years ago

This is why I generally choose small open source Linux based tools over smartphone apps and the like. I just don't trust app and web developers because they have repeatedly worked against my interests.

s3arch• 10 years ago

Could you let us know which open source Linux based tools you use, and what mobile/web app you let go loose.

TeMPOraL5• 10 years ago

There's nothing to trust app developers with. The mobile app ecosystem is ridiculous - most apps are so limited compared to what they could be that it boggles the mind. The primary problems: they force you to use the interface provided by the author, and they don't talk to one another.

Android phones become infinitely more useful with Tasker[0] and AutoApps plugins[1][2]. They let you work around the limitations of many apps, force them to talk to one another and to the underlying operating system. Sure, you can technically program Android, but the standard interface to that (Java, APKs) is so heavy and complicated that you can do whatever you need in Tasker quicker than you can create a hello world in Android Studio. Oh, and you can do this on the go, from your phone.

[0] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.dinglisch....

[1] http://joaoapps.com/

[2] - I only discovered them like few days ago, despite using Tasker for years, and I've already integrated many features from them, with clear path to using even more. They make Tasker many times more powerful than it already is. They e.g. solved my problem with creating custom commands for Google Now.

raverbashing• 10 years ago

Yeah, except:

- A phone has a convenient form factor (I still keep using a lot of desktop apps though)

- Small open source tools usually are incomplete and have clumsy usability

danr42• 10 years ago

Couldn't agree more with the looking back part.

It's a line of thought I frequently have when trying to think critically about many accepted practices in todays society.

It usually comes in the form of asking myself "Is this practice the kind society is going to laugh about in a 100 years?" or me imagining someone saying "Haha I can't believe this is what they did in 2016! Man were they dumb".

Most prominent non-tech example in these times for me is the meat industry.

unprepare• 10 years ago

not just meat

The entirety of food production is insane.

We import workers from other countries to have them pick our fruit and vegetables.

We use tons of various chemicals to combat and kill all kinds of insects, birds, animals to keep them away from our crops.

We grow huge amounts of food in areas without fresh water sources

etc.

dorfsmay• 10 years ago

Getting people hooked/addicted is not new, it's been used in TV series and shows for decades. I'll explain it all in my next post...

Godel_unicode• 10 years ago

Please elaborate in the form of a list of weird tricks

nihonde2• 10 years ago

If I find an app is pulling me in too often, I delete it. If I find a website is distracting me too much, I throw it on my hosts file (and redirect it to 127.0.0.1). If I find myself drinking too much beer, I stop. If I find myself craving anything in a way that feels intuitively bad, it's a good sign that I need to change something.

I feel like a lot of people respond to those impulses by going out of their way to make it normal—everyone has this problem—rather than deal with it before it becomes a monkey on your back. I have a lot of compassion for their predicament, but I also know that the answer is very, very simple: walk away and do something else.

Bartweiss• 10 years ago

As a personal prescription, this is great, but as a societal one it's like saying "just don't smoke, it's as easy as that!"

On a national or international scale, we don't get to deal with what ought to be, only what is. And it increasingly looks - Facebook averages 50 minutes of use per day - like the average person either doesn't know or doesn't manage to limit their consumption of these things. Super-satiation is a real problem, is in fact most of our problems from obesity to inaccurate news to dishonest politicians. There comes a point where we have to accept that this is going to take some solution larger than personal responsibility.

supergreg• 10 years ago

So no hobbies?

nnd3• 10 years ago

The reason why such products still exists is exactly because the majority of consumers are not like you.

0xdeadbeefbabe• 10 years ago

But why call it technology?

On the bright side, the profit from hijacking your brain goes to sending their kids to "low-tech" schools[0] Hurray for computer human symbiosis after all[1]

[0]http://www.educationnews.org/technology/silicon-valley-tech-...

[1] http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/psz/Licklider.html

goalieca• 10 years ago

I'm glad you posted this. It is all about trying to drive habits just like cigarettes which are specially engineered.

mc325• 10 years ago

I agree with you and the article and further... Many companies are trying to take search, for example, to the next level by brining predictability through your history as well as your graph. It takes decisionmaking out of people's minds.

"You show a history of reading this and that book, have watched these movies and your circle of meaningful people have influenced you thus, so we have this book on its way to you now."

It looks like it's really intelligent and offers convenience, time-savings, "efficiency". You don't even have to think of what you want, it knows already. You have an appointment in LA in 3hrs, don't forget your [whatever] and the mother of the person you are about to meet is in the hospital, take something appropriate for the occasion, we also suggest the following lamentation "...".

This kind of thing is taking the humanity out of being human. People are reduced to a basic animal framework and the machine is adding humanity for you, so you don't have to bother. In taking the "tedium" out of daily living, people are reduced to a sort of best on a pedestal.

grillvogel4• 10 years ago

I'm convinced we are going to reach a point where people trust what the computer tells them more than their own eyes.

kbenson9• 10 years ago

You can look at it as removing our humanity, or you can look at it as supplementing our humanity.

Prior to the written word, we had to devote time and effort to passing down information through the spoken word. By offloading this task to an external device (wall, tablet, parchment, paper, book, screen), we've been able to use that time and brainpower to focus on other items, while also increasing the fidelity of our history and what we can learn from it. People lament the loss of an oral storytelling culture. It is a loss, but we've gained as well, so mathematics, literature, philosophy. We are able to build on the past in a way we weren't before.

Prior to the plow and domesticated animals to pull them, we used to have to plant manually or practice a more hunter & gatherer lifestyle. By offloading these tasks we are able to secure our future needs, and live a life less of subsistence, and more of security in our health and future. Some people lament the loss of connection to the land, the feeling of oneness with the seasons. It is a loss, but again, we've gained as well. This free time has allowed us to study what we've written, and build upon the past.

You could make a case that using these tools (and hundreds more in our history) takes the humanity out of you, and relies on the tool for it. I would make the case that using these tools is what makes you human, as without them, what's really the distinguishing feature that separates you from the apes? To me, nothing defines humanity more than the constant improvement of our race, our reach, and our capabilities.

That I carry around a small computer in my pocket that connects to a much larger network and allows me near instantaneous connection to my family, friends, coworkers, and the largest accumulation of knowledge the human race has ever seen might seem like I'm trading away what you think makes us human, but since I use this to keep in touch with friends, be more mindful of important things to them, learn about what I'm doing to be more safe, secure and healthy, and share with myriad sub-cultures, I strongly disagree.

criddell• 10 years ago

by brining predictability through your history as well as your graph

I wish they were better at it. For 15 years now, people have promised that relevant ads will be useful rather than annoying. So far, it seems like the pinnacle of that is to show me the last pair of shoes I looked at on Zappos every where I go.

Ad-tech seems laughably bad. Now I just run with uBlock Origin. Maybe I'll block ads for the next 15 years and see how things are looking in 2030.

dave20003• 10 years ago

Interesting you used smoking as a metaphor and not advertising. The amount of effort and money that's gone into that is amazing.

Clanan• 10 years ago

I think this hearkens back to the "great power, great responsibility" cliche. The power of technology requires mature, responsible users and creators. But it's very difficult to be either of those.

DigitalJack• 10 years ago

You couldn't be more right. Looking at apps on Apple's App Store, you will often see them bragging about their app being "Addictive," or in reviews, people will state how addictive the app is as if that were a good thing.

B1FF_PSUVM• 10 years ago

That and "aggressive" for praising car designs. Great idea, we really could use some more aggression on the roads ...

tdaltonc6• 10 years ago

I think that these powers can be used for good. I'm building a subreddit for people who want to learn how to align the behaviors their apps construct with their users best interests.

https://www.reddit.com/r/behaviordesign

colordrops• 10 years ago

Funny that you mention cigarette smoking. I was just ruminating last night in bed how hard it was to put down the phone and go to sleep. I had the same feeling of addiction that I hadn't felt since I quit smoking 15 years ago. It actually caused me to have a minor panic attack, and I'm now actively seeking methods to reduce my dependency on the phone and internet information feed.

perseusprime112• 10 years ago

+1 Smartphone is a universal addiction as opposed to cigarette smoking. If we do not do something about this, our future humans will walk around with stiff necks as this will be coded into our DNA and we will evolve accordingly.

dforrestwilson• 10 years ago

I just uninstalled Facebook from my phone last night. I keep opening my phone to check it and remembering that it isn't there.

Overall I'm glad I did it. I can still get on the laptop when I want to check in on people and will hopefully be less distracted at work. Looking forward to reconnecting with people in real life as opposed to virtually.

amelius2• 10 years ago

The same holds for fast-food and pop music.

patcon• 10 years ago

I heard some thinking by Jake Appelbaum that it feels like you might connect with: https://twitter.com/patconnolly/status/612755010238193664

There's some sort of future truth in this kind of thinking that I'm still sorting out. It seems to centre around a future ability to embrace and accommodate all the ways that humans and our minds are frail, instead of all the ways that we're great. And that seems pretty counter to the prevailing western culture of choice and autonomy. Accepting this might require social concessions, where we carve out safe spaces and practices, free from the all-too-easy possibility of manipulation. I can very much imagine, in a sci-fi-esque way, how this leads into conversations that will later involve trans-humanism :/

Hopefully the above doesn't seem dark -- I'm an optimist!

bps4484• 10 years ago

"but about creating want in the user" reminded me of a quote, but it was about television advertising, which I think may be a more apt comparison:

Indeed, we may go this far: The television commercial is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products. Images of movie stars and famous athletes, of serene lakes and macho fishing trips, of elegant dinners and romantic interludes, of happy families packing their station wagons for a picnic in the country -- these tell nothing about the products being sold. But they tell everything about the fears, fancies and dreams of those who might buy them. What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer. And so, the balance of business expenditures shifts from product research to market research. The television commercial has oriented business away from making products of value and toward making consumers feel valuable, which means that the business of business has now become pseudo-therapy. The consumer is a patient assured by psycho-dramas.

I highly recommend the book http://www.amazon.com/Amusing-Ourselves-Death-Discourse-Busi...

kennethologist• 10 years ago

Any books you would recommend for reading about these techniques?

rms_returns• 10 years ago

User happiness just happens to not be be necessary for Facebook to be a successful business.

Agreed. But the anti-thesis of that is that along with tech companies (like Facebook and Goolge), the average user is evolving too. In other words, sooner or later, the average user will start thinking exactly what you are thinking now. And thats when the user will start ditching Facebook for something open source and WhatsApp for something like Telegram.

mclovinit• 10 years ago

One of the interesting side effects of social media is the social "guilt" of "unfriending". I suppose this is another form of the inconvenience associated with using a technology. Individuals feel briefly butthurt by someone consciuosly disassociating themselves after intelligently beating the system. For example, I first unfriended all connections prior to deleting my Facebook account which allowed me to stay away forever instead of coming back to reactivate my account. You might have heard of similar approaches such as the "overwhelming force" of paying someone when it comes to quitting smoking if they happen to catch you smoking. Instead it seems companies have countered this by selling electronic cigarettes which seem to be socially appealing (e.g. asthetically appealing color and pattern choices). If someone does to act quickly enough on their plan to "leave the system", they may quickly get pulled back in with a counter move on behalf of some business.

cJ0th• 10 years ago

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.

This would be my feelings as well. However, you have to acknowledge that this is only one possible scenario. It could be that somewhere in the future all of a sudden we discover a puzzle piece which is as of yet unknown and boom everything makes perfect sense and the way we did things in the 00s looks incredibly quaint and idiotic.

Atm I try to ignore FB et al as much as I can but there is a slim chance that this makes me look like a fool one day.

kafkaesq• 10 years ago

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.

Or perhaps cars and freeways, from about the same period.

voodootrucker• 10 years ago

Apps always serve the customers. When people used to buy apps, they were the customers. Now advertisers pay for apps, and people are the product. Economics are hugely important, as all behavior eventually will align with what is incentivized.

vicbrooker• 10 years ago

I can't see a way for this style of design to be feasible that doesn't rely on a subscription-based business model.

As long as users allow free + advertising generally be the way to for build a dominant tech company then I would assume anyone that tries to compete by not optimising for advertising (eg. reducing friction for users) will lose. Which is a damn shame.

Based on my limited knowledge of the history of news media, theres a cycle between free + advertising and paid + high quality. Intuitively it should apply to other verticals too, and I hope that, in reality, it does.

majewsky8• 10 years ago

For many kinds of services it can work in parallel. For example, there are ad-supported mail providers like Google, while I consciously chose a subscription-based mail provider (posteo.de) whom I trust to act in my best interest.

The only thing where this would not work so well is social networks, due to the network effect.

forgottenpass• 10 years ago

Apparently google has an Ethicist.

Ctrl-F: Ad

Huh. Zero mentions of the thing that manipulates people by design.

I guess I don't blame him, because even with a blind spot to ads it would seem Google still doesn't give two shits about his input. He explicitly calls out a problem YouTube feature, which he certainly would have voiced internally before externally. And he doesn't work at Google anymore.

Google must want results from ethicists the way tobacco companies of old wanted results from in-house scientists.

knowaveragejoe3• 10 years ago

He mentions "thousands of other techniques" that exist, if you read the article. I'm sure advertising is a subset of those.

eric_h• 10 years ago

Apparently google has an Ethicist.

Well, had. From his bio snippet at the bottom: "Ex-Design Ethicist & Product Philosopher @ Google"

nissimk• 10 years ago

It sounded to me like a euphemism for hanging out on the roof waiting for your non compete agreement term to run out.

tremon2• 10 years ago

Apparently google has an Ethicist.

I'm not sure if I should rejoice that Google has one, or be worried that Google has just one.

angelbob• 10 years ago

More than one. There was a British AI company they bought on condition of hiring an AI ethicist.

So there's at least one other than the former Google ethicist who wrote this article.

brador• 10 years ago

Ads don't always manipulate, they can also inform. Lets say you're looking for a new headset and have a mental buy price. The ad shows you the set you want at the price you wanted. Click, buy, and no manipulation.

majewsky8• 10 years ago

no manipulation

Because the ad is definitely a neutral source of information.

ypeterholmes• 10 years ago

Also no mention of politics, despite going on at length about the 'illusions of freedom'. Granted, going there would force an admission that the world just kinda works like this all around.

jonstokes• 10 years ago

First thought: I gotta get off all of these apps. I always knew they were messing with me, and now I know how!

Second thought: Our UX designer needs to read this ASAP... it's basically a "best practices" guide for making a social app that shows "traction".

whatsreal2• 10 years ago

I had the same first thought, but I think it needs to be tempered somewhat. Some apps you can turn off notifications on. For example, Gmail on my phone I have turned off notifications for my work account, but not my personal account. I've also filtered what comes into my "Primary" inbox heavily so I only see emails that have some legitimate urgency on the phone. Everything else disappears into tabs and labels that I check when I want to.

If Gmail didn't make that set of options available to me I would delete it off my phone. I have yet to receive such an important email that it would have had horrendous results to not know or reply immediately. I keep the limited set of emails I do see simply because I enjoy the convenience and politeness of being able to reply to my parents, wife, and friends from my phone.

tlb• 10 years ago

How can one separate the inherent addictiveness of social approval (which we evolved to cope with) from the added addictiveness due to slot-machine rewards?

(Discrete measures of approval, like a count of Likes, add their own variance in addition to the inherent variability of how much people liked something. That discretization is a property of the digital system, and adds the variance of a binomial distribution.)

So when you say something IRL, you can gauge a lot of fine gradations of approval in the way people react. But online, where you get a small count of upvotes, the quantization adds variance and makes it more addictive.

The added variance is most significant at small sample sizes. People whose submissions get hundreds of votes might find the process less addictive than people whose submissions get a handful of votes.

Would HN be less addictive if the upvote process was more analog, somehow? Say, by adding up the duration people held down the mouse button for?

petra• 10 years ago

Btw, if we're talking about variance, reddit adds variance on top of the real comment scores, and they say it's to "fight spam". Maybe the real reason is addictiveness.

knowaveragejoe3• 10 years ago

One nitpick: maybe it's just the grocery stores near me, but the Pharmacies are almost always located near the front right by where you walk in. Milk is often in the back however.

jff• 10 years ago

Mine has the pharmacy just inside the doors and a cooler right next to the checkout counters filled with milk. You do, however, have to walk past a big cooler full of delicious cheese and fresh sushi pretty much as soon as you enter the door :)

kefka• 10 years ago

Milk in the back or side makes sense though. The milk and dairy area is usually front-facing doors from the huge walk-in refrigerator.

It wouldn't be smart to put a huge walk-in fridge in the center or front of the store, given the recurring shipments from cold storage trucks to fridge.

... However locally, our Kroger(s) has a small case that holds 15 gallons of milk, and a shelf of common bread up front and center.

antognini• 10 years ago

There was an interesting episode on Planet Money a little while back about why milk is in the back of a supermarket. They had two people give very different explanations: Russ Roberts (an economist) argued that it was just simpler to maintain the cold chain with milk (and meat) in the back of the store since that's where trucks unload, and Michael Pollan (a food writer) argued that it was a behavioral economics trick to make people walk through the whole store.

That said, I've also noticed that in many larger store they have a small case of frequently bought perishables at the front of the store.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/07/23/334076398/episo...

xufi2• 10 years ago

It saddens me whenever I go out wit my friends and I try to have a conversation, that everyone is glued to their phones and can't have face-face conversation.

jacquesm• 10 years ago

Find different friends. Not everybody is like that.

nickpsecurity• 10 years ago

Exactly. This is one of those things many people assume and it causes them problems. The assumption that people these days always stare into their phones. Some people do that, some do it a lot less, some barely, and some never. Reality offers more choice.

Maybe OP should write a post on intersection of common assumptions with marketing tricks. There were a few embedded in here. Our assumptions get us just as often, though.

ljk8• 10 years ago

Even sadder is when you see this happen to families, with the kids' eyes glued to the phone screen instead of interacting with their families

xufi2• 10 years ago

Yep. The typical American family dinner is the Digital Dinner if you can call it that

majewsky8• 10 years ago

Are cellphone signal jammers available for purchase by common people?

Kinnard• 10 years ago

The menu options metaphor applies so well to government. Especially given our current predicament.

Mendenhall2• 10 years ago

There are companies that have whole teams of "addiction specialists" that some video game companies hire to give talks to their producers. I know this from personal experience, they are literally trying to make you addicted and have that goal in mind.

firebones3• 10 years ago

Name names. Or at least LinkedIn titles!

amelius2• 10 years ago

That’s why I spent the last three years as Google’s Design Ethicist caring about how to design things in a way that defends a billion people’s minds from getting hijacked.

Every time I see the doodle, I have the feeling I'm being hijacked. After playing with the doodle I often forget what I came to Google for. Just saying.

cdnsteve• 10 years ago

A brilliant article.

lisper2• 10 years ago

This is not just a problem at the consumer level. My entire career I have been told that I couldn't do X because it wasn't "industry standard" or "best practice" or some other code word for "not on the menu."

stinkytaco5• 10 years ago

As a manager it's an interesting balancing act. There are reasons things are done the way they are done and sometimes they are "because we've always done it that way" but more often it's because we've done it enough to understand something someone new to the company or industry doesn't. It's hard to know where to let go and where to draw the line.

I try to provide an environment where new people can 1. Try an idea and watch them fall on their face because they didn't understand best practices. 2. Then try to encourage understanding of those best practices and how they can be improved and change slowly to minimize impact or unexpected consequences.

lisper2• 10 years ago

I applaud your willingness to let people try new things, but the way you describe it seems to assume that all new ideas are bound to fail. They aren't. Different is not necessarily better, but better is necessarily different.

tdaltonc6• 10 years ago

We need our smartphones, notifications screens and web browsers to be exoskeletons for our minds and interpersonal relationships that put our values, not our impulses, first. People’s time is valuable. And we should protect it with the same rigor as privacy and other digital rights.

I think that the only way we can do this is for out technology to make our values impulsive.

dTal• 10 years ago

I don't know about the only way, but this is a stunningly thought-provoking comment.

AndrewKemendo7• 10 years ago

The challenge is that there is no one set of "values" that we can agree on as a people.

tdaltonc6• 10 years ago

That's not such a big problem. I think we can get good an inferring values from behavior and using values in marketing. Then if you download an app that has positioned itself with certain values, the designer can reasonably assume that you hold those values.

danvoell• 10 years ago

Would it be possible to build an app interface which interacts with these apps yet works on behalf of the user? I might be willing to pay for something like this.

tmaly• 10 years ago

Great post, the whole Yelp part really spoke to me as I have been working on my own side project to help me find better food dishes. I am trying to wrap my mind around this slot machine concept as I really do not want people using my project like this.

Any suggestions on UI would be greatly welcome.

kreutz• 10 years ago

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.

excalibur2• 10 years ago

He 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

marxidad• 10 years ago

Are you laughing because privacy and other digital rights aren't currently protected as rigorously as they should be?

excalibur2• 10 years ago

The notion that they're currently protected at all is a joke.

astazangasta• 10 years ago

It'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.

frogpelt3• 10 years ago

timewellspent.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?

ljk8• 10 years ago

isn't it better to use a universal icon for simple actions like this? e.g. pointing to wrist for the time, floppy disk icon for saving a file, etc

frogpelt3• 10 years ago

I agree. It's better for design that compels certain actions.

But its worse for helping users control their impulses.

I personally feel the users should bear the overwhelming majority of responsibility for controlling their own impulses.

But the author's own website contains design objects that encourage certain impulsive behaviors and I was pointing that out.

jamesmiller5• 10 years ago

Similarly resonates with to another great article "The Slow Web" - http://jackcheng.com/the-slow-web .

marknutter• 10 years ago

Interesting read, but is the author being serious when they suggest that the FDA should be setting standards for how software UX is designed? I can't even begin to imagine how much of an unmitigated disaster that would be.

alerting• 10 years ago

No need to worry -- FDA people are probably addicted to those software as well, if not worse

gentleteblor• 10 years ago

I wonder what impact this knowledge would have on the public's perception of Silicon Valley (and the tech industry in general) if it got very popular. The current thinking seems to be something akin to: Oil & Gas Industries bad, Tobacco Industry bad, Fast Food Industry Bad, Big Pharma bad. Startups Good! Silicon Valley Good. Tech will fix everything. But it's the same old game.

bobwaycott2• 10 years ago

I spend most of my internet time on HN. It makes me wish HN tracked this and, each time I load the page, prompted me with a "Do you really want to spend the next n minutes here?"

sah2ed• 10 years ago

Well there's something close: the "noprocrast" [1] option in your profile.

[1] Explained here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=814695

bobwaycott2• 10 years ago

Oh, duh. I always forget those are there. :)

ljk8• 10 years ago

Very eye-opening read.

few random thoughts:

Hijack #7: Instant Interruption vs. “Respectful” Delivery... By contrast, Apple more respectfully lets userse toggle "Read Receipts" on or off

Unfortunately iPhone has a new feature to reply to messages immediately even in the lock screen, looks like everyone is guilty of this

“now that you know I’ve seen the message, I feel even more obligated to respond.”

always tried to purposefully not respond right away even when it said I read it already, but it does feel weird/rude

floatboth• 10 years ago

Replying from the lock screen is good though?? You reply from the lock screen, so you don't unlock the phone, so you don't start doing other things than replying?

ljk8• 10 years ago

oh yeah that feature is definitely very useful it just reminded me of what the author mentioned about replying

hughw2• 10 years ago

/me furiously redesigning our app to be a slot machine....

henrik_w• 10 years ago

I just finished reading "Deep Work" by Cal Newport - great book. The central theme of the book is that you need distraction-free focus to do your best work (especially relevant for programmers I think). Social media goes against this - constantly checking HN, Twitter or FB breaks this focus. He basically recommends to quit altogether. A good start is to try and go a full day with checking any social media - it's harder than it sounds.

mazuhl• 10 years ago

Same here and I've just started reading "Hooked" by Nir Eyal which is kind if a counter/companion to "Deep Work". Following Newport's logic I am looking at optimising engagmement (for a paid/freemium app/SaaS website) as "help people stay in their flow state, make the interactions smooth and non-demanding, then get out of the way". Part of the book seems suggests that having tools is fine as long as the tool doesn't too much extra baggage or make to process of using it too much about itself (drawing you away from the goal/original focus).

nnd3• 10 years ago

Nothing new here. If anyone is interested to learn about these mechanisms in death there is a great book "Hooked" by Nir Eval.

The real problem here are the users. If they keep unconsciously falling for the same tricks over and over again, rather than taking a stand and rejecting manipulative products, there is no incentive for product makers to create product which are _not_ manipulative. You can compare it to eating junk food, rather than choosing healthy options.

flurpitude• 10 years ago

As with addictive drugs, the real problem doesn't wholly lie on either side. You can't blame the users entirely for the fact that people choose to supply a harmful product for profit, but neither can you wholly blame the suppliers for being tempted to do so when users lap it up. Regardless of the blame question, it will improve when (if) both sides change their behaviour, or when either side changes unilaterally and forces a change from the other side.

nnd3• 10 years ago

Addictive drugs is a good comparison. The supply stills exists because it's profitable and because of suppliers who don't have any moral problems with providing the supply in the first place, for the sake of profit. I remember I watched a documentary on Mexican cartels, and their excuse is simply because they don't know any better.

In the case of technology, it seems a sacrifice has to be made, to refrain from using said manipulative strategies, and thus losing profit.

I still don't quite understand your point about consumers. Assuming that you have free will, it's your own choice to either use those products or not. You can't blame companies manipulating your behavior if you opted in in the first place.

hypertexthero2• 10 years ago

A book on a similar theme from before the internet is [Ways of Seeing][1] by John Berger. The typography, set in bold throughout, doesn't do the text any favors, but the writing and information is good.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ways_of_Seeing

thaw13579• 10 years ago

The article does a good job of showing examples, but strangely, it doesn't connect this in any way with the vast related research in psychology and economics. This makes me skeptical of the claims of expertise...

siglesias• 10 years ago

Anybody else struck by the irony of the glaring "Don't miss Tristan Harris's next story" dialog at the bottom of the article?

Note the verbiage exploiting Fear of Missing Something Important.

hughw2• 10 years ago

Ironic, yes, and sad.

sbierwagen• 10 years ago

A note of slight relevant interest: fastmail.com's native client doesn't actually have a manual refresh button. You only get a notification for a new mail if the server pushes one to you.

xg153• 10 years ago

A manual refresh button apparently doesn't help, because now you stumble from the "constant interruptions" trap into the "slot machine" trap...

grok2• 10 years ago

I think this is not necessarily right -- the existing technology limits peoples choice and directs them to behave in a certain way sometimes, but it's not like people don't know they are being manipulated or that they are being provided limited choices, but they live with it what's available if what's available is satisfactory enough. But if it doesn't really satisfy them, people do go out of their way to get what they want...mostly. Atleast that's what I see from a data-point of 1.

Animats• 10 years ago

Hm. Maybe we need a system for mail and messaging which puts most items into a bin to be read later. Once every N hours, it shows you the "later" items.

(One real headache is the demise of third-party messaging clients. You can't write a Twitter client any more, or a Facebook client, or a WhatsApp client, or a Slack client. This is a big problem, because the vendor clients work for the man, not for you. With email, you're still in control, but not with the proprietary systems.)

gruez• 10 years ago

I imagine that this could be done on android by batching notifications for display at specified intervals. Not sure about iOS (without jailbreak) though.

AndrewKemendo7• 10 years ago

This is classic game theory.

You lose as a company if you don't build in these addictive features. So everyone does it because as he made clear, attention is the currency of business currently. All of these companies, and new companies would have to agree not to build these behaviors in.

The idea of an FDA or bill of rights for technology is great in the holistic macro sense, but I think unrealistic as it is not aligned with the interests of companies.

It's the same with any externalities, be it pollution or labor exploitation - things that have clear nexus with bad outcomes but struggle to gain traction around limiting because of overwhelming business interests.

tim3333• 10 years ago

I agree a FDA for tech addictiveness probably won't happen. Now a Chrome extension to block much of it similar to adblock. That would be doable.

firebones3• 10 years ago

Shame beats it. See up-thread. Once people start seeing mindless staring at phones as the public health equivalent of smoking, things will improve.

devy• 10 years ago

Tristan Harris, the OP of this medium post, listed a table of comparisons between what's today's engaging/addictive/time sink product characteristics vs. time well spent products he advocates on his main project site[1]. Of all the 11 points, two of them has the most profound sociological impact or inertia:

* Success Metrics: measure success by net positive contributions rather than interactions

* Business Model: use non-engagement based advertising rather than engagement advertising.

I fully applaud Tristan's vision and mission but skeptical of how quickly companies, VCs and society can adopt it.

[1] http://timewellspent.io/

tdaltonc6• 10 years ago

If you're interested in learning more about these power and how to use them for good, consider joining us:

https://www.reddit.com/r/behaviordesign

https://www.reddit.com/r/habitdesign

1_2__3• 10 years ago

I'd say it's worse, because now that we don't pay for things (ad support ftw?) the service providers have a much stronger incentive to keep you on the site than they do to make you happy. They've slowly but surely developed methods that do exactly that, leaving us all wondering why we spend so much time on sites/in apps that we don't actually enjoy.

This isn't going to change.

JoeDaDude• 10 years ago

I could not help but notice the block at the end that asked one to "Read Tristan's next blog" with a button to Follow him.

johnchristopher• 10 years ago

tldr; : don't use social networks on your smartphone or you're going to miss out on real life.

tard• 10 years ago

how come this article only got 2 points[1] when someone submitted it here a day ago, but this time it's at the top of everything?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11726766

rm_-rf_slash16• 10 years ago

Because life isn't fair.

hackaflocka• 10 years ago

Nothing "the government" can't solve!!!

blabla_blublu• 10 years ago

My 2 cents on this(opinion) and how I am struggling to cope with tech usage in my life.

I noticed that I spend a disproportionately high volume of time "consuming" than "creating". Recently I have been making efforts to create more. writing, drawing, painting. Something, anything so that the brain can spend some time coming up with new things instead of just reading/passively participating.

Technology has empowered a lot of us to create more, but it has also played a huge part in 'consumption', since it is so easy to swipe up and get the next article and the next and the next. Not to forget passive reading where I just skim through without actually paying any kind of attention to detail.

shostack• 10 years ago

Yeah, consumption vs. creation is a great way to sum it up.

By and large I've cut WAY back on my video game playing (like, from several hours a week down to maybe a half hour of mobile gaming in bed at night) and tried to replace it with "healthier" activities like learning guitar and gardening.

Oddly enough, I don't feel like I have any more free time in my life. I'm wondering if I've filled the gap with more consumption via Reddit/HN/reading books enough to make up for the difference.

And that's the rub, because a lot of the stuff I read online or in books isn't garbage. HN has some interesting topics, my Reddit feed is lots of interesting stuff for the most part now, and I'm reading a great book on investing. Ultimately though those are still consumptive activities.

greggman2• 10 years ago

I had a mildly negative reaction to this article which seems different from most people's reactions here

Yelp example: I get that yelp is limiting my options but what did I do before yelp? Pretty much I just went to the 4 or 5 places I already knew instead of seeing if there was something new nearby. I tried hundreds of new places because of recommendations from Google Maps or Yelp that I likely would not have tried otherwise. Certainly not before I had this thing in my pocket that let me research at the moment of desire instead of having the plan ahead

Similarly I look for meetups and have been to way more activities that I would have gone to in the past.

On the slot machine idea: Before smartphones and apps I'd flip through a magazines and hope there'd be something interesting. Before digital TV back when channel surfing tuned into each channel immediately instead of taking 3-5 seconds I'd flip through channels hoping to discover an interesting program. When I buy a book I'm gambling it's going to catch me. When I go to a new restaurant I'm gambling it's going to be delicious (it often isn't)

I guess I don't really see the difference between that and many of the things listed on that list.

I also do uninstall apps. I've un-followed 90% of my connections to keep it my feed actually relevant to me.

Sure I do spend too much time on (in my own opinion) on the net for various things. hopefully I can keep it under control.

It got more scary for me toward the end where he seemed to be calling for government regulation. A digital "bill of rights". An FDA for Tech. No doubt he's assuming he'll be on the committees to decide what's best for everyone else.

iamcasen• 10 years ago

I think his point about Yelp was more that THEY CONTROL all those new choices you explored. Yelp becomes the gate keeper that restaurants and bars must appease in order to show up in their list that you are looking at.

phantarch• 10 years ago

There's definitely positive value in the services and apps that you mention, otherwise people wouldn't begin using them initially.

I think the key difference between the services and living life with "Pre-Internet" substitutes is that all of the services have been designed and engineered to elicit a certain usage.

When you use something that was designed, there's a certain set of axioms governing that thing. You've got to buy into someone else's interpretation of value. If you're aware that the other person's interpretation is different from your own, then you'll be much more likely to have the self-control needed to interpret its value for yourself. The danger is that most people don't do that and as a result fall prey to their own assumptions based on what they were told is valuable.

The trickle of pre-internet information doesn't compare to the firehose we have today. There's not one single solution and I agree that a governance of these ethical ideals will be tricky no matter what form it takes.

themartorana• 10 years ago

I'd rather have the fire hose with the bad that comes with it than what came before - severely limited information, often old or stale, often requiring travel to find it.

Having the wealth of the world's information LITERALLY at your fingertips is going to come with some bad. But holy moly is it just so much better this way.

cynoclast• 10 years ago

I loved the part about the "friction required to enact choices" bit. Like how it's outstandingly easy to get a bank account, and how as a part of the law regarding privacy, they're required to provide a method for you to opt out of them selling your data, which involves them sending you a paper privacy notice, and to opt out you have to send them a written letter (no form is provided), to an address you have to write out yourself, and at your own cost.

That always infuriated me.

It should be as easy as signing up.

majewsky8• 10 years ago

I think Germany has some legislation (or a court decision) that requires that customers be able to void their contracts over the same communication channel where the contract was initially created.

Dowwie2• 10 years ago

Much of this content is associated with the field of Behavior Economics. For instance, in Hack #1, the author is speaking of what academia has called "Choice Architecture". For more about that, you can freely access multiple studies published by Thaler and Sunstein.

krosaen• 10 years ago

Related: http://darkpatterns.org

imacomputer2• 10 years ago

Estimated rewarding time is 12 minutes? Who reads that fast!

galfarragem• 10 years ago

I found it funny when the author also uses manipulative tricks:

- he finishes the article with two links (one direct and one indirect) for the same website;

- he (or the software) underestimates the time needed to read the article.

Pulce• 10 years ago

Likes was 666 wen I went to the page... that hijacks me.

thesrcmustflow• 10 years ago

One major reason why is the #1 psychological ingredient in slot machines: intermittent variable rewards.

I first came across this concept in a Hello Internet podcast, and it's amazing how much you see it in just about everything on the internet once you've heard of it.

tomc1985• 10 years ago

Perhaps we are in need of a cultural shift that emphasizes "doing it right" instead of "making all the money"

Lxr• 10 years ago

But grocery stores want to maximize how much people buy, so they put the pharmacy and the milk at the back of the store.

Early competitors of Google thought that accurate search results only served to drive users away from their site and search was therefore an unimportant part of an overall "Internet company". It would be interesting to see a grocery chain with the philosophy of "find what you want really fast" rather than "make it really difficult to find what you want so you spend longer here" - it could be very successful by the same analogy.

mck-• 10 years ago

How Hacker News Hijacks your day...

bcoughlan• 10 years ago

What if your email client gave you empowering choices of ways to respond, instead of “what message do you want to type back?”

Communicating directly via writing or talking is the only thing here that is not driven by limited choices.

It reminds me of the koan about the expressiveness of the command line compared to point and click:

http://catb.org/esr/writings/unix-koans/gui-programmer.html

One evening, Master Foo and Nubi attended a gathering of programmers who had met to learn from each other. One of the programmers asked Nubi to what school he and his master belonged. Upon being told they were followers of the Great Way of Unix, the programmer grew scornful.

“The command-line tools of Unix are crude and backward,” he scoffed. “Modern, properly designed operating systems do everything through a graphical user interface.”

Master Foo said nothing, but pointed at the moon. A nearby dog began to bark at the master's hand.

“I don't understand you!” said the programmer.

Master Foo remained silent, and pointed at an image of the Buddha. Then he pointed at a window.

“What are you trying to tell me?” asked the programmer.

Master Foo pointed at the programmer's head. Then he pointed at a rock.

“Why can't you make yourself clear?” demanded the programmer.

Master Foo frowned thoughtfully, tapped the programmer twice on the nose, and dropped him in a nearby trashcan.

As the programmer was attempting to extricate himself from the garbage, the dog wandered over and piddled on him.

At that moment, the programmer achieved enlightenment.

dspoka• 10 years ago

I love how on one side there is an engineer at google talking about how addictive technology is and then on the same day someone else at google releases an api to make mobile phones be even more clever slot machines... https://developers.google.com/awareness/?ref=producthunt

ca98am79• 10 years ago

Imagine a digital “bill of rights” outlining design standards that forced the products used by billions of people to support empowering ways for them to navigate toward their goals.

This scares me

kercker• 10 years ago

The author apparently has his own agenda, after seeing the time well spent link all over the article.

ommunist• 10 years ago

This is another perspective on what Nick Carr noticed in his brilliant "The Shallows", and it is invaluable. I am glad Google is not entirely evil.

urahara• 10 years ago

Here is Tristan's post "How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds" in Russian (translated): https://wob.su/blog/ekonomika-vnimaniya-vzlom-umov/

RonileC• 10 years ago

Inspiring!

How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds

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