Author: Max Fisher
âOur algorithms exploit the human brainâs attraction to divisivenessâ
Facebookâs systems were designed in a way that delivered users more and more divide content in an effort to gain user attention and increase time on the platform ~9
Sean Parker, Facebookâs first president â
âThe thought process that went into building these applications was all about âHow do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possibleââ To do that, he said, âWe need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or post or whatever. And that is going to get you to contribute with more content, and that is what is going to get you more likes and commentsâ He termed this the âsocial-validation feedback lookâ, calling it âexactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because youâre exploiting a vulnerability in human psychologyâ ~24
How do companies, producing little more than bits of code displayed on a screen, seemingly control usersâ minds? âOur actions have been engineeredâ, Services like twitter and YouTube habitually alter our everyday behavior, just as their designers intended. ~25
One of Eyalâs favorite models is the slot machine. It is designed to answer your every action with visual, auditory, and tactile feedback. A ping when you insert a coing. A ka-chunk when you pull the lever. A flash of colored light when you release it. This is known as Pavlovian conditioning, named after the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov, who rang a bell each time he fed his dog, until, eventually, the bell alone sent his dogâs stomach churning and saliva glands pulsing, as if it could no longer differentiate the chiming of a bell from the physical sensation of eating. Slot machines work the same way, training your mind to conflate the thrill of winning with its mechanical clangs and buzzes. The act of pulling the lever, once meaningless , becomes pleasurable in itself. ~25
- Dopamine
- Social apps hijack a compulsion - a need to connect - that can be even more powerful than hunger or greed.
Why had these subjects been so resistant to give up a product that made then unhappy? Their behavior, the economists wrote, was consistent with standard habit formation models - i.e, with addiction - leading to sub-optimal consumption choices. A clinical way of saying the subjects had been trained to act against their own interests
The single most powerful force on Social Media is identity. Expressing Identity, sharpening identity, seeing and defining the world through its lens.