Suckers
Concern Within the Tech Community Over Chronic Use
We as users may look like suckers for buying into the hype of social media, but tech companies are just as sloppy for believing we’d all turn a blind eye to our own manipulation. Still, only through gaining agency over our data diets, and truly craving and demanding what is best for us in the digital sphere, will tech be incentivized to redesign for long-lasting, positive change.
It’s expected that tech companies will promote their products in the most positive light possible. Why would they not? They need eyeballs hooked on screens in order to appease their only paying customers: advertisers. As a user you are, by definition, a lower priority in the eyes of social media companies. Though I feel, in some sense, deceived and angry that a platform can deploy such harmful means of manipulation on its users, I’m still not a paying customer. I can’t be too surprised to not be treated as such.
For that very reason, we must enthusiastically educate ourselves on the various methods of manipulation, the same ones that prompt us to keep feeding the data demand in the first place. We may be hungry for inclusion, connection, and other nutrients that Instagram has promised to serve up to us. But all it takes is a closer look at the ingredients to realize that much of it’s junk food.
Don’t just take my word for it. Tech insiders also see a problem in such prolific social media usage, and industry veterans are demanding change. Check out the videos below for a deeper understanding from the very people on the production line.
A Taste
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Useful Terms
Digital Slot Machine 🙏🏼
A common metaphor for modern-day phone usage. Bright colors, attention-grabbing sounds, and random rewards. A time-suck exploiting psychological vulnerabilities of the user for profit.
Asymmetry of Power 💰
Imbalanced status of influence between app programers and users. Social media companies pour extreme wealth into making products the most psychologically irresistible as possible. Users, by default, become subordinate.
Smoothing the Experience 🏂
App design strategies which promote high levels of usage with very little effort on the part of the user. Encourages mindless media consumption i.e. infinite scroll, automatic play (Youtube, Instagram), Instagram Explore Page, the online
”rabbit hole”.
Attention Economy 👨👩👧👦
The collective human capacity to engage with the many elements in our environments that demand mental focus. Acknowledges that the human capacity for attention is limited and that the content and events vying for that attention far exceed the capacity.
Hierarchical Lock-In 🔐
A system in which status and one’s numerical standing, in a digital sense, serves as a chief incentive and currency. This limits the online environment to a statistical ranking entity (with on and off-line implications) i.e. creating for praise and eyeballs over intrinsic values.
Dopamine-Boosting Agents ❤️
Dopamine, a neurotransmitter in the brain, plays a role in how we feel pleasure. Digitally, external boosting agents are employed to maintain the addictive loop of high usage i.e. live count of “likes”, view counts, positive comments, bright-red notifications, public social status standings.
Chronic Status-Seeking 💎
A symptom of vanity metric-driven online environments. The desire to display wealth, status, relationships, power, and accomplishments primarily for the purpose of maintaining prestige in a digital hierarchy.
Algorithmic Aim 📌
User-provided data employed by social media platforms to determine which content (including ads) user is most likely to be engaged with. Based on “relevancy” instead of publish time. User-friendly in concept, but in practice the most “engaging” content often promotes fear, outrage, and narcissism.
What Tech Execs / Experts Are Saying About
Digital Manipulation
It’s a social-validation feedback loop...exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators — it’s me, it’s Mark Zuckerberg, it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’s all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway...it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other. It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s’ brains.
— Sean Parker, First President of Facebook
Facebook’s old mantra was “Move fast and break things”, and now they’re coming up with better mantras and picking up a few pieces from a shattered world and gluing them together.
— Jaron Lanier, a “Founding Father of Virtual Reality”, Philosopher, Author of “10 Arguments For Quitting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now”
[The executive was] just raving about these people spending twelve hours a day on Facebook...so I asked a question to the guy who was raving: “The guy who’s spending twelve hours a day on Facebook, do you think he’ll be able to do what you’ve done?”
— Jim Clark, Silicon Valley Businessman, Founder Silicon Graphics, Inc., Netscape Communications Corporation
Hypnosis might be therapeutic so long as you trust your hypnotist, but who would trust a hypnotist who is working for unknown third parties? Who? Apparently billions of people.
— Jaron Lanier, a “Founding Father of Virtual Reality”, Philosopher, Author of “10 Arguments For Quitting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now”
From the point of view of the algorithms, you are no longer a name, but a number…Dystopian science fiction often imagines an evil empire that replaces names with numbers. Real-life prisons do it to prisoners. There’s a reason. To become a number is to be explicitly subservient to a system. A number is a public verification of reduced freedom, status and personhood.
— Jaron Lanier, a “Founding Father of Virtual Reality”, Philosopher, Author of “10 Arguments For Quitting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now”
But to me it’s not even about the programs, however over-worshipped they might be, but about the power relationships that arise because people accept and implicitly respect the programs.
— Jaron Lanier, a “Founding Father of Virtual Reality”, Philosopher, Author of “10 Arguments For Quitting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now”
If ordinary people were to get all happy and satisfied, they might take a moment away from the obsession with social media numbers and go frolic in the flowers or even pay direct attention to each other. But if they’re all on edge about whether they’re popular enough, worried about whether the world is imploding, or furious at morons who are thrust into the middle of their connections with friends and families, then they dare not disengage. They are hooked because of provoked natural vigilance. We in Silicon Valley like to watch the ants dig harder into their dirt. They send us money as we watch.
— Jaron Lanier, a “Founding Father of Virtual Reality”, Philosopher, Author of “10 Arguments For Quitting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now”
If you can find a way to challenge us without vilification, it’s good for us. Taking charge of your own information life is a great way to do that.
— Jaron Lanier, a “Founding Father of Virtual Reality”, Philosopher, Author of “10 Arguments For Quitting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now”
The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works.... No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth. This is a global problem... I feel tremendous guilt. I think we all knew in the back of our minds—even though we feigned this whole line of, like, there probably aren’t any bad unintended consequences…And I don’t have a good solution. My solution is I just don’t use these tools anymore. I haven’t for years.
— Chamath Palihapitiya, Ex VP of User Growth at Facebook
My kids accuse me and my wife of being fascists and overly concerned about tech, and they say that none of their friends have the same rules. That's because we have seen the dangers of technology firsthand. I've seen it in myself, I don't want to see that happen to my kids.
- Chris Anderson, CEO of the drone maker 3D Robotics
Whether or not positive feedback might in theory be more effective in certain cases, negative feedback turns out to be the bargain feedback, the best choice for business, so it appears more often in social media.
— Jaron Lanier, a “Founding Father of Virtual Reality”, Philosopher, Author of “10 Arguments For Quitting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now”
Some have compared social media to the tobacco industry, but I will not. The better analogy is paint that contains lead...after pressure and legislation, lead-free paints were the new standard. Smart people simply waited to buy paint until there was a safe version on sale. Similarly, smart people should delete their accounts until nontoxic varieties are available.
— Jaron Lanier, a “Founding Father of Virtual Reality”, Philosopher, Author of “10 Arguments For Quitting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now”
More recently, Facebook researches finally acknowledged what other researchers have found: that their products can do real harm.
— Jaron Lanier, a “Founding Father of Virtual Reality”, Philosopher, Author of “10 Arguments For Quitting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now”
There are a million BUMMER games going on all the time, and you’re a loser at almost all of them, because you're competing with the whole planet. The winners are mostly random.
— Jaron Lanier, a “Founding Father of Virtual Reality”, Philosopher, Author of “10 Arguments For Quitting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now”
A social media company is in a better position if it doesn’t know what’s going on, because then it makes just as much money, but with less culpability.
— Jaron Lanier, a “Founding Father of Virtual Reality”, Philosopher, Author of “10 Arguments For Quitting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now”
Facebook also plays the game. The Facebook page of a deceased person becomes a shrine that one can only visit as a member, and to be a member you must implicitly become an adherent.
— Jaron Lanier, a “Founding Father of Virtual Reality”, Philosopher, Author of “10 Arguments For Quitting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now”
The best way you can help is not to attack those who would manipulate you from afar, but simply to free yourself.
— Jaron Lanier, a “Founding Father of Virtual Reality”, Philosopher, Author of “10 Arguments For Quitting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now”