<story><title>Testimony to House committee by former Facebook executive Tim Kendall</title><url>https://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/files/documents/09.24.20%20CPC%20Witness%20Testimony_Kendall.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ALittleLight</author><text>One problem with this is that it&amp;#x27;s easy to conflate &amp;quot;addictive&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;people like to use it&amp;quot;. Should television shows been punished for cliffhangers because they hook people into seeing the next episode? Breaking Bad had an interesting plot and character progression that made me want to keep watching - are they addicting me?&lt;p&gt;One person might say &amp;quot;We created all these statuses and features to be &lt;i&gt;addictive&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot; but it seems just as true to say &amp;quot;We created this stuff because people liked it and we are trying to make something people like.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>dylan604</author><text>This bit of dialog should be the smoking gun in my opinion. Big Tobacco got taken to the woodshed over this very thing: making the product as addictive as possible. This should be the club that is used to beat Social Media platforms over their heads. As with Big Tobacco I&amp;#x27;m sure it rings true with Social platforms as well in that not just one of them is doing it they all are.</text></item><item><author>4cao</author><text>Some of the most interesting excerpts (although it&amp;#x27;s worth reading in its entirety):&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; My path in technology started at Facebook where I was the first Director of Monetization. [...] we sought to mine as much attention as humanly possible and turn into historically unprecedented profits. We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Tobacco companies [...] added sugar and menthol to cigarettes so you could hold the smoke in your lungs for longer periods. At Facebook, we added status updates, photo tagging, and likes, which made status and reputation primary and laid the groundwork for a teenage mental health crisis.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Allowing for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake news to flourish were like Big Tobacco’s bronchodilators, which allowed the cigarette smoke to cover more surface area of the lungs.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Tobacco companies added ammonia to cigarettes to increase the speed with which nicotine traveled to the brain. Extreme, incendiary content—think shocking images, graphic videos, and headlines that incite outrage—sowed tribalism and division. And this result has been unprecedented engagement -- and profits. Facebook’s ability to deliver this incendiary content to the right person, at the right time, in the exact right way... that is their ammonia.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The algorithm maximizes your attention by hitting you repeatedly with content that triggers your strongest emotions — it aims to provoke, shock, and enrage. All the while, the technology is getting smarter and better at provoking a response from you. [...] This is not by accident. It’s an algorithmically optimized playbook to maximize user attention -- and profits.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; When it comes to misinformation, these companies hide behind the First Amendment and say they stand for free speech. At the same time, their algorithms continually choose whose voice is actually heard. In truth, it is not free speech they revere. Instead, Facebook and their cohorts worship at the altar of engagement and cast all other concerns aside, raising the voices of division, anger, hate and misinformation to drown out the voices of truth, justice, morality, and peace.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>munificent</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; Should television shows been punished for cliffhangers because they hook people into seeing the next episode?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Does this significantly negatively impact the lives of viewers or of those around them? Addiction doesn&amp;#x27;t just mean &amp;quot;want to have it&amp;quot;. Addiction means &amp;quot;want to have it so bad it messes up other aspects of my life&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;(For what it&amp;#x27;s worth, I do personally avoid cliff-hanger shows because I find the anxiety and frustration of being left hanging is rarely sufficiently well compensated by the quality of the show.)</text></comment>
<story><title>Testimony to House committee by former Facebook executive Tim Kendall</title><url>https://energycommerce.house.gov/sites/democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/files/documents/09.24.20%20CPC%20Witness%20Testimony_Kendall.pdf</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ALittleLight</author><text>One problem with this is that it&amp;#x27;s easy to conflate &amp;quot;addictive&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;people like to use it&amp;quot;. Should television shows been punished for cliffhangers because they hook people into seeing the next episode? Breaking Bad had an interesting plot and character progression that made me want to keep watching - are they addicting me?&lt;p&gt;One person might say &amp;quot;We created all these statuses and features to be &lt;i&gt;addictive&lt;/i&gt;&amp;quot; but it seems just as true to say &amp;quot;We created this stuff because people liked it and we are trying to make something people like.&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>dylan604</author><text>This bit of dialog should be the smoking gun in my opinion. Big Tobacco got taken to the woodshed over this very thing: making the product as addictive as possible. This should be the club that is used to beat Social Media platforms over their heads. As with Big Tobacco I&amp;#x27;m sure it rings true with Social platforms as well in that not just one of them is doing it they all are.</text></item><item><author>4cao</author><text>Some of the most interesting excerpts (although it&amp;#x27;s worth reading in its entirety):&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; My path in technology started at Facebook where I was the first Director of Monetization. [...] we sought to mine as much attention as humanly possible and turn into historically unprecedented profits. We took a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook, working to make our offering addictive at the outset.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Tobacco companies [...] added sugar and menthol to cigarettes so you could hold the smoke in your lungs for longer periods. At Facebook, we added status updates, photo tagging, and likes, which made status and reputation primary and laid the groundwork for a teenage mental health crisis.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Allowing for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and fake news to flourish were like Big Tobacco’s bronchodilators, which allowed the cigarette smoke to cover more surface area of the lungs.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Tobacco companies added ammonia to cigarettes to increase the speed with which nicotine traveled to the brain. Extreme, incendiary content—think shocking images, graphic videos, and headlines that incite outrage—sowed tribalism and division. And this result has been unprecedented engagement -- and profits. Facebook’s ability to deliver this incendiary content to the right person, at the right time, in the exact right way... that is their ammonia.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The algorithm maximizes your attention by hitting you repeatedly with content that triggers your strongest emotions — it aims to provoke, shock, and enrage. All the while, the technology is getting smarter and better at provoking a response from you. [...] This is not by accident. It’s an algorithmically optimized playbook to maximize user attention -- and profits.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; When it comes to misinformation, these companies hide behind the First Amendment and say they stand for free speech. At the same time, their algorithms continually choose whose voice is actually heard. In truth, it is not free speech they revere. Instead, Facebook and their cohorts worship at the altar of engagement and cast all other concerns aside, raising the voices of division, anger, hate and misinformation to drown out the voices of truth, justice, morality, and peace.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>yamrzou</author><text>Facebook is definitely addictive. It took me more than a year of trials to be able to break the cycle and get off the platform. The thing is, it gets harder over time to take a pause from it.&lt;p&gt;But now that it has been one month since I last used it, and I noticed that all I did was to replace my Facebook time with Hacker News, I can&amp;#x27;t but wonder: Does the addiction problem lie with the user, or in the platform? Or is it, more generally, in the way the internet serves us content?</text></comment>