Regarding the attention economy, I believe many practices utilized in today's social media will become crimes in the future due to how they exploit our behavioral structures.
I consider myself lucky because I have experienced the times where it was still possible to get bored. It teached me that consistently putting effort into things I am interested is much more satisfying than doing stuff that gives immediate pleasure. In the long run I find former to be much more satisfying. But with all the stuff we have now that can distract us, many people seem to never even notice that there is some alternative. Maybe I am overreacting but I think this will be a huge problem.
When has anything been criminalized for this? Every product advertised exploits our psychology. This is how our economy works like it or not and it started long before facebook showed up.
A lot of gambling practices are not allowed at least for young people. I agree that exploiting psychology is a gray area because it's hard to draw the line between ethical and unethical. But it's agreed that many practices are illegal against children. And I don't see how social media is different in this respect.
That was about oppressing subsets of the population without overtly targeting that group. If it was about addiction cigarettes would have been banned.
Heres the quote from John Erlichman a staffer in the nixon administration:
“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
Regarding the attention economy, I believe many practices utilized in today's social media will become crimes in the future due to how they exploit our behavioral structures.
I consider myself lucky because I have experienced the times where it was still possible to get bored. It teached me that consistently putting effort into things I am interested is much more satisfying than doing stuff that gives immediate pleasure. In the long run I find former to be much more satisfying. But with all the stuff we have now that can distract us, many people seem to never even notice that there is some alternative. Maybe I am overreacting but I think this will be a huge problem.
When has anything been criminalized for this? Every product advertised exploits our psychology. This is how our economy works like it or not and it started long before facebook showed up.
A lot of gambling practices are not allowed at least for young people. I agree that exploiting psychology is a gray area because it's hard to draw the line between ethical and unethical. But it's agreed that many practices are illegal against children. And I don't see how social media is different in this respect.
Drugs. Yes I’m equating some social media with drugs.
That was about oppressing subsets of the population without overtly targeting that group. If it was about addiction cigarettes would have been banned.
Heres the quote from John Erlichman a staffer in the nixon administration:
“You want to know what this [war on drugs] was really all about? The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”