September 2019 – Page 2 – Social Media and Digital Cultures

Are We Really In Control? Technology and Its Ethics

As I listened to Tristan Harris’s Ted Talk, How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day, I was reminded of an assignment that I give to my middle school students. I require them to read articles covering both sides of an argument in order to help them answer the question “Is technology helping or hurting us?” I agree with Harris’s point that tech companies are manipulating us towards things that are not necessarily the best for us, but that this same power could be used to encourage us in more healthy and positive pursuits. One of the articles that I require my students to read is, Is Technology Killing Our Friendships? by Lauren Tarshis. Tarshis’ article suggests that technology is “killing” the friendships of teens by giving them the illusion that they have true friendships just because they have 500 friends on Facebook. The reality is that they actually never reach a deep level of friendship with any of their “friends” outside of liking the persona that each person has created online. Yet, they have been convinced that “friended” equals friendship. Harris suggests that social media could be used to “..empower us to live out the timeline that we want.” He suggests that if we were given the opportunity to instead of posting a controversial question online, we could use that same platform to plan a dinner party where the conversations can be had in person, building those relationships in person while furthering the same controversial discussion, we would be creating a much more healthy timeline. Tarshis’s article makes the same point. Human contact is key to our continued social growth.

Harris explains that these tech companies have divisions of people who’s only focus is to manipulate our actions online. They have created the ability to “… precisely target a lie only to those people who would be more susceptible to it.” To me, this is terrifying. I agree with Harris when he suggests that “The only form of ethical persuasion exists when the goals of the persuader are aligned with the goals of the persuedee.” This sounds wonderful and very idealistic. As much as this would be what is best for the masses, what is the likelihood of these corporations giving up their power over us? As I look at my students faced with the choice “Is technology helping or hurting?” and I am surprised. There is always a significant number of students when confronted with the data, who actually argue that technology is hurting us. This gives me hope for our future around Harris’s position on ethics. I don’t believe that the internet and social media are inherently evil. They are benign on their own, but it makes me wonder what it would take to convince these tech companies to use their “power” for our good?

Shanghaied by Social Media: Your Attention Is a Commodity & App Designers Are Using Addictive Design to Hijack It

Tristan Harris wants you to know that your attention is a commodity. In fact, it’s such a commodity that app designers are crossing ethical lines to grab as much of it as they can.

In his 2016 TED Talk, Harris describes the root of the situation:

“[E]very news site, TED, elections, politicians, games, even meditation apps have to compete for only one thing, which is our attention, and there’s only so much of it. And the best way to get people’s attention is to know how someone’s mind works. And there’s a whole bunch of persuasive techniques that I learned in college at a lab called the Persuasive Technology Lab to get people’s attention.”

The lab he’s referring to here is infamous. If there’s an origin story about how addictive design and social media became so intertwined, its setting would be there – at Stanford’s Persuasive Technology Lab.

Motivation + Prompt + Ability = Addiction

Back in the mid-to-late 2000s, the Persuasive Technology Lab and its instructor (BJ Fogg) introduced Silicon Valley to the formula at the heart of technology addiction: Fogg’s Behavior Model.

According to Fogg’s Behavior Model, there are three forces – motivation, prompt, and ability – that work together to drive user activity.

Motivation: A reason for users to act. Fogg categorizes them as:
- Sensation (pleasure/pain)
- Anticipation (hope/fear), and
- Belonging (acceptance/rejection)
Prompt (or Trigger): An external or internal “call to action” that reminds users to do a certain behavior.
Ability: Designing in a way that makes a behavior easier to do.

Take, for example, Facebook’s app.

Motivation: Receiving “likes” on something you posted acts as a form of validation and thus motivation to use the app
Prompt: Push notifications telling you that you’ve received a “like” act as a trigger to pull you back into the app.
Ability: The moment you open the app, you can easily and mindlessly peruse material in your feed’s “infinite scroll” will keep your attention with minimal effort on your part.

Think of any popular app (Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube) and the ways they use these three forces to keep users’ attention hooked become prolifically apparent.

Even Creators Get Hooked

Hooked By Social Media, Like a Fish — Photo by Bruce Warrington on Unsplash

Even Silicone Valley designers have found themselves hooked.

Leah Pearlman, co-inventor of Facebook’s “like” button, realized she had become addicted to Facebook after she caught herself using the number of “likes” she received as a stand-in for self-worth.

Describing her mindset at the time, Leah recalls:

“When I need validation – I go to check Facebook. “I’m feeling lonely, ‘Let me check my phone.’ I’m feeling insecure, ‘Let me check my phone.'” – BBC interview

And while many designers of this addictive tech did not set out to do an ethically dubious thing, they feel responsible:

In 2006 Mr Raskin, a leading technology engineer himself, designed infinite scroll, one of the features of many apps that is now seen as highly habit forming. At the time, he was working for Humanized – a computer user-interface consultancy.

Infinite scroll allows users to endlessly swipe down through content without clicking.

“If you don’t give your brain time to catch up with your impulses,” Mr Raskin said, “you just keep scrolling.”

He said the innovation kept users looking at their phones far longer than necessary.

Mr Raskin said he had not set out to addict people and now felt guilty about it.

– BBC interview

Harris’ Call to Arms

Tristan Harris has been fighting against tech’s manipulative design practices since he was working for Google back in 2012, when his 144-slide presentation “A Call to Minimize Distraction and Respect Users’ Attention” went viral across thousands of Google employees. Since then, Harris became Google’s first “design ethicist” before breaking ties and founding his own nonprofit, the Center for Humane Technology.

Harris thinks three changes need to take place before addictive technological design loses its hold.

First, technology users need to become aware that their attention is being deliberately cultivated by tech. He argues that this does not have to be an all-or-nothing approach: users can make simple changes (such as turning off all push notifications) to regain control over their tech habits.

Second, the business model of tech and the accountability systems around it needs to become more transparent and ethical – something that will only happen once the people in the locus of control become more accountable and transparent. This could potentially change with some of the legal challenges to tech giants we’ve seen developing in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, among others.

Third, app design needs to go through a second birth – “design renaissance” – in which design choices like Fogg’s Behavior Model are used to encourage beneficial instead of addictive user behavior.

Reflecting on Addictive Design

What are your thoughts on addictive app design? Do you think Harris’ suggestions are viable?

The Race for Attention

The race for attention is nothing new. People like being noticed and they being paid attention to. This has been true since before history was recorded. What is new, is that the race for attention is now being fought virtually by tech companies. Our mobile devices now demand more of our attention than we ever demanded or tried to achieve from other people. Our time is being spent not with people, but with our phones as we check our notifications, social media posts and play online games.

Tristan Harris in his TED talk “How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day” mentions how that race for attention is changing our world, our conversations and our relationships including how we want to have them. I completely agree. People no longer know how to talk to anyone else unless it is through a device. The art of conversation is starting to disappear.

It is not rare to go to dinner with friends and have everyone get their phones out after the food is ordered and check in with social media, notifications, emails, texts, etc. People are addicted to checking their notifications, checking their email and making sure they are “not missing anything” when in fact, they are missing IRL (in real life) interaction.

Most people joke that “Google owns me” but it is not really a joke. Mark Stone wrote in a Techvibes article “ Google Owns You. But You Already Knew That, Right?” describing just how much of our personal information Google owns. The other tech companies are no different.

People have become complacent about lack of online data privacy and the amount of time and effort social media demands. This complacency is creating a vicious cycle where tech companies are becoming more and more persuasive and learning better techniques so that we will give them more of our attention. As we give them attention we have less attention for our IRL.

Tristan Harris proclaims that “we need new models and accountability systems. So that as the world gets better and more and more persuasive over time” the “goals of the persuader must align with the goals of the persuadee” and be accountable and transparent to what we want. We need to lose our complacency and group together to demand those new models and accountability. It is not ok to lose ourselves to the virtual world at the expense of our relationships in the real world.

What are your thoughts on the race for attention? Do think people understand the amount of time they spend online?

What’s Behind the Curtain?

My fourth grade teacher was a novel experience for me in a lot of ways. He was my first male teacher and my first teacher to assign long-term projects. He taught a group of us to play guitar after school. As a first-year teacher assembling a classroom library from whatever he had at home that was remotely suitable for elementary students, he introduced me to several series and characters that I would otherwise not have met that early. (Thank you, Mr. Haas, for my enduring love of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Get Smart!) He helped our class write and compose two songs, and then record them in an actual studio. I presume that somewhere during that year, we covered the expected academic topics, as well, as we all seemed to be ready for fifth grade the following year.

But one of his most lasting impacts on my thought patterns was the unit we did on advertising. We looked at various strategies used for selling, including both what they looked like and why they worked. We were sent home to find examples of each and describe the components of the ads. I can’t say advertising doesn’t work on me, but I can say that I tend to notice and attempt to deconstruct its methods and goals more often than some folks I observe. That unit was what caused a flash of recognition in me for Tristan Harris’ line, “what we don’t talk about is how the handful of people working at a handful of technology companies through their choices will steer what a billion people are thinking today.” (Harris, 2017) There are plenty of methods of advertising, and the internet is not the only outlet. It’s just one of the most potent and omnipresent. With a relatively small number of individuals at the helm and making many of the decisions about what we see, how we see it, and whose viewpoints get heard, it’s still a good idea to have some idea about how our experience on the internet is curated and shaped before we even encounter it. As I investigated the question, I encountered a 2015 multi-part report from MIT Technology Review, entitled “Persuasive Technology.” It was their May/June 2015 Business Report section. In an article entitled “Technology and Persuasion,” (Byrnes, 2015,) the researcher describes methods to keep people hooked on a particular game by recognizing behaviors that might mean they are getting bored and responding to those, or how a corporate wellness provider group uses data and game designers to maintain engagement from the workforce at a higher level than previously achieved. The researcher also cited an ad firm’s use of tracking data to better choose more effective advertising for individual users. Another article entitled, “New Technologies Persuade in Old Ways,” (Anders, 2015) specifically called out some of the strategies that have been used in some form to guide people’s behavior since time long before the internet was a consideration. Anders described these strategies as: “reciprocity, likeability, authority, scarcity, consistency, and social proof.”(Anders, 2015) If you think about those for a few minutes, you will readily see them at work all around you. Most of us would rather buy from or participate with a company that we see as friendly to us and/or our causes. We like to follow people’s feeds that may respond to us and boost our profile. We readily follow other users’ or experts’ advice and reviews on products and services, and items that sell out or advertise a limited number of opportunities are catering to our need for things that we see as limited.

If you’re interested in how companies may be programming you, take a look at one of these articles, or some of the others in the edition. They all seem to be short and easily digested. What did you learn, and how will it affect your outlook or behavior moving forward?

Anders, G. (2015, March 23). New technologies persuade in old ways. MIT Technology Review, Volume 110, No. 3. Retrieved from: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/535831/new-technologies-persuade-in-old-ways/?set=535816.

Byrnes, N. (2015, March 23). Technology and persuasion. MIT Technology Review, Volume 110, No. 3. Retrieved from: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/535826/technology-and-persuasion/?set=535816.

TED. (2017, July 28). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day | Tristan Harris. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C74amJRp730.

Mind Control: Sci Fi or Cell Phones?

This week I am reflecting on a Ted Talk given by Tristan Harris entitled, “How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day.” He knows what he is talking about: he was “a design ethicist at Google where he studied how to ethically steer peoples’ thoughts” (Harris, 2017). All of the large technology companies have similar labs and positions, although maybe they are not so ethical. So why do these positions exist? Because cell phone technology has created a competition for our attention.

You are experiencing it every day, maybe without even realizing it. You end up binge-watching a show instead of going to bed because the next episode auto-plays and you get sucked in. A teenager you know asks a friend to continue snapchatting for him while he’s on vacation because he doesn’t want to lose his streak. Videos on Facebook or YouTube start playing automatically so you start watching even though you weren’t that interested. Notifications pop up on your cell phone and send you off thinking about or acting on something you had not planned on thinking about or acting on at that moment. A headline pops up at the bottom of an article you read, and you are off reading another. All of these are examples of a few large technology companies swaying our thoughts and actions to do what they want us to do. They have studied the mind, how to get our attention, and the things that motivate us, like fear of losing something (a Snapchat streak) and outrage. Yes,outrage. This is why you see so many inflammatory posts on Facebook and Twitter. What better way to get our attention?

I admit that I’ve been sucked in. My husband and I don’t watch much television, but when Stranger Things is released all at once and the episodes automatically play one after another, it’s difficult to turn it off. I’ve also seen my teenage kids keep their friends’ Snapchat streaks going in their absence. As Tristan Harris states, “It affects everyone because a billion people have one of these [cell phones] in their pocket.”

He prefaces that statement with the following: “The costs are so obvious…It’s not just taking away our agency to spend our attention and live the lives that we want. It’s changing the way that we have our conversations, it’s changing our democracy, and it’s changing our ability to have the conversations and relationships we want with each other” (Harris, 2017).

That may seem like an extreme viewpoint at first, but let’s look at it a little closer. These technology companies have control rooms full of people trying to decide what will grab our attention, and they are all competing with each other. And as the Netflix CEO flippantly said, they are also competing with things like sleep (Hern, 2017). Seriously, though, what one company does, the other will do also, whether as simple as using auto-play or as disturbing as posting controversial items or telling lies to outrage people and perpetuate conversations online that we might not even want to have.

So what can we do about it? The first step is simply to understand that you can be persuaded and that you might want to protect against being persuaded. Harris goes on to discuss two more steps: a new accountability system for those aforementioned control rooms and a “Design Renaissance.” In a perfect world, wouldn’t it be great if these technology companies were aligned with the goals of those they are trying to influence? He uses the example of a lonely person at home getting on Facebook. Instead of Facebook encouraging him to spend more time onscreen alone, it could encourage him to go out and socialize with friends. However, when the bottom line for these companies is profitability, is that realistic? Perhaps, not. But, I do agree that in order for us to take back some control, the first steps are awareness that we are being persuaded and action to protect ourselves.

So what are your thoughts on the topic? Were you aware of this practice by technology companies? How do you feel about it? Now that you know this is happening, will you change the way you use your cell phone? One small step might be turning off notifications. I’d love to hear your thoughts and suggestions.

Harris, T. (2017, July 26). How a handful of tech companies control billions of minds every day [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/tristan_harris_the_manipulative_tricks_tech_companies_use_to_capture_your_attention?language=en

Hern, A. (2017, April 18). Netflix’s Biggest Competitor? Sleep. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/18/netflix-competitor-sleep-uber-facebook

Above the Din

In a July 2017 TED Talk, former Google “design ethicist” Tristan Harris pulled back the curtain on an aspect of social media (SM) that we suspect is there, but seem to dismiss. Social media companies have control rooms where dedicated experts work day and night to keep us online, clicking, liking, responding and interacting. Instead of material goods or cash, media giants compete for our attention. They invest heavily into stimulating our use of social media to keep us engaged with them. Like casinos with free drinks and no clocks or windows, social media spaces are psychologically engineered to keep us from pushing away from the table and walking away. They can be similarly unhealthy.

Since much of the content on SM is user-generated, Twitter and the like need us to feel inspired to respond via posts. It is possible to be a passive user of social media, viewing others’ Facebook posts and Instagram pages, but these sites are incentivized to spur us into action. Kitten videos are nice, but they don’t necessarily incite the level of emotion that causes one to voice a public response that will keep the user-to-user ping pong ball in play. Eliciting a heightened emotional state is effective in keeping users actively engaged. Not all of those emotions are positive, but they work.

“Outrage works really well at getting attention.”

Anger causes us to block out other emotions and stimuli. It dominates our consciousness until it is resolved. When it is directed at social media content, the emotion and the content can form a positive feedback loop of ever more consumption. The accessibility and availability of vast volumes of outrageous content have changed our relationship with social media.

I mentioned that Mr. Harris is an “ethicist.” His dire report on how we are being guided down a path of outrage was not delivered without a way out. His call to action boils down to media giants being better stewards of the world-wide conversation. Being the skeptic that I am, listening to Harris’ presentation, I put on my billionaire CEO hat.”Where do my advertising dollars come from if I dial down the outrage,” I asked.

I’m learning how to leverage the massive social media landscape in order to establish learning modes for my 21st century learners. Coming from a traditional teaching role, I’ve noted the transformative effect Sanpchat, et c. have had on attention spans and social lives. I’m concerned that learners will struggle to switch contexts from casual socializing to study or work. My lessons will not be “click bait” or shallow headlines, and I don’t want them to be treated as such just because they arrive via channels that deliver that sort of thing. Blogger Christopher Pappas agrees, and adds that frequent SM users risk “cognitive overload.” Will I need to have a control-room full of engineers helping me to compete for my learners’ attention amid a world full of chatter? Will they be hopelessly distracted by notifications on their phone if that is where my next learning module is accessed?

Mr. Harris asserts that to pull ourselves out of the outrage-loop and return to healthy levels of screen time a few changes are needed:
1. We users need to recognize how vulnerable we are to marketing and persuasion by manipulation-experts who don’t have our best interests at heart.
2. Media companies should be more transparent about how they manipulate the dialogues they host, and
3. A ‘design renaissance’ should occur in which social media spur us to a healthier kind of action, both online and off.

Can it be done?

The Center for Human Technology has some ideas to help us design ‘healthier’ online consumables, for lack of a better word. Check out their Humane Design Guide here.
What do you think? Pick one of Mr. Harris’ three changes above and make a realistic suggestion about how it can be achieved. We’d love to hear from you.

Our Divided Attention

At the end of our lives, all we have is our attention and our time. What will be time well spent for ours? – Tristan Harris

Everything happened inadvertently in front of our eyes. Suddenly we had the possibility of connecting with people we had not seen in years. We could see each other, know what they were doing, share our stories through photos, videos, texts. What could be wrong about it?

I am still surprised to think that everything beautiful about social media has been transformed into danger, distrust, bullying, lack of ethics and a waste of our time … and everything has happened so quickly and so subtly that we did not even realize what was happening.

Harris’s talk is a wakeup call to become aware of what are we wasting our time, our attention and our effort on. On worthwhile things?

via GIPHY

In the last weeks, we have reflected on the dangers that have arisen along with the evolution of technology and especially social media. Harris argues that we must recognize the fact that we are being manipulated and persuaded; that new models of responsibility and transparency must be created for those who are doing that (or will do); and, finally, that we design a new renaissance.

This last argument drew my attention the most. The “renaissance” design that Harris speaks of would help us focus our attention on things that are worth the effort. If we don’t refocus on transcendentally important issues, in whose hands will we be?

Collectively, we must redefine our priorities and act accordingly. Problems such as poverty, hunger, quality of education, gender equity, climate action, peace, and justice, etc. will not fix themselves. They also require our attention and more importantly, our actions.

How should we start? Please, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below!

Connectives: Our brains on technology

George Siemens writes “Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking.” This quote brings up several concerns, but first let me talk about how I connect with the quote.

In my 26 years of life I have seen the rise of technology from Dial up to wifi; from AOL messenger to snapchat. This changes our thinking and our way we deal with the world around us. For example until I received my own smart phone, which was not until my freshman year of college. I would care less what was going on in the greater world around me, other than what I saw in the newspaper and the nightly news. Since having a smartphone I changed to have notifications, popups and internet searches about the most recent news. This hinders the notion and ability to purely live in the present. This like everything has positive and negative effects.

Some of the more negative aspects of this constant connection to the technology we use everyday is a disconnect with the present. we focus on not only the present, but of the future and we have become impatient.

I remember a time when it would take four hours to load a map to use for classwork. This was a nature thing and relatively short for how detailed the map was back in the early 2000’s. Now with the advancement of technology we become impatient at things not loading instantly or in a shorter amount of time.

However hope is not lost, we have some control on how our brains become wired with technology, we can re-set, and press restart on aspects of how our mental processes address technology. This is not easy as we have become addicted to our technology, but being able to unplug for a couple hours everyday, and be cognizant more of the actions and movements that are around us, we can address some of the effects that technology places us in.

Social Media as Community Organizing

I work in a small city of just under 30,000 people. In a lot of senses, it’s a bedroom community, as most people that live there commute to work in one of the much larger cities nearby. The city and residents pride themselves on a very strong sense of community, a vibrant downtown and excellent engagement in causes both local and global. As an example, within my workplace, we have nearly 300 active volunteers per year, which calculates out to an equivalent of approximately 1% of the city’s residents being active in the library, a rather impressive quantity, given that many other causes in town are also well-supported.

I have frequently observed the impact of social media on various causes and information-sharing in the city. I am aware of a minimum of three Facebook groups moderated by local citizens used to disseminate information, share opinions, publicize events, and elicit support for various causes. Various colleagues have joined them as an additional avenue to spread information about library offerings and have an eye on topics of local interest. I subscribe to one of the groups and can think of many times that I have seen its role in shaping public sentiment or garnering attendance for rallies, vigils, or City Council meetings. It can be a dumping ground for people’s negative attitudes, complaints about traffic, bad manners, or local policies. However, it has also been used to get word out about local candidates and why they’re running, as well as campaign events for folks to learn more about them. I’ve seen organizers use it to get carpool arrangements started for more distant marches and rallies, and to share suggestions on how people can comment on upcoming legislation or potential City policies before they are voted on or enacted. Local hot topics include fracking, intergovernmental relations, and some of the local festivals. All of these have plenty of posts by people sharing their opinions with various levels of civility, and also give like-minded folks a place to hear about meetings or other gatherings where they can learn more about or further advance their causes.

We frequently think of social media being used to organize people that are geographically spread, and that is clearly a major impact it can have to unite people that may never meet. It’s interesting to see it also used to streamline communication for people that live in the same place and want to connect in person but may not know about their joint interests or local manifestations of those causes without the medium of these community stream-of-consciousness style conversations.