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Former Google/Facebook/Mozilla Employees Will Fight Addictive Technologies (qz.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Quartz:
A new alliance made up of former Silicon Valley cronies has aseembled to challenge the technological Frankenstein they've collectively created. The Center for Humane Technology is a group comprising former employees and pals of Google, Facebook, and Mozilla. The nonprofit launches today (Feb. 4) in the hopes that it can raise awareness about the societal tolls of technology, which its members believe are inherently addictive. The group will lobby for a bill to research the effects of technology on children's health... On Feb. 7, the group's members will participate in a conference focused on digital health for kids, hosted by the nonprofit Common Sense.
The group also plans an anti-tech addiction ad campaign at 55,000 schools across America, and has another $50 million in media airtime donated by partners which include Comcast and DirecTV.
The group's co-founder, a former Google design ethicist, told Quartz that tech companies "profit by drilling into our brains to pull the attention out of it, by using persuasion techniques to keep [us] hooked." And the group's web page argues that "What began as a race to monetize our attention is now eroding the pillars of our society: mental health, democracy, social relationships, and our children."
The group also plans an anti-tech addiction ad campaign at 55,000 schools across America, and has another $50 million in media airtime donated by partners which include Comcast and DirecTV.
The group's co-founder, a former Google design ethicist, told Quartz that tech companies "profit by drilling into our brains to pull the attention out of it, by using persuasion techniques to keep [us] hooked." And the group's web page argues that "What began as a race to monetize our attention is now eroding the pillars of our society: mental health, democracy, social relationships, and our children."
Now give me your money, you crooks, and get lost.
The discussion about the addictive and manipulative effects of social media has started long before Clinton considered (officially) becoming president. The topic was hot in 2014 (if I recall correctly) and may have been before that.
If you check Google scholar the first research in that area is from 2010. So this started with Obama.
the Google + team how they made their product so non-addictive.
Then start going after their former companies as well.
Any of these guys trying to jump on the anti-addictive train now are just sleazeballs trying to profit from both ends of the trend.
Much like Mozilla (and formerly Netscape before them), they deserve to be financially ruined as a reminder to others that even in business you must act morally and justly...
Who am I kidding. These guys are going to make millions, maybe more, as a non-profit, claiming the moral high ground. Once they've gotten enough they might get some gigs as independent speakers during their twilight years, while going on fancy cruises and acting like haughty self-important assholes. It is the way of the world and the way of life.
Short of a change in both nature and nurture of the 96 percent, there will be no change in the actions of the people mentioned in TFA. Snake oil or virtual opiate salesmen they are all.
captcha was 'jerking'. Like 'I was jerking, because they'd left me with my schlong in one hand and my empty wallet in the other.'
Help fighting facebook by posting memes and sharing them with your friends.
Best of luck to these people on this worthwhile cause and I hope they get lots of help and cooperation from people and from the companies that need to change. I know Zuck has acknowledged it's a problem, however I worry that it's only because he wants FB to avoid being regulated by the government.
When I'm thinking about humane technology, the first thing I think about is how I can hammer it into the undeveloped minds of children. Double plus good.
I get a real thrill when I create something really awesome.... You know that feeling... :) That Coding feeling... sometimes its all you can think about... you bump into walls when you got your mind set on a problem... lol Is that Bad?
[($)]
Only if you convince him to trade his house for your cell. What prison are you at?
Actually no, there is tons of evidence this goes back to the 50's or before.
It's like with the banks. You've got these talented and nerdy characters that first work for a big bank, ripping off people in legal ways, and then when they've made a lot of money they purify themselves by going to work for an organisation which monitors the banking system. I don't know if I should condemn them, they're not less moral than other people, but they're certainly no moral guides.
... they care about things. Better late than never. Unfortunately repairing the damage would take an enormous amount of concerted efforts by parents, teachers, and industry, which I unfortunately doubt will happen. The attention grabbers (freemium games and social media as examples) are the crack cocaine of the current generation and one can only hope that the next generation learns from it.
What I wonder is whether two generations down exposure to these attention grabbers will highly inversely correlate with the family financial status, similarly to obesity, drug abuse, and dropout rates. My conjecture is that families living in poverty will not be able to push kids off the devices, while others recognize the impact on mental health of their kids and limit the exposure.
A fucking what? Is that what people do when they fail the exam to be UX facilitator?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Pfft, try having an actual addictive technology. Like the Tasp, or the cyberpunk internally implanted cocaine replicator (or symbiote). Having an option to do something, in this case something very trivial like posting in Facebook, does not make that something addictive.
"The children have to learn about TekWar sometime."
Google should withdraw their for cigarettes for children campaign app YouTube kids... and stop advertising towards them.... simple...
.. in the name of piss
Who are these virtue signalling assholes to say that social media is harmful to willing users. Moral complex much? Just because they are feeling guilty about contributing to the creation of modern social platforms doesn't give them the right to force their opinion down the throats of millions of users who seem perfectly happy to use said platforms to communicate with each other. This is sounding a lot like the bullshit that third wave feminists are doing to half the population.
Remember Douglas Engelbart? Apart from the famous "mother of all demos" there was his philosophy which loosely says that technology should help boost IQ not subvert or replace it, as has largely happened.
The cause is people being sheep too stupid, too inexperienced, or too lazy to critically think, and thus perfectly rubes to be fleeced.
Until the masses choose to stop being pawns in intellectually or amorally superior people's games of control and profit, they will never be able to overcome the shackles they willingly place upon themselves.
Addiction is not itself the entire problem. We are addicted to many things that are good. Like oxygen. Or food. Or love.
I'm all for not getting people hooked on things that harm them (like Facebook or Reddit etc). But in the process we should not ruin the good parts of technology either! Otherwise we have created harm to fight harm, as is so typical for us still-in-the-dark-ages humans.
Nowadays, it has become far too fashionable, to obsess over a nostalgic view of a better past (that never existed) and over minimalism, due to everybody being so ridiculously afraid of the world that it must be considered a mental illness. And this very much has the smell of that.
Let's create a win-win here, OK?
Whenever Sen. Ed Markey (D-Salem 1680) lets fly on some science/tech subject, he is invariably dead wrong, and the best course of action is to do the opposite on whatever issue he is spouting about this time. I have never known my personal Markey Index to fail.
First of all, the headline on this article is silly. What are Silicon Valley manufacturers supposed to do - intentionally make their products less attractive to consumers? The linked article focuses on 'tech addiction' as being the problem, and we have been here before. I have been around long enough to remember when tech addiction was phrased in the press as "teenagers" talking for hours on the old black plug-in wall telephone. Young people were offered this new mechanism for keeping in touch when they were not physically together, and they embraced it. Over time, telephony was integrated into the general culture and became part of the human background.
Then there was the time when television was going to make zombies of us all, with nobody stepping outside ever again, and the rise of cars not just as competition for public transit, but as a place for "teenagers" to Have Sex. Note the theme developing here?
So now that "teenagers" have discovered the smartphone this time, it has enabled a fad for social media. Though the idea that we would all drop everything to become addicted to Facebook is already dated, pearls are still being clutched over the possibility that some social medium will become mental Fentanyl. But now that Markey is involved, I know that can't happen.
How about encouraging good parenting? Lot of the problems these people created was a direct result of addictive technology. But it also created a connection for bullying, and other bad behavior. But a lack of parenting to monitor this behavior and limit technology addiction is more about bad parenting. Giving kids a Facebook user account in grade school or even a $800 smartphone that you do not monitor as a parent is certainly a prime contributor to kids abusing technology. How about the other gorilla in the room gaming, tv consumption, or a lack of real social interaction. We have a bunch of young people who can't function face to face with people. Everything is done by technology. But are people who embraced this previous good choices for stopping it? I seriously doubt it.
remove all traces of internet from your home, cancel your mobile internet subscriptions, shutdown your router and wifi access points!
now enjoy your new addictive-free life and go watch some TV.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
So is this the start of the tech #metoo movement? Spend years agreeing to doing things to get ahead in your career, then once you get established now turn around and complain about how you were used?
Instead of your draconian thoughts, maybe we could talk about educational initiatives.
Pupils could be taught about the risks of games and the social networking stuff.
After all, Game Addicts are a very real group of people. And they require clinical treatment to get off their "existence in the cyber-game-world".
That does not mean we must outlaw games or facebook. It just means we should be aware of the problem. Awareness is the first step to fixing issues.
Add some rules to the router to limit access to one hour per day per user. That should be a serious aid to lots of teenagers.
If only we had a Ministry of Truth, then these evil Rooskies could never muddy our purified information streams with their pesky truths.
We would still believe Saddam Hussein was a chummy of Osama bin Laden and he was sitting on a pile of half-ready nukes and evil vials. We would have a Good Conscience that we removed Hitler 2.0 and saved the world from armageddon.
Now these evil Rooskies proved it was all lies by GWB, Israel and the Saudis. How dare they to create these divisions in our Civilization !
And didn’t a large number of people from the tech industry work for the Obama administration, or at least were consultants?
If they're creating an alternative that is less addictive, they've already lost since investors will see even lower engagement on their platforms versus their existing competition
will be provisioned with a special donor home page where they can upload photos of themselves, friends, and pets, and keep a journal of how their struggle to stay away from addictive web technologies. These, in turn, can be "liked" by other CHT donors.
Don't bite the hand that feeds you
An addicted mind, when going through withdrawls is susceptible to finding another addictive substance.
There is also no doubt that some facebook users are also addicted to various addictive substances, as well as to social media use.
When the addictiveness is "turned off" any mind that has passed from purely elastic into semiplastic-rigid is going to have an unmet hunger. I can't make myself believe that there are going to be "lifelong effects" that "neuroplasticity" no longer applies to.
The US has had a "zombie apocalypse" about once every 5 years for the last 20 years, starting with Crystal Meth, then oxycodone, then Heroin, then Fentanyl. Every other "apocalypse" is perpetrated by big pharma, while the alternate cycles are by big syndicates. We are just starting to get onto the downhill slope of Fentanyl, which means we have 2 years to get to the bottom, where the next mega-addictive "zombie apocalypse" will reveal itself.
It is very believable that a decent chunk of the folks who are socially addicted but not chemically addicted will be going through a time of "junking" and will be a likely target/victim demographic. There are a billion users, right?
Whatever solution is proposed, it should be tiered, and should have intrinsic monitoring/flagging because it is going to be a very leading indicator for the onset and nature of the next super-drug epidemic.
-EngrStudent
I have one question: Are they going to invite James Gosling?
We are celebrating the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelly's book this year: Frankenstein is the doctor who created the monster, so they (Silicon Valley) created the technological Doctor Frankenstein? Or they created a technological monster? Just for clarity...
Aseembled? We don't need to steenkin' aseemble!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
A lot of this criticism of changes to technology affecting our day-to-day lives comes from "enlightened" individuals who assume that others are too stupid to know what's best for themselves or have any self control. This is not that that different from people, both liberal and conservative, who assume that single moms, who collect welfare welfare, don't know how to properly use the money, or are too dumb or uneducated to do so. "Don't give that homeless mom $5 for gas, she's going to buy Newports with it." It's patronizing. It's disgusting.
.... how these kids that grew up with an ipad glued to their face turn out.
give money
I stand corrected; I've thought for a long time now that social media had become cancerous spontaneously, now I see it's cancerous by design. Time for some Digital Chemo.
and now it's time for the parasites involved to make a shitload off anti-addiction
These technologies are not addictive. Anyone who says so is an asshat.