06.20.20
Gemini version available ♊︎Addiction as Big Pharma/Drug Mentality in the Realm of Software
“They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
Summary: The ethical aspects or the negative impacts of software deliberately designed to make users ‘addicted’ are rarely explored in the mainstream; that really ought to change and Richard Stallman has taken an interest in that
TWITTER can be addictive. Once you get accustomed to following some account, for as long as a decade, it’s hard to quit following. Up until recently there were still several Twitter accounts that I followed (over RSS): Snowden, FFII, EPO, Wikileaks and very few more. I wanted to know what they were up to (the acronym “FOMO” is used to described this phenomenon) and thought I’d be out of the loop — an important loop — without syndicating a bunch of ‘tweets’. People tend to be in denial about their addiction until after they’ve recovered from it.
In recent years we got a number of confessions about social control media giants (Facebook in particular) working to make their platforms “addictive”; executives admitted this and they turn to psychological techniques to achieve this. See for example:
- Facebook was designed to be addictive. Does that make it evil?
- Science Shows Why Facebook Is So Addictive
- 5 Psychological Reasons You Are Addicted to Facebook
- ‘Addictive’ Facebook bad for kids, admit insiders
Richard Stallman still says in the front page of his Web site, “send me examples of how proprietary programs have been designed to be addictive.”
Last year we posted links to a number of articles with examples in them. Twitter is among them (infinite scroll principles, adopted also by Facebook and nowadays Reddit). There’s an ethical element or aspect associated with addiction, especially chronic addictions that can lead to bankruptcy (like gambling), depression, various health issues, and social problems (like having no real friends, only virtual ‘friends’ or ‘in-game’ friends). People’s lives can be ruined also by Internet addiction, set aside addiction to computer games and social control media (or so-called ‘phones’). █
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