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You haven't been manipulated into buying an umbrella at all, because deciding you'd rather stay dry than wet is a straightforward choice; a product that offers you that choice is a straightforward product which provides a tangible service.

To be manipulated, you'd have to exposed to a constant stream of ads telling you how wonderful umbrellas are and what an unattractive loser you are for not owning one; how desirable people with high status use exclusive umbrellas while most people get by under a wet newspaper; and how you should buy a new umbrella every year because they're constantly improving, and this year's umbrella already has more a billion users worldwide and offers 23% more anti-rain features thanks to the exclusive Umbrella Corporation[tm] lifestyle eco-system. (And now here's a video of attractive people smiling, and of a world-famous umbrella designer talking earnestly about engineering, design, and craftsmanship.)

You'd also see paid testimonials and likes on social media sites. They'd appear to be spontaneous and sincere praise, but in fact they'd be factory farmed and produced to order by unhappy people working in open plan offices paid so little they can barely afford the rent.

And you'd have an umbrella that only worked reliably some of the time, so you'd have to keep considering the purchase of an improved model - in the vain hope you could finally end your constant nagging frustration with umbrella technology.

Worst of all, you'd believe you were making a straightforward umbrella-buying decision entirely on your own initiative, using perfectly objective and rational criteria.

Has facebook done any of that? Did you come to facebook because of an ad, or was it because you wanted to keep in contact with your friends and family? The fact that they are trying to use those social ties to make you look at more ads is what's amoral, not the fact that they sent you an email that doesn't apply to you as a "hook".

The explicit description at one of the Facebook developer conferences I went to was to do things which caused users to stay for longer. I think the word they used was some pleasant-to-neutral term like “compelling content”, but the goal was to switch from “more users” to “longer stays” - and to use psychology to achieve that.

Then there is the games sector. I was only in that sector from 2007 to 2010, but when I left many of them were asking how to make their content “addictive”.

I’d say it’s immoral that Facebook et al have wasted subjective lifetimes of their users’ consciousness by addicting them to whichever drug the brain synthesises to reward the minor and unfulfilling social interactions that it provides (and the reverse, the pain from the fear of missing out).

In standard / common usage, selling and marketing an umbrella to someone is not "manipulation".

Your definition of "manipulate" is not what most people mean in these contexts. Your use of "manipulate" in such a way muddies the waters and distracts from the core issue.

Putting word choice aside, the core issue here is _not_ about people's preferences (e.g. many people don't like to get rained on). Rather, the core issue is about unknown and unwelcome influences, particularly influences that operate on parts of our minds that are hard to combat due to human nature.

Facebook's manipulation of our attention is conceptually related to how casinos trick people into staying longer than they would otherwise.

The point though is that companies act to maximize 'user engagement', a goal which may be at odds with what users actually want to get out of a product or service. Whatever they can do to get just 5% more views or clicks or time on sight is 5% more ad revenue for their investors. Nevermind if that 5% comes from time I'd rather been spending elsewhere and will end up regretting. They incorporate design choices that cause this, whether by autoplaying the next video, implementing a continuous feed, all while controlling exactly how much content they need to show before you finally get sick of it. They are stealing the surplus the promised you.

And suppose you are of psychological steel. Should those who aren't still be exploited? There are entire industries and schools of design whose goal it is to extract as much money as possible from users, take slot machine design for example. (I'd definitely recommend looking up the work of Natasha Schull). Do you consider that practice immoral? Nir's existence is a testament to the fact that product designers use similar techniques

We didn't solve alcoholism by outlawing alcohol, we are only really recovering from that product by creating a culture of respect and social norms, which means we need to critically think about how we're spending our time and the signs of any manipulation as a part of becoming an adult.

Alcohol is outlawed in many contexts, though they vary from place to place. In some (all?) countries, likewise tobacco. These are combined with large scale government advertising campaigns that start in school, which only differ from propaganda in that I think they are true (but then, if they were fake and I’d fallen for it, how would I know? Lots of people in my original country fear the drug Ecstasy, but that government lied - and continues to lie - about the dangers, and the poster-girl of the anti-Ecstasy talks at school died of a water overdose that only happened because of previous, different, bad anti-drugs advice).

Also, there are many ways to fool people that still work even if the victim knows about them, and the pain of being told one has been fooled means every technique the victim knows can (and often will) be rattled off as a fully generic counter-argument to whoever tells them that they have been fooled.

I just want to be clear that society at large has instituted regulations like "You need to be 21 to drink" and "You cannot drink in a public park", but there are no regulations on how much you are allowed to drink, that's where personal responsibility to social norms comes into play.

So you're saying it's ok for the government to manipulate you, but not a company, because their goal isn't a vague idea of societal good, it's to make more money? I find it much easier to understand why a company does X, rather than why the age for drinking is set at 21. I take that understanding with me every time I sign up for any kind of service.

If anything should come out of any of this, it's that personal/private information should be fully controlled by individuals in the same way health information is handled. It shouldn't be so easy to generate huge databases of people and claim ownership over them, and it definitely shouldn't be so easy to use those social ties to create an addiction.

> there are no regulations on how much you are allowed to drink

Counterexample: drink-driving blood alcohol limit.

> So you're saying it's ok for the government to manipulate you, but not a company, because their goal isn't a vague idea of societal good, it's to make more money?

In the right area, sort of (manipulation generally bad but a few things can override the badness) but I would say that governments are (in theory) democratically accountable, whereas business are legally and financially accountable. Yes, people do vote for dumb laws, but in principle that can be undone by another vote, businesses only get in trouble with their shareholders if the government doesn’t limit their behaviour.

While I agree with the point that it would be better if it wasn’t “so easy to generate huge databases of people and claim ownership over them, and it definitely shouldn't be so easy to use those social ties to create an addiction“, I don’t have any long term solutions. At some point the collective footprint of someone’s public statements on the internet is such a database, albeit in the informal sense of the word and spread over dozens of unconnected businesses, and demonstrating that the information has been used to cause addiction is more difficult than demonstrating tax avoidance.

You're missing the static vs dynamic distinction. Facebook can guess with eerie accuracy whether you're about to start a relationship with someone, whether you recently got pregnant, whether you're going through a depressive/manic phase...the list is endless. Facebook changes itself by taking advantage of this information. An umbrella can't do this.

No, but a butler could.

I can't afford a butler, but if I could, then I'd get one. He'd live in my house and know all about me and my personal life; knowing about my personal life would help him do his job better. I wouldn't worry that my butler knew I was in a relationship, or pregnant, and that he changed his behaviour accordingly.

On the other hand, I suppose I wouldn't want a butler who sold information about me to third parties, or used the information to advertise to me for kickbacks. "You have been down recently, sir... perhaps a new Bentley would cheer you up?"

This exactly, the problem isn't the hook method which pretty much every service does to one degree or another, it's the fact that they are combining your personal information with the hook method, that's exploitative and terrible behavior which eventually is recognized as such.

Manipulation had always been there but what's new is that the best minds of a generation are working on exploiting human weaknesses with the help of technology to a new level.

Same for surveillance. It was always there but now it can be done on an absolutely unprecedented level.

> I've been manipulated into liking broadband because it provides the internet faster than dialup.

You weren't manipulated. Manipulating you into buying broadband would entail creating the artificial perception that broadband is faster. If a company produces a product that performs as it is supposed to, and it solves a problem you have that was not artificially created, then you're not being manipulated. Same for umbrellas. Not the same for cars: the auto industry has pretty clearly lobbied for policies that ensure sustained demand for cars as opposed to public transit.

    to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage

This is my definition of manipulation, there is nothing artificial or natural about it.