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Comment by ub | Hacker News Reader

Good thread here that provides a counter-balance. https://twitter.com/nireyal/status/1443882540868063241?s=21

> Good thread here that provides a counter-balance. https://twitter.com/nireyal/status/1443882540868063241?s=21

By the author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Eyal:

> In 2014 Eyal published his first book, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, which became a Wall Street Journal best seller.[12][13] The title reflects Eyal's idea of the "hooked model", which aims to "build products that create habit-forming behavior in users via a looping cycle that consists of trigger, an action, a variable reward, and continued investment."[14]...

> Eyal has spoken out against proposals to regulate habit-forming technologies, arguing that it is an individual user's responsibility to control their own use of such products.[2]

Somehow I'm not surprised someone like that would be writing desperate yet underwhelming apologia for Facebook.

Is there something specific about Eyals take that you disagree with?

Yep "my advice to parents is only give kids access to tech they're ready for" There is no metric to check if the kids a re ready for, I doubt that most adults are ready for the psychological effects of social media. This is too easy a way to offload the entire responsibility onto the parents, while the companies that make billions from it are off the hook. It's like blaming smokers because tobacco companies use addictive additives.

Someone actually including links to the raw information (transcripts, slides, etc) is to me the more trustworthy source. I've been misled a hundred times by mainstream media orgs when they don't actually include the raw data (links to studies, transcripts, links to a place the person they are writing about could respond) even if they definitely could, I've been mislead maybe twice by individuals who actually cite their sources in a manner I can look up.

Edit: and indeed it seems that a media organisation has mislead me yet again, declining to mention things like the 11 other metrics which Instagram was said to improve.

The person writes a book about hijacking human psychology for more clicks and then goes on to state how it’s our responsibility to control our use.

What does he want us to do, re-wire our brains on demand?

Any given platform in Big Social has millions it can throw on tuning its GUI and algorithms to increase engagement—and they do, seeing as that directly translates into advertising revenue. Then, each user has to face all of this machinery alone, often exhausted and/or sleepy, at home, defences lowered. I think it’s wishful thinking to expect majority of users to be able to stay vigilant at all times.

Neither do I think we should “regulate habit-forming technologies”, though. That really smells of addressing a symptom and of government micro-management. Sure, we can try regulating those behemoths into acting altruistically, pass laws, fund departments dedicated to monitoring of habit-forming technology usage—but inevitably lawmakers will be lobbied by big tech, departments will be understaffed, regulations wouldn’t keep up with the new tech, loopholes will be found and exploited, corruption will occur, and this all will drag on… while the business model would find its way.

Which I think is the root cause: the business model. It should never have been possible at such scale. Any platform this size that survives off advertisement money either exploits its users, loses to the next competitor that does, or—in what’s possibly the worst outcome—becomes a strongly government-regulated (and by implication government-approved) almost-monopoly. The stark misalignment of the interests, unique to this industry, effectively makes the purported service provider (can it even be called that if the service is free, though?) an adversary from end user’s frame of reference.

This is like saying some person can not quit eating sugar because it "hijack human psychology". Or anything similar. So I suppose ban sugar. A "re wired brain" can still stop using it, it only takes more willpower.

> What does he want us to do, re-wire our brains on demand?

He wants us to get hooked on his deliberately addictive products, but blame ourselves for it instead of him.

In this case it'd be "blame the parents", according to his tweets -- he said the parents "only give kids access to tech they're ready for".

But how are the parents going to know how Instagram affects their kids.

I know from experience that it's not that easy also for highly educated and well meaning parents to know that much about how their kids feel and precisely what causes those feelings (Instagram or something else?)

He also wrote Indistractible, a book about how to create healthy habits and not get Hooked on all the stuff he talked about in his first book.

Ultimately you’re responsible for your own life. The government isn’t going to save you.

Of course, government wants you to think they’re going to save you, and they’ll happily take all the power over your life that you care to give them.

Good context, but it would be better if you could refute his take instead of attack his past.

There is no apologia, there are many other habit-forming products we can use, television, sugar, others are used by children in many places and they self regulate.

How is this not the first comment

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