Lets rewrite "keep you scrolling" as an inexact colloquial English expression that parses down to "spend time on site", and what they really mean to express: "form the daily habit".
Whether it is passively watching hands free a la TikTok or being prompted to press a like button, post text, or smoke a cigarette and regardless of the trigger - so long as you don't forget the thing exists and come back to it every day profits go up.
You're just describing the basics of business but framing it to be nefarious? People who make a product, generally want it to be used as much as possible. It's why newspapers have crosswords and tv shows have cliffhangers. It's a problem when you want it to happen over the wellbeing of the users, so unless you think getting people to communicate with their friends and families is as bad as smoking, it doesn't seem to be the same thing.
It reminds me of that Key and Peele sketch where Peele described robbing a bank by working for them every day for 40 years
Facebook thinks its pretty bad: https://www.theverge.com/2021/9/29/22701445/facebook-instagr...
I don't know that it is worse than cancer. Lets hope not. Strange yardstick.
"We know Facebook executives believe that the company has positive overall benefits for the world"
And it was you that originally brought up cigarettes
Please don't take things out of context. The authors really actually are claiming that Facebook knows it is harmful and knew all along - disagree with them if you want but don't rewrite their position.
It's true for things that have a recurring revenue, and most of the time it's at the expense of the actual purpose of the product.
We take it for granted with social media, but imagine an email client doing the same and adding some random content between emails to keep you more engaged. Would you use it?
BTW, here is a cool game for you to take your mind off things, please enjoy thoroughly:
https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
Edit: please note before above reply was edited to 'No' it literally said that what I wrote is 'pretty much accurate'.
It's just been a fad to be concerned about it. That's basically passed now, and the next few fads are already pretty mature.
But hey at least it didn't drink the blood of all humanity, what's done is done. We should move on, you are correct.
Although, on second thought, it did spur those new next fads and set a precedent. And they do seem to be improving on the original in habit forming. It is also attempting to generate a new one to ride to a higher water mark and to be completely honest I'm not sure all those posts and things it prompted people to do en masse were beneficial to society overall..
Maybe there's some sort of lesson to be gleaned here.
Building a product that people for less time per day on average than TikTok, Youtube, Snapchat is "drinking blood"?
I think you should take a step back and evaluate if it's really as bad as you think it is.
Firstly, that is despite your best efforts and not for lack of trying.
Secondly, as we established, whether it is 5 minutes or 5 hours, the key is the formation of the habitual use.
Thirdly, the 'drinking the blood of humanity' is about the Paperclips game. Even if you've played it before here is that link again to rejigger your memory: https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
Please do make sure to play it all the way through to understand the reference. A bit of a time commitment but really not as bad as you think it is.