"Internet applications are designed to make you use them compulsively because the more the apps are used, the more revenue they generate for the tech companies[
Greenwald]. But internet apps can reduce your attention span and harm your intellectual capacity.[
Hill] Having captured users' attention, internet applications can be used to manipulate public opinion through targeted advertising[
Madrigal] and biases in what they show in search results, suggestions, feeds and monetization[
Barrett]. Compulsive use of apps is causing mental illness, self-harm[
Chuck] and suicide[
Twenge]. Computer games designed to make users play compulsively are also killing people who play until they drop dead.[
Spragg] There are an increasing number of injuries and deaths from people using their cell phones compulsively while driving or walking.[
Stock et. al.] And tech companies have provided terrorist groups with the use of their compulsion inducing platforms for "'spreading extremist propaganda, raising funds and attracting new recruits'" which has led to the murder of innocent victims.[
Carbone] The tech companies are culpable because their apps are designed to make you use them compulsively in order to generate more revenue. The tech companies have blood on their hands.
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Because many internet applications make money from adverting, they are designed to keep people using them for as long as possible. And they use psychological tricks to produce compulsive behavior[
Harris]. These tricks include: alert notifications and sounds to get you to use the application, hiding the clock so you can't tell how long you've been using the application, tracking streaks to make sure you use the application every day, auto playing videos to grab your attention whether you intended to watch a video or not, and games may use repetitive music to put users in a trance-like state. "
Sean Parker, the founding president of Facebook, said[
Parker]
... The thought process that went into building these applications ... was all about: 'How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?' And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that's going to get you to contribute more content, and that's going to get you more likes and comments.
It's a social-validation feedback loop it's like exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators - it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people - understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.
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God only knows what it's doing to our children's brains.
Chamath Palihapitiya, former Facebook vice president for user growth was quoted in a article in
The Verge[
Vincent]
Chamath Palihapitiya, who joined Facebook in 2007 and became its vice president for user growth, said he feels “tremendous guilt” about the company he helped make. “I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works,”
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“The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works,” he said, referring to online interactions driven by “hearts, likes, thumbs-up.” “No civil discourse, no cooperation; misinformation, mistruth.