Each app is competing against the other apps. Only the apps that grains your [[Focus|attention]] continue. Over time, your attention is more and more hacked by these apps. All exist to sell your attention to advertisers. Each one has a team optimizing the attention hacking.
Your digital reputation may affect your opportunities.
People start changing their behavior to get better scores.
As your weaknesses are mapped, you become increasingly transparent.
We must view individual attention as a societal good; and we should see society-wide “joint attention” as, in fact, a Commons, like fresh air or clean water. But unlike air or water, synchronous attention is a manufactured scarcity.
Most of our [[news]] feeds are insular networks made up of people who get their info from the same filter bubble we do.
Your information diet is nearly as important as your food diet. We are what we consume. By excesses to which our hardwired biology and natural tendencies have led us over billions of years of [[Evolution]]. Today’s excess of easy-to-access information will have a drastic an effect on health in the 21st century similar to what excess food had in the 20th century. Unhealthy food costs something financially. Consuming seven hours of pointless information is a lot easier and cheaper than eating thirty Twinkies. It requires conscious effort to make the right long-term healthy choices that may compete directly with our biological urges.
Under pressure to prioritize engagement and growth, technology platforms have created a race for human attention that unleashed invisible harms to society.
Misinformation, conspiracy theories and fake news makes harder understanding our world.
Technology’s constant interruptions and precisely-targeted distractions are taking a toll on our ability to think, to focus, to solve problems, and to be present with each other.
Social Media affects on our happiness, our self image, and our [[Mental Health]].
While social networks claim to connect us, all too often they distract us from connecting with those directly in front of us, leaving many feeling both connected and socially isolated.
Social media platforms are [[Incentives|incentivized]] to amplify the most engaging content, tilting public attention towards polarizing and often misleading content. By selling micro targeting to the highest bidder, they enable manipulative practices that undermine democracies around the world.
Any alternative social media company that grows to a sufficient size will have to embrace the evil tactics used by Facebook and Twitter in order to remain competitive in the market. It’s all about profit for these companies, not about a better society.
In the other hand, if social media companies were doing really bad things, we would hear ex-employees talk about these much more.
You compare yourself with the best possible version of everyone else curated in their feeds.
Social Media companies have incentives to build echo chambers as that’s one of the best ways to create engagement and keep users active.
We need a social network that does not cause divisiveness and negativity that is currently the natural by-product of optimizing for greater engagement.
How can the network [[Incentives|incentivize]] healthy conversations and encourage nuanced [[Resolving Disagreement|discussions]]?