Sounds like the lawyer's spinning what any successful business does with trying to acquire customers and serve their needs as though they were dealing drugs (granted, the line can be blurry between things that are simply enjoyable versus that which is more strongly addictive - some people get "addicted" to eating, but we can't really ban food, for example)
This HHHH strategy phrase is made up by these lawyers. It's not like the Microsoft version their mimicking where Microsoft actually said it. It makes the headline misleading like it alleges they said it internally as their strategy.
I hate when people say things like “Google did this” or “Meta did that.” There are actual named humans making these decisions. I want them found and held accountable. As of late these people have more power than ever. A single contributor at a company like Meta can make a change that impacts 0.025% of users (potentially hundreds of thousands of people) with zero notice or oversight, for their own individual gain. Not even to mention the systemic decisions this article describes.
On one hand I totally see your point. It's just disgusting that someone on high position is fully aware that Facebook is about making people addicted to slop and serve them exploitative ads. On the other hand, it is an organizational failure, because in a correctly working organization a single person wouldn't be able to throw shit with such a blast radius.
$META has everything it needs: the best distribution channels on the internet, a massive user base, GPU infrastructure, and an amazing, talented young team. I think $META will succeed.
No person with 'morals' would join this company in 2026, unless with the next RSU cliff, the morality hormone immediately gets triggered when the bank account reaches 7 figures.
I don’t think any company has “morals”. For sure individuals might but a big advantage of the corporate structure is this diffusion of decision making and blame. Anthropomorphizing corporations isn’t helping us get a clearer picture of how they work or why they do what they do.
I'm sure everyone here understands that. But, there's a difference between a company that puts morality and ethics first vs. one that abandons it altogether or even encourages its opposition. I've worked for all three types, and after unwittingly working for scum, I recommend to always check who one's bosses are. In my understanding, I believe Zuckerburg has always operated in opposition to morality.
In my opinion at least, any attempt to intentionally engineer addiction is morally wrong and should be at the very least civilly if not criminally actionable (if it can be proven).
It's mind control. That phrase is often associated with woo woo conspiracy theory, but I don't think that's hyperbolic. If you are engineering addiction, what you're doing is attempting to run a black hat security attack against the human central nervous system to violate a person's will and autonomy. That is the definition of mind control. Properly framed I think it's a form of assault, especially when deployed with deliberate concealment of motive or against children, the elderly, the mentally ill, anyone not strong enough to resist it.
The medium doesn't matter: addictive drugs, slot machines, web sites, social media apps, games. In that list I actually think explicitly labeled gambling stuff like Las Vegas is the least evil since at least in that case it's kind of up front and overt about what it is. I mean, it's a casino. WTF do you think a casino does? Hard drugs are kind of the same at this point. The thing that makes this case so awful is that people genuinely didn't know. Nobody including myself understood just how effective addiction engineering in a digital medium could be, and these companies were secretive about just how hard-core they were getting about studying and engineering this. They hired psychologists. There's stories of studies putting people in FMRI machines. It was a deliberate R&D program with the (secretive) stated goal of addiction.
The next thing important to understand is that businesses are structurally incapable of self-policing something with a profit incentive. I didn't say unwilling. I said incapable. Businesses, like all "corporate" entities (non-profits, governments, etc.) operate with a certain set of constraints, social customs, and rules, and for a business one of those is that they must earn revenue and/or attract investment to survive. If addiction results in revenue, then any business that refuses to engineer addiction will fail.
This is also why regulation of things like child labor, forced labor, safety requirements, etc. are required. If a safe workplace reduces profits than any company implementing a safe workplace loses to those who do not, etc.
BTW this is something a lot of "online Marxist" type anti-capitalists don't understand when they vilify business leaders. A business that doesn't do the profitable thing stops being a business. It's outcompeted by those who do the thing. The only way to stop these things is to universally police them, which levels the playing field and allows businesses who don't do the bad thing to keep operating. It's an instant race to the bottom because a business cannot not race.
So yeah... lots of words but I think this is an important issue and it's good that it's happening. I really hope an example gets made here, or that this at least raises awareness.
I think it's critically important that we start dealing with digital addiction engineering as an issue before the AI funding bubble pops. When that happens all the AI companies will have to look for other sources of revenue. Addiction engineering online became a thing after the dot.com bubble popped for exactly that reason. We already have AI driven addictionware in the form of digital partner apps and such, but if the AI investment gold rush stalls and we have a mass push for revenue among AI companies then with no policing here this will get really really bad.
A final moral to the story, I think, is that science f'ing works.
Like I said, it shocked me to see how much addiction a web site or a mobile app could create. Learning that it was deliberately engineered makes it less surprising.
Science works. When you apply the scientific method to an engineering goal, progress gets made, often dramatic progress. If the laws of physics and the nature of the system you're studying will allow it, you can get so far that the result can be shocking. Look at the hydrogen bomb. Look at aviation, space flight, AI, modern medicine. There's good and bad in there of course cause people do both good and bad things.
Which is why saying "we are going to apply science to make our product more addictive" should be criminal conspiracy. "We are going to apply science to do X" where X is some form of assault should be criminal. "We didn't think it would work that well" is a poor defense because I think at this point we should have learned that science works.
Arguably, that's even more harmful.
Similarly, I get irritated when people frequently almost continuously attribute actions and results to ‘the President’ or such state heads.
No person with 'morals' would join this company in 2026, unless with the next RSU cliff, the morality hormone immediately gets triggered when the bank account reaches 7 figures.
It's mind control. That phrase is often associated with woo woo conspiracy theory, but I don't think that's hyperbolic. If you are engineering addiction, what you're doing is attempting to run a black hat security attack against the human central nervous system to violate a person's will and autonomy. That is the definition of mind control. Properly framed I think it's a form of assault, especially when deployed with deliberate concealment of motive or against children, the elderly, the mentally ill, anyone not strong enough to resist it.
The medium doesn't matter: addictive drugs, slot machines, web sites, social media apps, games. In that list I actually think explicitly labeled gambling stuff like Las Vegas is the least evil since at least in that case it's kind of up front and overt about what it is. I mean, it's a casino. WTF do you think a casino does? Hard drugs are kind of the same at this point. The thing that makes this case so awful is that people genuinely didn't know. Nobody including myself understood just how effective addiction engineering in a digital medium could be, and these companies were secretive about just how hard-core they were getting about studying and engineering this. They hired psychologists. There's stories of studies putting people in FMRI machines. It was a deliberate R&D program with the (secretive) stated goal of addiction.
The next thing important to understand is that businesses are structurally incapable of self-policing something with a profit incentive. I didn't say unwilling. I said incapable. Businesses, like all "corporate" entities (non-profits, governments, etc.) operate with a certain set of constraints, social customs, and rules, and for a business one of those is that they must earn revenue and/or attract investment to survive. If addiction results in revenue, then any business that refuses to engineer addiction will fail.
This is also why regulation of things like child labor, forced labor, safety requirements, etc. are required. If a safe workplace reduces profits than any company implementing a safe workplace loses to those who do not, etc.
BTW this is something a lot of "online Marxist" type anti-capitalists don't understand when they vilify business leaders. A business that doesn't do the profitable thing stops being a business. It's outcompeted by those who do the thing. The only way to stop these things is to universally police them, which levels the playing field and allows businesses who don't do the bad thing to keep operating. It's an instant race to the bottom because a business cannot not race.
So yeah... lots of words but I think this is an important issue and it's good that it's happening. I really hope an example gets made here, or that this at least raises awareness.
I think it's critically important that we start dealing with digital addiction engineering as an issue before the AI funding bubble pops. When that happens all the AI companies will have to look for other sources of revenue. Addiction engineering online became a thing after the dot.com bubble popped for exactly that reason. We already have AI driven addictionware in the form of digital partner apps and such, but if the AI investment gold rush stalls and we have a mass push for revenue among AI companies then with no policing here this will get really really bad.
A final moral to the story, I think, is that science f'ing works.
Like I said, it shocked me to see how much addiction a web site or a mobile app could create. Learning that it was deliberately engineered makes it less surprising.
Science works. When you apply the scientific method to an engineering goal, progress gets made, often dramatic progress. If the laws of physics and the nature of the system you're studying will allow it, you can get so far that the result can be shocking. Look at the hydrogen bomb. Look at aviation, space flight, AI, modern medicine. There's good and bad in there of course cause people do both good and bad things.
Which is why saying "we are going to apply science to make our product more addictive" should be criminal conspiracy. "We are going to apply science to do X" where X is some form of assault should be criminal. "We didn't think it would work that well" is a poor defense because I think at this point we should have learned that science works.