
‘Addictive Technology’ Is the New Reefer Madness - pseudolus
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/10/addictive-technology-new-reefer-madness/599746/
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dawg-
The enigma of Nir Eyal continues to evolve and turn in on itself. First he
writes the manual for how to write addictive apps. Then he writes a book
seemingly atoning for his previous work hijacking human psychology.

And now it turns out he's actually trying to say "It's not Facebook's fault,
it's _your_ fault. If you can't stop using an app then it's a failure on your
end". When he knows full well that the playing field is not even, and he was
one of the guys who helped them take the upper hand.

The comparison to Reefer Madness is just silly. Pot is not a product
_designed_ by engineers to encourage the greatest time spent smoking pot as
possible. The most valuable companies on Wall Street in the 50s were _not_ in
the marijuana business. In 2019, the most valuable companies most definitely
_are_ in the attention business. Parents in the 50s were not putting joints in
the hands of two year olds for hours a day. Parents in 2019 are doing exactly
that with ipads and youtube.

