
Skinner Marketing: We're the Rats, and Facebook Likes Are the Reward (2013) - nwrk
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/skinner-marketing-were-the-rats-and-facebook-likes-are-the-reward/276613/?single_page=true
======
tabeth
I believe capitalism works, however, "bad" actions are not properly punished.
Case and point is the Equifax hacking which should have a company ending
punishment, not a slap on the wrist. Once people and governments start
punishing bad actions commensurate to both the scale of the action and the
_size of the organization_ everything will correct itself.

I feel like a broken record for saying this, but the solution to this problem
along with most social problems is education. A well educated population will
know when they're being taken advantage of and punish the actors accordingly.
It's no surprise that the most effective way to control people is to prevent
them from being well educated.

~~~
intended
If you ever find yourself advocating "education is a solution", you likely
need to re-assess your position.

Education is never a solution, because its practically unsolvable. Here a list
of factors that affect education outcomes.

Child/Student fetal health, maternal health, child nutrition, stimulation,
General health, adult/child stress levels, prolonged illness, availability of
food, water, electricity and security.

Family poverty levels, need to work, familial stability,

Study habits, study training, parental guidance, word use in family
conversation, familiarity with language of education, ability to learn,
availability of time to learn, which builds into whether you picked up the
initial building blocks of the subject and therefore future success.
Propensity to learn, interest in subject.

The list goes on. This is one of the weaker lists I've made, but the essence
of it, is that there are a huge number of variables that can easily break the
ability of a student to finish a subject.

Remember that completion rates for MOOCs are about 7%. That's the result when
you have _voluntary_ , motivated students, _choosing_ the classes they want to
study.

Solving "education", is a proxy for having already solved whatever societal
problem required people to be educated in the first place.

People would love to have the time to take a class on philosophy to enrich
their lives, or a class on logic, on media manipulation.

But if you remember conversations on HN, people constantly look down on the
arts and humanities, such classes are "pointless", you wont get a job.

A non-controversial opinion at time your education system is being valued more
as a treadmill for college, in itself a tread mill so people can get jobs.

The rule of thumb is that any time you find yourself saying "education will
solve it", work backwards, because Education is currently unsolvable.

(and we may not want to solve it - if you could get people trained on a "good"
subject in shorter times than ever before, then you can also train them on
"bad" subjects in shorter times than ever before.)

~~~
ravenstine
I essentially agree with you that "education" isn't really education, but I
don't follow that it's impossible. Practically speaking, I think it's very
unlikely we'll solve education, or solve harmful flaws to the human condition
for that matter, but I wouldn't go as far as to say they're unsolvable. Actual
education has been sufficiently tried in this country. There's definitely a
clear limit to the stupid ape we call the human, but even if we could improve
the average autodidactic or philosophic ability, or even increase the mean IQ
by 5 points, there could be a significant improvement to the health of our
society.

------
lyra_comms
This is what we are trying to rectify with Lyra, a conversation and debate
service which respects the user's attention. Our team is led by a cognitive
neuroscientist working on attention, and we're a nonprofit. You can read more
about our approach at
[https://hellolyra.com/introduction](https://hellolyra.com/introduction) .

------
golangnews
What would a good social network look like? Most of them are used for making
friends, not connecting with existing real world ones, but the interests of
users and platform are not aligned.

Perhaps it would charge high profile users and aim to satisfy readers and
posters, not advertisers or shareholders?

------
fictionfuture
The reality is all this is a result of well done user testing and giving users
more of what they respond to.

That said, cigarettes were the same thing so I think in the future the
solution to "habit forming tech" is simply to create a cultural push back and
potentially regulate.

~~~
agumonkey
Isn't it the same as so many "modern" tech ? mainly local hyper optimization ?

internet got to me to a point that when my line is broken I feel better in
less than a second.

I have an issue, I'm a hoarder, and internet / socnet are an infinite graph to
walk so I have a hard time not walking. Similar to the concept of "not missing
things" (forgot the usual term).

~~~
blfr
FOMO -- fear of missing out.

------
LogicalBorg
"We're the Rats, and Facebook Likes Are the Reward" \- This argument has no
validity. Facebook doesn't even dispense the likes, other users do. It isn't
valid to compare likes to Skinner rewarding rats, because Facebook isn't even
the one dispensing the reward.

~~~
cujic9
Your argument isn't sound. It doesn't matter who gives the rewards, what
matters is the conditions under which the recipient _receives_ the rewards.

> Thanks to Skinner's work, brain MRIs, and more recent research by
> psychologists, neuro-scientists, and behavioral economists, we now know how
> to design cue, activity, and reward systems to more effectively leverage our
> brain chemistry and program human behavior.

Effectively, Facebook designed a system that gives people rewards for giving
people rewards.

~~~
LogicalBorg
I think you are giving far too much credit to a simple like button. It's the
content of the user's post that the person is liking, not the genius of
Facebook.

~~~
cujic9
> I think you are giving far too much credit to a simple like button.

I'm giving credit to the thousands of engineering hours that gave rise to the
simple like button, and weeded out the less addictive alternatives. (Remember
the poke button?)

> It's the content of the user's post that the person is liking, not the
> genius of Facebook.

I agree.

------
vixen99
Yes, and as they used to say 'Queen Anne's dead'.
[https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/5004/where-
does-...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/5004/where-does-the-
idiom-queen-anne-is-dead-come-from)

------
nickthemagicman
Lol you just described Capitalism.

A like is equivalent to a paycheck.

Just instead of an well marketed FB post you have to have a well marketed
employee image.

~~~
erikb
Yes. However I think the definition of Capitalism is interesting. I don't
think other people include "paycheck for work" as defining element of
Capitalism.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
I hate to be "that" guy, but lately I feel like capitalism is a poison on
society. This is an awful situation but it's clearly driven by this massive
amoral machine of capitalism which will be very hard to peacefully bring to a
halt. The problem is systemmic. Has anyone written about better ways of fixing
this shit?

~~~
utexaspunk
I think Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote a thing or two about it...

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Given that their ideas were tried and failed, I hope a more contemporary
option is available...

~~~
goialoq
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Piketty)
is the most mainstream modern option.

------
zappo2938
Tinder is the worst throttling matches to develop emotional dependency. They
are not in the match making business, their goal is getting people to use the
app and it can't be good for the emotional health of the people involved.

~~~
tfolbrecht
Tinder only throttles the want-to-match swipe.

~~~
bogomipz
For people not familiar with the app, what is the "want-to-match swipe" ?

~~~
NegativeLatency
One swipe direction is "yes I like this person" one direction is "no I don't
like this person". In either case it shows you a new person after you swipe.

------
OnePostWonder
Silicon Valley will have its Snowden moment.

[http://www.cultstate.com/2017/10/13/The-Butterfly-
War/](http://www.cultstate.com/2017/10/13/The-Butterfly-War/)

------
blfr
I can understand destructive pursuits but I don't understand this, or grinding
in some RPG, or virtue signalling. When you're chasing money, sex, even drugs,
at least you get _something_.

Here it's nothing. And there is no way to miss that it's nothing after the
fact.

Do you reminisce after writing a well-liked post? After a night spent
levelling up?

~~~
jacek
For a rational mind it is difficult to understand. However, social networks
and many apps activate dopamine pathways in our brains [1]. The same pathway
that activates when reward is "real" (according to your definition). Problem
is, designers and engineers now understand this and use that purposefully to
hook their users. To learn more about this phenomenon I recommend R. Lustig's
new book "The Hacking of the American Mind".

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopaminergic_pathways](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopaminergic_pathways)

~~~
blfr
There's nothing real about a drug high, and I didn't say "real."

The explanation that these fearsome psychology engineers make us refresh
Facebook waiting for a notification sounds a lot like updated neuro-linguistic
programming (they drop an anchor!). Frankly, I don't buy it.

There's something deeper about people so desperately seeking an ersatz of
connection over social networks. This alienation could not have been caused by
Facebook. It just happens to be benefiting from the same trend that brought us
an opioid addiction epidemic and below replacement TFRs.

