
Roger McNamee: I invested early in Google and Facebook and regret it - skmurphy
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/08/08/my-google-and-facebook-investments-made-fortune-but-now-they-menace/543755001/
======
skmurphy
Key points:

I invested in Google and Facebook years before their first revenue and
profited enormously. I was an early adviser to Facebook’s team, but I am
terrified by the damage being done by these Internet monopolies.

Facebook and Google get their revenue from advertising, the effectiveness of
which depends on gaining and maintaining consumer attention. Borrowing
techniques from the gambling industry, Facebook, Google and others exploit
human nature, creating addictive behaviors that compel consumers to check for
new messages, respond to notifications, and seek validation from technologies
whose only goal is to generate profits for their owners.

The people at Facebook and Google believe that giving consumers more of what
they want and like is worthy of praise, not criticism. What they fail to
recognize is that their products are not making consumers happier or more
successful. Like gambling, nicotine, alcohol or heroin, Facebook and Google —
most importantly through its YouTube subsidiary — produce short-term happiness
with serious negative consequences in the long term. Users fail to recognize
the warning signs of addiction until it is too late.

~~~
wutbrodo
This line of thinking is very odd to me. As mentioned downthread, there are
plenty of wonderful things you get out of YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc:
music, personal connections, education, exploration, art, etc etc etc. The
dopamine-kick stuff isn't inherent to the product: the efficiency of delivery
just means that that stuff is easier to get. My usage of all these services is
extremely healthy, and none of the complaints people have about addictiveness
resonate with me at all; but I've also never been into idle TV watching, or
junk food, or celebrity gossip. Unhealthy usage is not inherent to the
product.

Advances in food production means that the proportion of people starving and
undernourished is lower than ever. It also means that, for the first time,
excess food is a problem for more than just kings. It would be kind of crazy
to complain that these advances in food production are per se a bad thing
because they enabled obesity. They're just a tool that accelerate both good
and bad uses.

It was already possible to feed the idle, addiction-prone part of your mind
with channel-surfing and People magazine. The Internet has accelerated this
possibility by making everything about access to content more efficient, but
describing efficiency solely as "making access to bad stuff" more efficient
makes no sense.

To me it seems similar to blaming an advance in fuel efficiency for making it
cheaper for bank robbers to get to their targets. It's true, but also missing
the point.

~~~
bamboozled
The hole I see in this idea is that we could have all of the benefits of
Youbute, without "YouTube". All of the benefits of these services can exist
without the predatory privacy invasive behaviour.

~~~
forthefuture
The problem is that there's a ton of value created by the information the
services collect. Delivering more value to advertisers allows more video
creators to make their livings.

If you started your own site there's absolutely no way you could be profitable
competing on both hosting costs and payout to creators.

~~~
remarkEon
Is there? How are we defining value here? Profit?

I broadly agree that creators hugely benefit from these platforms, but that
really doesn't seem to be what they're optimizing on imho. And you basically
admitted they're a monopoly with that final statement.

~~~
forthefuture
It costs money to host video. The volume of advertising you sell supports your
costs, with a fraction going to the content creators. Using information you
gather increases how much advertising you can sell. The more advertising you
sell the more money everyone gets.

Having a low cost infrastructure for video streaming and good advertising
deals is not a monopoly, it's an investment.

~~~
bamboozled
But you can still have advertising, just not targeted and use tactics from the
gaming industry to get people hooked on content.

------
nicpottier
I find the grouping of Facebook and Google interesting because I don't view
them as similar at all. His Google complaints seem to be aimed at YouTube, and
while certainly it could be argued YouTube is addictive, it doesn't seem
anywhere near as insidious or manipulative as say Facebook. It is also an
amazing platform for creators of all kinds, and also unlike Facebook is
creating this incredible resource of freely available, forever archived
videos. I see great public good from that.

On the Facebook front, there I agree 100%.

~~~
kodt
You should see the way young children use YouTube if you doubt that it is
addictive.

~~~
civilian
You should see the way young children use wooden blocks if you doubt that
wooden blocks are addictive.

I watched my nephews, for 20 minutes, simply throw blocks into a box and say
"throw and a miss! Throw and a hit!" It was mindless and ritualistic, and
frankly we should frightened of this wooden blocks trend. Don't get me started
on the game they call "Tag". /s

I feel like the word "addiction" is losing it's meaning. Just because someone
likes something and continues to do it doesn't mean that it's an addiction.

// edit: And really, think about your own experience with video games. Sure,
we all played video games at the expense of our homework and conversation with
my parents. But who could blame me? Middle & high school cater to the students
with room-temp IQs, my parents just rambled about the economy and weather and
the boring things I talk about now, and I lacked any challenge in my life
expect punking noobs in Starcraft.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
You make a really funny analogy, but I hope you see the other side to that
argument.

Kids really might stay up all night playing with "addictive" wooden blocks.
They might spend 10+ hours a day with the blocks. They may have violent mood
swings when you take the blocks away.

But wooden blocks...suck. The types of entertainment kids have had access to
in the past is nothing like what they will have access to in the future.

When I was 6-10, I had an unhealthy relationship with comic books. I stole
them. I read them to the detriment of education. My parents just had to manage
my addiction, because beating it was impossible. And these were just
ultimately just crappy drawings on crappier paper.

When my child is 6-10, he will be able to put on a VR Headset and actually BE
a comic book superhero. If children can be overwhelmed by a wooden blocks
obsession, how the fuck are they supposed to incorporate the type of stimulus
into their lives we are now building for them?

~~~
ashark
At least blocks and comic books have _some_ value for kids' development (and
maybe a lot).

If we're at a point where we consider hours of toy unboxing videos and
watching adults play with toys on a little screen developmentally equivalent
to hours of playing with physical objects or reading comic books, I guess I
give up on this whole humanity experiment.

~~~
remarkEon
I remember as a kid one Christmas playing with the boxes themselves with my
younger siblings, almost forgetting about what was in them. I seriously doubt
my (future) kids will do that and that makes me sad and is a little
terrifying.

------
simmons
_Borrowing techniques from the gambling industry, Facebook, Google and others
exploit human nature, creating addictive behaviors that compel consumers to
check for new messages, respond to notifications, and seek validation from
technologies whose only goal is to generate profits for their owners._

I've been thinking a lot lately about much our industry seems to be trying to
leverage addiction. It's certainly not just Facebook and Google -- it seems to
be happening throughout consumer technology. For example, video games seem
carefully optimized to turn us into Skinner mice, and most television apps
have adopted the annoying "play the next episode unless the user opts out in X
seconds" feature. (Even Plex, although I'm not sure what they're getting out
of it.)

Ultimately, I suppose it's up to the consumer to resist the addiction while
availing themselves of the value provided by these products, in much the same
way that most of us can enjoy and appreciate beer, wine, and spirits without
becoming alcoholics. But thinking about these things is making me reconsider
what sort of projects I'd like to work on.

EDIT: Obligatory Paul Graham article on the subject:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html)

~~~
bbctol
I'm reminded of Clay Shirky's talk/essay (wish I could find a link, but it
doesn't seem to be on his website any more) about the tremendous consumption
of gin (and other drugs) during the Industrial Revolution as a way to deal
with the changing world and cognitive surplus of extra time. My hope is that
we're in a transitional period when it comes to the internet; we'll become
more and more aware of how to use the internet responsibly and regulate
ourselves individually or communally to use it for its greatest benefit. But
we're in the midst of the Great Binge right now, playing with technologies
that have massive psychological effects without considering their long term
impacts, giving people what they want in the short term while really reshaping
culture, society, and what it means to be a person in the long term.

In my more pessimistic/imaginative moments, I feel like after the coming
apocalypse the internet will be banned, Butlerian Jihad-style; long-range
communication technologies only for the elite in strictly regulated contexts,
because too much access for the individual causes addiction and madness. To be
clear, I don't think this is a _good_ outcome (as with the Industrial
Revolution, technology has huge long-term benefits if the terrible costs can
be overcome) but I think there needs to be a really serious change in how we
think about communication technology, and part of that means acknowledging its
harms.

~~~
Yen
You may be thinking of his book by that same name.
[https://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Surplus-Technology-
Consumer...](https://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Surplus-Technology-Consumers-
Collaborators/dp/0143119583)

It looks like it's also summarized as a TED talk (I've not seen it)
[https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_cognitive_surplus_will_change_the_world)

------
keebEz
I haven't used Facebook in a long time, deactivated my account. I had 2 factor
auth on with my phone and they just pinged me twice, back to back, yesterday
from their 2 factor auth number asking me to reactivate.

Spamming me from a 2 factor auth number to use your product is a new low I've
never encountered elsewhere.

~~~
throwaway91111
Text STOP and report them if they continue.

------
nayuki
Personally speaking, Google and Facebook provides me with useful and timely
information. Life was more inconvenient before these companies were around.
Yes, they introduce some of their own new problems, but I would rather not
return to the pre-G/FB days. It would be best if future companies and products
learn lessons from the current situation and build even better information
platforms.

~~~
anindha
Initially with cigarettes, society only focused on the positive aspects and
even after 50 years people still smoke.

Once a company gets going, even if it is discovered there are long term issues
with their products, they will be hard to compete against.

~~~
wutbrodo
> Initially with cigarettes, society only focused on the positive aspects and
> even after 50 years people still smoke.

What were these? Just the stimulant effect of nicotine?

~~~
skmurphy
Yes for people with ADD cigarettes enable focus and productive work. Much
stronger and more effective than coffee.

------
adventured
> Facebook and Google — most importantly through its YouTube subsidiary —
> produce short-term happiness with serious negative consequences in the long
> term.

He says that and then proceeds to provide absolutely nothing to back up such
an extraordinary claim (emphasis on the serious negative + long-term part).

This article reeks of some terrible combination of nanny state
authoritarianism and trite moral lecturing about proper use of one's time
(something that was more common a century or more ago when the US was
overflowing with lecturing about how to live a 'proper' life).

Want to know why people are spending 50 minutes per day on Facebook? Because
for those people it's better than the alternative, their lives are devoid of
anything better to do with that time (specifically the person doesn't want to
do anything else with that time, after all it's their free will choice).
That's the same reason those same people were previously watching four or more
hours of TV each night (which they frequently pay/paid a lot of money to do).
They want to watch hours of tv, they want to spend 50 minutes on Facebook -
who are you to tell them how to live?

Twitter, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Kik, Viber, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, email,
text messages, etc. People want to hyper socialize, you can think it's
unhealthy if you like, you still don't get to determine how people live and
you never will.

------
anindha
I wouldn't lump either Google or Youtube with Facebook.

I signed up for Youtube Red, their commercial free subscription. I fill my
subscriptions with topics I want to learn more about. It is easier to curate
content on Youtube than Facebook.

I would pay Facebook $2-5/month not to show me advertisements.

~~~
newscracker
> I would pay Facebook $2-5/month not to show me advertisements.

I'd expand that beyond ads alone, to have the payment prevent tracking,
profiling, "filter bubbling", and sometimes emotional manipulation
experiments. [1] But that model won't scale, and it wouldn't offer Facebook
growing value over time either.

[1]:
[http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28051930](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28051930)

~~~
anindha
Why wouldn't it scale? It is the same strategy that Apple uses: build a
compelling base product, and then sell additional services.

You could still have a free service that displays ads.

~~~
ubernostrum
Apple's successes have generally not involved a default position of "free but
ad-supported". For example, the iTunes store is a massive success for Apple,
but didn't begin with free downloads supported by embedded ads in the music
(which is what other music services have done). Instead they said "here it is,
$0.99 per track".

Apple's track record of not needing to track me or sell my personal
information to prop up its business models, because they launch products that
have real "get the end users to pay money for it" business models, is one
reason why I stick with their products.

------
eduren
So then liquidate your shares in both and donate the money to charity maybe? I
sincerely doubt he regrets making millions.

------
placebo
Show me one groundbreaking technology that wasn't also used to the detriment
of humanity. As long as there are shitty human traits, there will be shitty
use of new technology. The only question is whether good will outweigh the
bad. Just as with nuclear technology, it is still too early to tell whether
humanity will be wise enough to handle its own intelligence.

------
em3rgent0rdr
I don't like the lumping of Facebook with computer games in general. A "one
more turn" experience in a good game is something I genuinely want.

------
diego_moita
> Like gambling, nicotine, alcohol or heroin [...] produce short-term
> happiness with serious negative consequences in the long term

Same applies to Big Macs, pizza, slushies, Cheetos, TV, seating, laziness,
political pundits, marijuana, ...

In the end it is all about caveat emptor: is up to the customer to decide.

~~~
defined
> Same applies to Big Macs, pizza, slushies, Cheetos, TV, seating, laziness,
> political pundits, marijuana, ...

> In the end it is all about caveat emptor: is up to the customer to decide.

In a balanced world, where choices are relatively evenly spread, this may be
true.

In a world where the number of harmful choices far exceed the number of
healthful ones, and the harmful ones are much more profitable (and so promoted
more heavily), free choice becomes a different proposition.

However much willpower, intelligence, and savviness we _think_ we have, we get
tripped up by our firmware defects, even when we _know_ they are there and try
to be wary[1].

Deliberately exposing ourselves to proven brain hacks and thinking we are
immune and have real choices is ... inadvisable.

Anyone who is diabetic (or simply overweight) and tries to buy or eat food
that is not harmful to the pancreas will appreciate how eternally vigilant one
must be to avoid the cleverly hidden food label traps, and how choice is
manipulated, cynically and incessantly, by the US food industry.

Extrapolate this to most US industries, and re-evaluating "choice" may be a
depressing task.

[1]: Thinking: Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

EDIT: typo

------
DonnyV
Of all companies to worry about Google and Facebook are at the bottom of my
list. How about we worry about Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Bank of America,
Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, etc. You know the companies that actually can affect
our lives and mold politics.

~~~
ImSkeptical
Google is what people use to get information. Facebook gives people news. Both
of these companies could have a large impact on our lives and politics.

------
cestith
Oh, to be sorry about the billions I've made...

------
aw3c2
Invest in indieweb and similar _good_ developments then?

------
alexashka
Roger should read a couple of books or travel outside his rich 1% oasis where
people spending their free time on facebook/youtube is an issue.

Without realizing it - his short sightedness is exactly the root of the
problem he's complaining about.

~~~
adventured
Absolutely correct. For the other ~99% of humanity, acquiring access to these
digital tools has been a massive leap forward in _all_ regards. Whether you
were stuck in a small town in Oklahoma, born into a family in Bangalore
earning $20 per month, or millions of scenarios around the globe that are in-
between. McNamee seems to have no idea how the rest of humanity actually lives
and what access to Internet-based information, messaging or media has made
possible in terms of dramatic life improvement.

~~~
wutbrodo
Even for 1%ers, there are people mature enough to enjoy the benefits of these
services without falling prey to abusing them. You can abuse anything that
feels good: TV, junk food, tabloids, etc etc.

~~~
jhayward
To equate a susceptibility to addiction with immaturity is a severe error
which will prevent you from ever dealing with addiction, in yourself or
others, in a rational and realistic fashion. It is not about moral character,
or immaturity, or lack of Godliness. It is a disease process with roots in
biology and genetics.

Also, everyone is susceptible to manipulation of their dopamine reward system,
no matter how robust. The impact of effect varies from person to person.

------
RichardHeart
Give people what the should want, and make them want it, not what they
shouldn't want, but do.

------
ne0free
Author is more like wannabe pus __... Give me that money if you dont want

------
johnvonneumann
Agree wholeheartedly with the entire article. Gotta cringe when you get to the
end though, and you get blasted with "Top 3 Dog Pics You Have To SEE To
Believe!!!", ironic.

