
The Great Attention Heist - prostoalex
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-great-attention-heist/#!
======
harryf
Strikes me that the ability to focus and direct ones own attention will (or
already has) become a new form of class divide; those who can concentrate and
those who can't. And it will likely have much different boundaries than
earlier class divisions like wealth - in fact the wealthy are more likely to
struggle given greater access to a wide range of digital products.

~~~
colmvp
It reminds me of Cal Newport's book Deep Work, where he argues those who can
deliberately focus in the 21st century and actively deny themselves from being
distracted (scheduled e-mail reading, banning Slack, only reading news certain
times of the day) and go deep in subject matters will have massive advantages
in the knowledge economy. The open office trend certainly hasn't helped. One
of my friends who is a ML coder says he'll get 4x done in a single day at home
compared to going to work where he gets bombarded by conversations.

After reading many books related to apps and attention (e.g. Hooked!,
Irresistible), I elected to give up using Facebook, Instagram, and put heavy
restrictions on my habit of going to Reddit/NYTimes/News Websites.

And I'll print things from the web so that I can concentrate on it without
distraction in a quiet room with no digital distractions.

When I was younger, I probably called Knuth a luddite for abstaining from
e-mail all the way back in the 90s. But wow, my opinion has done a full 180
over the 2010s.

~~~
cdubzzz
Another thing I did recently - shut off all alerts on my phone other than text
messages and Telegram (both of which are pretty rare in my case). Before doing
that I would get alerts from my personal email, a family email and multiple
work emails. Now I get hardly any alerts and already feel much more productive
throughout the work day because these things aren't catching my eye/ear so
often. It's really interesting.

~~~
christophilus
My phone spends 99% of its time either off or in silent mode. I turn it
off/down during work hours so I can focus, and then I forget to turn it back
on/up. It annoys the crap out of my friends / family, but it's worth it. I use
it as an answering machine, GPS, and casual web browser.

What I _haven 't_ figured out how to do is do the same thing with work
communications (Slack et all). Since I work remotely, it's important that I
have a virtual office door that people can knock at. The problem is that if
you too often have your door closed on Slack, people complain that you're
never available. If you have your door open too often (the default), you
always have this nagging feeling that you're going to be interrupted soon, so
you may as well not start on anything that requires focus.

^^^ Does anyone here work remotely and have a good solution for this?

~~~
tomjen3
Have the door closed during certain hours (slack has a dnd mode, which can be
overridden if it is important) then people will learn to contact you during
those times, especially if you down prioritise those who accept the system.

You are going to catch some slack, offset that by producing more/better than
anyone.

~~~
tomjen3
Accept the system -> abuse the system.

------
whitten
"Do not feed the monsters. Some are wandering thought forms, looking for a
place to set up house. Some are sent to you deliberately. They come from
arrows of gossip, jealousy or envy–and inadvertently from thoughtlessness.
They feed on your attention, and feast on your fear." \- Joy Harjo, Conflict
Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems (via dukeofbookingham)

~~~
hi41
Rightly said. Bitterness and jealousy do occupy one's being and then there is
nothing left to give.

------
onion2k
Do people really click more ads the longer they spend on Facebook? It feels
like an unreasonable assumption to me. Clicking on an advert takes you away
from the app, so if you design an app that people never want to stop using
then they're never going to click an ad. The 'ideal' (for Facebook, not for
users of Facebook) is an app that people want to use enough to be aware of an
ad that's displayed on the page, but that _isn 't_ compelling enough for them
to want to stay on the page rather than click on the ad to go wherever it
takes them.

Facebook would maximise their profit by tailoring the application to be
something that people want to log in to as regularly as possible but not to
stay on for very long so they're compelled to click away after a seeing an ad.
Maybe that's what Facebook have done, but when you hear about users spending
hours a day scrolling through their timeline on there it doesn't seem that
way.

~~~
aninhumer
Ads aren't just about click-throughs though. If someone is scrolling endlessly
and seeing adverts every few minutes, that's still influencing them. Possibly
more so because they're in a comfortable cycle of absorbing snippets of
information, and don't appraise it critically.

~~~
jclardy
Yes, exactly. Click-throughs are great and easily measurable, but showing a
product name/image in the context of a user seeking content has value in
itself.

------
baxtr
Oh dear HackerNews, how dearly I love thou, but how many hours of me life has
ye taken already? I’d rather not know

~~~
colmvp
The difference that I justify for using HN over a lot of other aggregators in
the quality of the content tends to be much higher. I still have a large
backlog of repos and writeups that I'd like to study, all found from
submissions on HN.

~~~
marcosdumay
> I still have a large backlog of repos and writeups that I'd like to study,
> all found from submissions on HN.

:)

I have one too. The relevant question is, are those things relevant for your
work and projects? If not (that's my case), there isn't much difference.

~~~
dnate
There is. Watching memes all day is way less productive than reading about
some obscure processor bug, or doing a tutorial in the newest functional js
dialect.

------
remir
We haven't seen nothing yet. Smartphone addiction is a thing, but at least you
can put your phone in your pocket on silent and go on with your day.

But AR lenses are coming and will be the next big thing in my opinion. Imagine
being immersed in this semi-virtual world all day long. Imagine being a child
and grow up in a world where these things are ubiquitous. Imagine what this
will do to their attention.

~~~
fortythirteen
Imagine the world a hundred years from now, where almost everything is
presented as augmented reality, and where someone who doesn't have permanently
augmented vision is seen as an outsider, much like the Amish today.

Think about nothing being sold with a color or pattern anymore, because you
can just customize it to whatever you want in your AR view. Think about
products not having any sort of printed imagery, because it's pointless when
animated digital overlay overrides it anyway.

Think about being one of those outsiders who sees an entire world where
everything you interact with is black and white and you can't hold but the
lowest job, because you are literally _blind_ to 99.9% of "reality". Think
about not being able to live a middle class life without augmenting your
vision.

~~~
stinkytaco
I assume you look at that world as bad. Though that's purely assumption on my
part, since you offer no value judgement.

But using that assumption and for the sake of discussion, I'll point out that
your dystopian vision could be applied to most technologies. Imagine a time
when anyone can get a hold of you. They no longer need to write a letter or go
to a telegraph office, your voice is there, whenever they want it. They are
able to invade your home with this attention seeking technology by installing
a little bell. You are more and more marginalized in the workplace if you are
not permanently wired to this network of contacts.

Of course, this process escalates as technology escalates, but it's not the
first time that someone has looked at the future and said "think about this
world that is so alien". I just wonder where we cross the line to dystopia

~~~
fortythirteen
Yes, I'm old enough to remember how glorious it was that, as a kid, you would
be unreachable most of the day without even your parents freaking out. I think
smartphones are a small piece of a current dystopia.

I can turn off my phone most of the day and still interact with society,
though. A ubiquitous AR has a high probability of being nightmarish ~50 years
in, IMHO.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
We all worry about that future, and have seen the crazy AR video about SPAM on
vimeo.

But humans will constantly optimize their lives for greater happiness.

Each piece of technology that makes life better, can also be a trap of
addiction. But we will figure this out.

I have access to stimulus like sugar, drugs, alcohol, and gambling, all of
which are easily overindulged, but somehow most of us figure out a good
balance. Those that can't get the balance right, are supported with in
different ways like laws that protect the public.

The AR integration will be the same. When it gets to the point that long term
suffering outweighs temporary happiness society will set up boundaries and
EVERYONE will be ok with that. Maybe some people will think you are silly for
not having AR lenses in all the time, but it won't be that much different from
being that guy who doesn't drink at a party.

~~~
fortythirteen
> I have access to stimulus like sugar, drugs, alcohol, and gambling,

I think the current diabetes and opioid epidemics show that a huge chunk of
society is not "optimizing their lives for greater happiness".

------
srndh
Just engaging with all the devices is a job in itself. Its very tough to
focus.

I keep all social media & news apps in a tablet that I refer to as the "time-
killer". Controlling the alerts is a losing game. So, I just put all in a
separate device. Even with browser, I have a separate profile that I use for
HN & reddit.

Even my phone is silent most of the times. I wish there was a answering
machine app, so I can respond to calls at my convenience. In my circle, we
actually just voice message via whatsapp, so no one is disturbed and can
respond at a convenient time.

~~~
dionidium
_" Just engaging with all the devices is a job in itself. Its very tough to
focus. I keep all social media & news apps in a tablet that I refer to as the
"time-killer". Controlling the alerts is a losing game."_

I have manually disabled nearly all notifications on my phone, which works
pretty well for me (but I think your isolation strategy sounds like a pretty
good one, too).

~~~
srndh
Each time you update the OS or the app, it messes with the settings. So, since
these things are designed to suck you in & the I am sure the developers
deliberately overwrite the settings.

That is why I decided to have a separate device.

------
sandov
I loved the article, even though I disliked a banner ironically trying to
catch my attention at the beggining.

------
greggman
old news I guess but I recently realized I could block elements with ublock
origin so I blocked the "hot meta questions" and "hot questions from other
stack exchange sites" elements from stack overflow because I'd see some
slightly interesting topic and get sucked in.

not sure what other similar helpful things I can do. I unfollow agressively on
Facebook. use Fbpurity to filter as much as possible. don't use Twitter.

I still get distracted all day long. should probably ban HN from my life for
the 4th time . it's not easy. I changed my hosts file once but VMs don't use
the same file. tried using parental controls on iOS but they ban way too much.
used noprocrast but can open incognito window although it helps not being able
to comment. Wishing there was a fake VPN app for iOS I could use to block
sites

~~~
121789
There is...it’s called Freedom. It’s a bit buggy, but it works for my
purposes. I use that on iOS and Cold Turkey on PC

------
krisives
It's ironic there is a popup advertising contests and giveaways upon page
load.

~~~
optimalsolver
Why don't you use an ad blocker?

~~~
krisives
I am using uBlock Origin in Safari but it still appears. This is a smaller and
more obscure site I don't expect a blacklist to be 100% effective.

~~~
quadrangle
huh. I'm on Firefox w/ uBlock and tested in Iridium, both blocked any popup.

------
tschellenbach
I'd really like my phone to be able to prioritize notifications and only bug
me for important things. Calls, SMS, notifications etc should all be hidden
and prioritized. A call from my wife, or someone I know should be immediately
shown. Notifications about important emails as well, not so much about the
latest offer available on amazon.com. Phones make it hard to control the level
of notifications and could do a better job at that.

~~~
Toast_25
In android there is a "do not disturb" option that silences everything but
calls (you can drill it down further to starred contacts or none at all) and
sms messages (also drillable), I always have this on.

I turn off read receipts where I can, allowing me greater control of when I
respond and I also silence group chats and people who are bothersome
indefinitely. If they are important enough I will find time to answer them,
regardless of how "noisy" or "noiseless" they are. If it's urgent, they can
call.

You can install a pihole server at your home that will block advertisers
through DNS, allowing you to use even free apps without ads. (I haven't done
this yet since I moved recently).

As for emails, I imagine you can have a single email address on your phone for
important emails and configure email forwarding rules from your default email,
I haven't tried this though.

------
pbkhrv
Every other month I go on a media diet: no social media, no news, no
unnecessary browsing of any kind - only books and a small number of podcasts
are allowed (plus whatever Internet usage is necessary for work). I've been
doing this for more than a year now, and it has helped me feel a lot less
"fragmented". I highly recommend it.

~~~
tomjen3
What do you do when you need to know something? (recent example: my toilet
stopped refilling, I had no idea what was wrong and found the information on
the internet). Also, which podcasts do you prioritize?

------
tjwii
haha, on opening the page a popup shows that needs to be clicked away to read
the article!

~~~
quadrangle
OMG, don't use the internet without something like uBlock Origin! Are you
crazy‽

------
amrrs
The Attention Merchant - another similar read:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28503628-the-
attention-m...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28503628-the-attention-
merchants)

------
lostmsu
This makes me think, that on the scale of the paperclips game we are well past
where most players would think we are. We are actually at the beginning of the
hypno drone release project.

------
dandare
When my friend on FB share various stupid chance-to-win contests they are
selling my attention for their chance to win. I was looking for a decent way
to tell them.

~~~
tzahola
The decent way is to unfollow them.

~~~
sandov
The decent way is to stop using facebook.

~~~
Chaebixi
Why not all three:

1\. Tell your Facebook followers that the platform is manipulating and using
them (by posting articles like this one to your feed).

2\. Unfollow the most annoying ones (or send them even more personalized
messages about how they're being used).

3\. Leave Facebook once you think enough people have gotten them message.

Facebook might die quicker if enough people do this, and it will be better for
everyone, not just you.

------
ilikeeverything
this should be a mandatory read for everyone, like a warning label

