Look at video games, particularly on mobile. I mean they aren't even games anymore. They're just metrics-optimized psychological-trick machines to extract the most money from you $1 at a time ie in-app purchases and pay-to-win. These aren't games: they're engagement bait to bring you and your wallet back each day.
Why do we have this? Because people suck and it just makes way too much money for anyone not to do it. Why didn't we have this 20 years? Because the technical capability wasn't there.
It's really no different here. Communication and messaging costs have really gone down to zero. If it wasn't FB, it'd be someone else. There's simply too much money with very little costs in engagement bait, whether or not that's the intent of the platform or product.
And yeah, that's the case because people suck. Most people aren't looking for verifiable information. They're looking for whatever or whoever says whatever it is they've already chosen to believe. That's it.
I'd say the biggest problem with FB and Twitter is sharing links as this is such an easy way for the lazy, ignorant and stupid to signals their preconceived notions to whatever audience they happen to have. But if Twitter or FB didn't allow sharing links, someone else would and that someone else would be more popular.
I honestly don't know what the solution to this is.
> Look at video games, [...] I mean they aren't even games anymore. They're just metrics-optimized psychological-trick machines to extract the most money from you $1 at a time [...]
I don't think so, and I used to spend a lot of time in arcades. For one thing, everyone had to pay the exact same amount to play. Good player, bad player, whatever. There was no "free tier" to get you hooked before things suddenly got much harder, and when they did there was no way to pay more to make things easier (though toward the end some games did let you continue by pumping in more tokens). Every game was also self contained. There was no persistent state that you were in danger of losing if you didn't keep checking in day after day, week after week. Fortunately, the games were also cheap. Even when I was really poor, I could afford a dollar for several tokens that were enough to play the games I liked just about as long as I could stand. Hour-long games of Battle Zone turned into all-afternoon games of Joust. I could turn a game over to someone less skilled, go back to my apartment, eat lunch, come back, and pick up again before they'd managed to exhaust the lives I had accumulated.
Arcade games were certainly meant to be enjoyable, and to keep you playing, but they were nowhere near the dark-pattern psychological minefield that modern games - especially mobile games - often are.
I was thinking more about the late 80s to the early 90s.
Games usually were designed with an easy first level and a big ramp-up in difficulty, and yes, you could pay for continues.
No free tier of course, arcade owners certainly didn't want their machines being squatted by non-paying players, but the easy start was definitely a hook, and they definitely played the sunk cost fallacy. After you put in so many coin, you don't want to stop there right? You can put in lots of coins if you are not careful. They clearly solved the "play for hours" issue too, all games I knew had an ending after less than an hour, and you had to be really good to get there without continues.
And sure, the games were meant to be enjoyable, but so are the mobile games. The only significant difference is that you own your phone, so you running the game costs the publisher nothing. Arcade cabinets are expensive machines and owners don't want you to keep playing if you are not paying, so they have to balance their settings so that you don't stay too long on a single credit, but at the same time, make sure you want to come back for more. Mobile games only have the second requirement.
Of course, only talking about video games, arcades often have prize games that are borderline gambling too.
The trend in modern arcades seems less predatory though. You can get 10 minutes of game play for a credit no matter how skilled you are, as long as you select the right difficulty. There is less of the "get hooked on the first level and spend all your coins" attitude. The counterpart is that you won't play for much longer if you are really good.
> I was thinking more about the late 80s to the early 90s.
Then you're talking about a time when arcades were already past their peak, facing competition from consoles and PCs, forced to invent or refine some of these dark patterns in a declining market.
So when you asked whether the description of games today also applied to arcades you might have meant those arcades, and I don't deny that your impressions are real or accurate, but I stand by my claim that the description does not apply to arcades in general. When you include their heyday, the majority of arcades that have existed did not have much in common with the kinds of games we've been talking about.
The solution is probably not to freak out so much and cultivate your (metaphorical) garden. People will adapt as they always have. This exact moral panic plays out every time the economics of information changes as far back as the printing press, which a 16th century scientist warned would create an overabundance of information that was “confusing and harmful” to the mind [1]. Even further back, Socrates apparently warned of the dangers of writing (the danger being forgetfulness). I don't think they're strictly wrong. They just overvalue the benefits and overlook the problems of older technology. Unalloyed good is not the bar. Technology is never an unalloyed good because we are not an unalloyed good.
Yet each and every time, "but this time it's different though", "but this is unprecedented".
Yes, the world of information is bigger and more complex. Yes, we also invent bigger and more complex tools to manage our bigger and more complex world. And the world is richer for it. There's never been so many quality video games and insightful media than today.
There are still many video games that are not click boxes, and if you watch what kids are actually into, they tend to be actual games like roblox, minecraft, among us and fortnight. Even the small mobile games they end up being mostly games vs. metrics optimized click games.
So the biggest obstacle to solving anything about this world is stupidity of the general population. People can't stop choosing the most stupid things with their wallets and attention.
As harsh as I am on humanity, it's not entirely people's fault. We have primate emotions that have been grossly outpaced by our technological development. This is why I've become somewhat anti-technology despite still working on technology because it stretches us to lifestyles that are distinctly inhuman.
Humanity simply does not have the emotional capacity to handle the technology we create. It never has and never will, and it's just that software has greatly amplified this inability. This is why mental disorders are skyrocketing. We're building emotional prisons with technological walls and bars.
My laymen and superficial understanding of the situation is that humans do continue to evolve but our genome is also degrading in terms of building up mutations.
It's fine if everyone is stupid, or most of us choose to engage in stupid things from time to time. I paid $17 to see Transformers. That was pretty stupid, but oh well, no one got hurt.
People want to be entertained and engaged - I do not think they aim to harm. So I think we need to develop alternatives to entertain people - these alternatives can still be stupid, they just shouldn't be harmful.
Why do we have this? Because people suck and it just makes way too much money for anyone not to do it. Why didn't we have this 20 years? Because the technical capability wasn't there.
It's really no different here. Communication and messaging costs have really gone down to zero. If it wasn't FB, it'd be someone else. There's simply too much money with very little costs in engagement bait, whether or not that's the intent of the platform or product.
And yeah, that's the case because people suck. Most people aren't looking for verifiable information. They're looking for whatever or whoever says whatever it is they've already chosen to believe. That's it.
I'd say the biggest problem with FB and Twitter is sharing links as this is such an easy way for the lazy, ignorant and stupid to signals their preconceived notions to whatever audience they happen to have. But if Twitter or FB didn't allow sharing links, someone else would and that someone else would be more popular.
I honestly don't know what the solution to this is.