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Comment by dj-wonk | Hacker News Reader

I am glad to see more people caring about long-term effects of their use of social software. More of us are mindful in how we engage with technology.

Now that I've said the positive, let me talk about the negatives. I bet things will get worse before they get better. At present, the commercial pressures on social media platforms to manipulate "users" dwarf human pushback against these "dark art" techniques.

I don't see any easy solutions. As with many collective challenges, we need increased awareness to effect change. This is arguably a political problem; we need social organizing as a counterbalancing force.

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We don't need "increased awareness", we need a social decision system (aka "an economy") that rewards positive social outcomes and disincentivises negative social outcomes.

At the moment we have the opposite. No one cares how you make your first billion or two, or how people suffer as a side effect. They only care that you have a billion or two. Toxic side-effects remain invisible and uncounted.

There's a certain irony in attacking EA for building a game economy that's closer to the effort/reward profile of the real economy - for both players and owners - than any other game economy to date.

First, a question for you: What values would you like your "social decision system" to embody?

Second, I advocate for increased awareness because awareness is the first step towards rational thought. Many psychological manipulation techniques work best on the irrational parts of our brains, so often a useful first step is to engage the rational mind. That said, I'm not claiming awareness guarantees systemic change.

Well to have that economy we need transparency (read: the open availability of essential data/information).

On top of that we need awareness that such tools exit.

And on top of both of those we need a universal belief that this "stack" is an enabler and that enpowerment can have impact; that the little guy/ gal do matter.

Currently, best I can tell, we're lacking quite a bit at all three levels.

Is it even possible to create such a system? The psychological flaws these companies are exploiting are built into every human being.

There is no better.

From many angles there are too many things working to passively shore this edifice up.

The best solution I found in years was after randomly catching up with a good friend. He just gave up on the smart phone.

Hes not a Techie, he used to love video games - but he has a unique quality to be embody Human-ness. Hes dumped social networks, and dropped smart phones.

In short the way out for those who can manage it is cold turkey.

I now suspect that the people who can handle this, are not on HN or social networks anymore

I use Facebook mostly to keep up with a few old friends. It saddens me to see what I can only call radicalization happening to many of these folks.

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