The Attention Economy & practical self defense
Disclaimer: This post will talk about things that have a concerning societal impact. I won’t go into these structural problems at all. This is a personal survival guide to the internet/modern life.
Intro
Some of the world’s biggest companies earn money by changing the way you behave. They use adaptive, customized propaganda to affect you. They turn you into an addict in order to maximize the amount of propaganda you see. This is known as the attention economy, where your attention is a scarce resource to be harvested for profit.
You are one person. It’s a real David vs Goliath situation; if you don’t act methodically, you’re fucked. This post will give you a better understanding of your situation, and a few key tools you’ll need to escape.1
The Attention Economy
You can recognize attention-economy companies by the ads/propaganda they push. Most of the websites you use on a day-to-day basis are based in the attention economy, especially “free” services backed by large corporations such as Google & Facebook. These businesses have the following goals:
To increase the time you spend using their services
To increase the number of ads they can show you without impacting (1) too much
To increase profit per ad by matching you with ads that impact you more. More impact = more value = more profit
They get you to spend more time on their services by making you addicted. This wastes time & potential. It makes you neglect parts of your life. It also messes with your sleep.
A common strategy for creating addiction is called “social media”. Social media promises community feeling, a sense of belonging & inclusion. Social media delivers insecurity & narcissism, a decrease in real-life community participation, and a bunch of FOMO. This is a prime example of a bait-and-switch.
These are the consequences of business goal number 1: increasing the time you spend on the services. If we want to talk about the consequences of goals number 2 & 3, we need to take a look at the customers of the attention economy.
“I feel tremendous guilt. [...] we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works.”
― Chamath Palihapitiya, Ex VP of User Growth at Facebook
The Customers
The actors that feed money into this addiction machinery do it for one reason: they want to change your behavior patterns in ways that benefit them. There are two main players here: ideological ones and corporate ones.
The ideological players want to shift your beliefs and political actions to match their agenda. Getting beliefs implanted introduces incoherence in your world model2, weakening your ability to make sense of the world. Being swallowed by an ideology makes it harder to listen to ideological opponents, eliminating an important checks-and-balance to your confirmation bias. Decisions made while under the influence of ideological manipulations can lead to time and resources being wasted.
Corporate advertising makes you feel bad. When you feel bad, you are more likely to seek fulfillment by buying stuff. Ads also sap meaning from life by turning our shared cultural environment into props used to present stuff.
How can we resist these influences? The first step is to understand enemy tactics.
“… our problem was no one would take us seriously“
― B.F. Skinner, talking about pigeon-guided missiles.
Enemy Tactics
Fundamental Research
The addictive design of attention-economy websites is based on a psychological conditioning scheme called “Variable Ratio Reinforcement” (or “Variable Rewards”). This conditioning scheme is commonly attributed to B.F. Skinner’s work on operant conditioning.
Skinner was a behaviorist, focusing on behaviors patterns rather than the internal workings of the mind. During the fifties, he assembled a team to perform pigeon-training experiments.
One experiment involved electrocuting pigeons stuck in cages, relenting when they pushed a lever. Turns out the pigeons learned to push the lever pretty quickly.3
The team also experimented with different reward routines, where they fed the pigeons delicious food pellets4 to get them to push the lever consistently. One of the routines involved giving the pigeons food every time they pushed the lever. The pigeons weren’t that excited by predictable rewards, learning at an ok rate.
The team then played hard to get, giving Variable Rewards. In this experiment, the pigeons got a pellet after a random amount of successful lever-pushes. This was super interesting to the pigeons, turning them into well-trained lever pushers in no time.
This is transferrable to humans. We’re also suckers for variable rewards. The reason variable rewards work so well is explained by the way the dopamine system works:
When you get an unexpected reward, your brain releases dopamine. The dopamine reinforces the behavior pattern you executed just before the reward. Over time, your brain moves the dopamine hit earlier into the process, releasing dopamine when you anticipate getting a reward.5
Variable rewards in nature represent problems to solve. When your brain anticipates a variable reward, it goes into problem-solving mode by releasing an extra-strong dose of dopamine.6
In nature, this gives you extra motivation & attention, helping you solve the problem. In modern life, this gets you addicted. The stronger anticipation-dopamine hits from variable rewards reinforce behavior to an absurd degree.
Variable Rewards in the “Wild”
Now, let’s take a breath and take a step back. Is this pattern of addictive variable rewards familiar? Personally, I easily get hooked on things like this. From the top of my mind:
Refreshing email
positive reward: mail from friends
negative reward: spam/nothing
Facebook notifications
positive reward: someone wrote things to me
negative reward: some random group suggestion or similar
Any scrollable feed ever:
positive reward: content I like
negative reward: meh stuff
I could go on and on7, variable rewards are everywhere. The prevalence is not a coincidence; variable rewards have been an integral part of addictive services for quite some time now.
Part of the prevalence can be attributed to competitive pressure pushing companies into building addictive products using trial-and-error. Part of it can be attributed to Nir Eyal.
8In 2008, Nir joined a team with a questionable mission: making an ad platform for “social online games” like FarmVille. He spent three years in this intersection between advertising and addictive micro-transaction games, researching companies dependent on “mind manipulation”. In 2011 he started an online community where manipulation enthusiasts helped compile best practices.
Around this time, he started consulting with big silicon valley companies, helping them run experiments to make their products more addictive. This work got compiled into a design framework called “The Hook Model”.
In 2014, he released this framework in a book called “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products”. The book was a huge success in Silicon Valley, influencing product design for years to come.
The Hook Model
Services based on “The Hook Model” run users through four-stage cycles:
The cycle starts with a Trigger. The nature of this trigger depends on how far gone you are. If you haven’t touched the service before, it’s most likely an invite from a friend or a link to some service-specific content. If you have the app installed, it’s most likely a notification. If you are already addicted, the trigger will be in your own mind: maybe you’re bored and looking for something to distract you.
The trigger causes you to perform an Action. The action is designed to be as simple as possible, enabling you to perform the action without having to think about it at all. Clicking the app on your phone is the most common action.
The action leads to a Variable Reward, releasing a spike of dopamine that reinforces the Trigger → Action pattern. Common variable rewards include seeing something (good or bad) on your newsfeed, reading a notification, or similar.
After the Variable Reward, you are asked to Invest in the service by committing some effort. Common investments include writing a comment, following someone, or similar. Your investment lets the service figure out even more effective triggers for the next cycle.
Over time, as you progress through these cycles, you will:
Invest more and more in the service, making it costly to leave
Move from external triggers such as notifications to internal triggers such as boredom
Reinforce the Trigger → Action pattern until it’s second nature
Have you ever found yourself scrolling a newsfeed without noticing the shift from boredom → open app → scroll? Do you open apps out of habit, without thinking about doing it? If so, you have been Hooked™. Next up: getting out!
If you know your enemy and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles.”
― Sun Tzu
Practical Self Defence!
Mindset
It’s common to expect getting out to be a one-off thing. You “just uninstall the app” and then you are free! This is bad advice, which I expect stems from a few success stories that got spread, and a lot of “shameful” re-installs that didn’t get talked about.
In my mind, the first step is to realize how deeply unfair the situation is. The biggest corporations in the world make you addicted, powered by machine learning, social validation, teams of experts, and large-scale trial-and-error!
This means that getting out will be hard, requiring steady work over time. You will most likely have setbacks, reinstalling an app in search of distraction. Don’t judge yourself for setbacks. Focus on gradual improvements over time, taking one small step at a time. Work methodically, accepting where you are and figuring out what to do next.
Now, let’s get practical. This is the point where this text shifts towards action steps. I will ask you to do practical things, including:
Setting up reminders, using a to-do list or your phone alarm clock. Please pick a calm, non-annoying notification sound.9
Writing text, either on a device or on paper.
Installing software.
Take a moment to check in with yourself, are you ready to act? You’re free to just read on as usual, of course10, but I think there’s more value in getting started now.
[…]
Ready? Let’s begin!
Action - Distraction-seeking behavior?
Context: I’ve noticed a pattern in myself where the main driver for engaging with addictive technology is “distraction-seeking behavior”. When I feel sad, bored, or frustrated, these services offer a temporary distraction. This is an “internal trigger”, according to the Hook Model. This internal trigger leads directly to distraction-seeking behavior when you’ve been Hooked.
So, in order to get a clearer view of your internal triggers and the actions they prompt, here’s your first action step:
Action steps:
Ask yourself “What distraction-seeking behaviors have I been engaging with recently?”.
Write down your answer.
Set up a recurring reminder to do this weekly.
Action - Toolify!
Context: Many people use their smartphones for entertainment. Using your smartphone for entertainment is a subtle step away from using it as a distraction.
As such, I suggest that you shift your mindset. Don’t use your smartphone for entertainment. Use it as a tool.
Action steps:
Look through your phone apps, and identify which ones you use for entertainment.
Uninstall rarely used “entertainment apps”. This includes games, social media, overly clever music services, and similar.
Note: You might be tempted to uninstall apps you are addicted to at this point. Go ahead if you feel like it. But please don’t judge yourself if you find yourself reinstalling them later.
These first action steps will help you become more mindful of where you’re at. Now let’s introduce some practical tools you can use to improve your situation!
Breaking the Hook cycles
This section will be all about breaking the addiction-inducing Hook cycles:
In this post, we’ll focus on the external triggers & harm reduction. If you reduce the number of cycles you go through, your internal triggers will fade away over time.
Action - Notifications
Context: The main external trigger you will face is notifications on your phone. Remove 95% of them! The only notifications you might want to leave on are the ones where you remind yourself of things, or when other people want to reach you personally.
Action steps:
If you don’t know how to disable notifications on your phone: open Google in a new tab and search for “disable notifications android”, or “disable notifications iPhone”. Open the first result, and follow the instructions. If this fails, open the second result and try that. Continue until you succeed.
Disable 95%+ of all the notifications. If you are unsure about a notification, go ahead and disable it. You can always re-enable it later if you need to.
Whenever you get a notification that isn’t necessary, disable it.
Action - Grayscale
Context: The visual design of apps might act as a trigger. We want to make the design less appealing. This is done by setting your devices to grayscale. This also gives your devices a boring tool-vibe, which is perfect.
Action steps:
Open Google in a new tab and search for “grayscale android”, or “grayscale iPhone”. Open the first result, and follow the instructions. If this fails, open the second result and try that. Continue until you succeed.
Action - Filter Automatic Emails
Context: Another common external trigger is emails. If you stop engaging with a service, you will most likely get manipulative automated emails about how much “your friends” are missing you. There’s also a constant barrage of emails from services that want to hook you in.
Action steps:
If you don’t know how to create email rules, go to Google and search for “email rules gmail”, “email rules outlook” or similar. Open the first result, and follow the instructions. If this fails, open the second result. Repeat until you succeed.
Create a rule to block most automated emails, adding explicit exceptions for things you like, such as emails from me. You can filter automated email by checking if the body contains the following text:
opt-outnewsletterdo not wish to receive future emailspromotional email fromhow likely are you to recommendunsubscribeunsubscribing
I suggest marking these emails as read, and moving them to a separate folder, called something like “Automated Emails”. This allows you to skim this folder whenever you’re afraid that you’ve missed something important in the same way you check spam for lost emails.
If automated emails sneak by, update the filter with more keywords. You might need to add translations, for instance.
Bonus Actions
I’ve investigated other ways of eliminating external triggers. The three I listed in detail is the most important ones, but here are a few more suggestions:
Consider changing app icons to further reduce the trigger from the app design. Pick a minimalistic icon pack with only letters, or similar.
Move apps around so you can’t find them in their habitual locations.
“It did what all ads are supposed to do: create an anxiety relievable by purchase.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Harm Reduction - Ad Blocking
Context: Ads are everywhere. Using an ad blocker to block ads won’t make services less addictive, but it will reduce the harmful impact of ads and propaganda.
The adblocker uBlock Origin also enables you to block triggers from web pages. You can read more about it in my other post. I’ve removed wikipedia’s “random button” this way.
Action steps:
Install browser extension uBlock Origin.
Block wikipedia’s “random button” using the instructions in my other post.
The End?
I have put a lot of thought into this for some years now. This post serves as an introduction and contains the vital parts. If I feel like it, I might follow up with more tools & ideas. ‘til then!
P.S. I have an old document with more tips, read it if you want to skip ahead and learn more now. Link.
I use the term “world model” to mean “a mental representation of the world, that resides in the ‘mind’ of an agent”. Agents are “actors” capable of making actions. You are an agent.
B.F. Skinner is also known for a project developing pigeon-guided missiles.
They starved the pigeons to 75% of their original body weight to increase their level of food-pellet enthusiasm
Some people believe dopamine is the reward itself. This is not true. Dopamine reinforces behaviors that lead to rewards. In the reward system, dopamine underlies “salience”/”motivation”.
As you can tell from the diagram, negative rewards cause the dopamine to drop, causing you to slightly unlearn the behavior. This drop is more than compensated for by the hit you get when a variable reward gives you a payoff.
Tinder swiping? Checking the price of assets? Fishing? Slot machines? “Play next” on youtube/NetFlix?
The following two sections are both paraphrased from Nir’s book “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products”.
For Android, I recommend “Retro Beep” on low volume
I wrote this part to reduce pressure. This is shown to increase the number of people that commit. Manipulation for the greater good?
A major problem is that people aren't sure what to do with the extra time that they have because the habit of reaching for their phones is so deeply ingrained. You'd need a whole other essay: "If not smartphones then what DOES make your life meaningful and satisfying?"