[hooande]

> These companies have hired focus groups, marketing experts, psychologists, and countless design teams to get people hooked on their platform. Are we really surprised?

I don't think that this is the problem. From what I know, hackernews doesn't hire any marketing experts, psychologists or focus groups. It doesn't even support images. I was more addicted to this site than any other, despite the lack of psychological tricks.

And there are many sites that DO employ full psychological warfare teams that I completely ignore. Tinder seemed fully committed to forcing repetitive user engagement. And I dropped that site after about two days, psychologists or not. If all it took to force engagement was a certain list of UI tricks, every funded social site would be able to do it.

I don't think there's a single root cause or an off switch for social media. This phenomenon is here to stay, for better or worse. I think that we will adapt as a species but there's no going back.

[ben_w]

Endless A/B testing will climb up some peak in the landscape of human psychology; that you and I are on a different peak may help a bit, but there are ways to find other peaks and money to be made in the attempt.

(I'm apparently on peak "Idle Game", and thus benefited greatly from the end of Flash browser games freeing me from that pointless waste of time).

[IggleSniggle]

Oh my goodness how could I have forgotten that decade of my life until you mentioned it? Oh, right, yeah, that's how.

Edit: I think my comment was lost in translation. What I meant was, "yes, this was such a phenomenon, and I experienced it too, and I marvel at the amount of time that I wasted in Idle games, and sympathize with others who are also lost in these Skinner boxes"

[ethanbond]

“A lot of people are addicted to websites which employ armies of engineers and scientists to generate addiction” is not really addressed by “I am addicted to a site without those techniques.”

Analogously, my addiction to Parmesan cheese doesn’t mean heroin isn’t that addictive (or intended to be addictive).

[thfuran]

I find it very unlikely that you're actually addicted to Parmesan.

[branperr]

There are definitely UI tricks used by pretty much everyone when applicable. For example, infinite scrolling is used to keep people’s attention. There are other dark patterns that exist as well