The ethics of the attention economy: a [podcast] w/ Sam Harris & former Google product philosopher Tristan Harris

In anticipation of my upcoming podcast conversation with @ned, I was somewhat delighted to come across this recent conversation between Sam Harris and former Google product philosopher Tristan Harris.

I say "somewhat" because I was also a little jealous. I had attempted to get Tristan on my podcast after I had a debate w/ Nir Eyal, the author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, about the societal implications of digital distraction, over a year ago. So, Sam beat me to it.

Some highlights of the conversation:

• Tristan uses a "city" metaphor to describe technology companies such as Apple and Facebook. They are the "cities" which we inhabit in our digital lives, and much like any city, they need to be planned to shape the behavior of its inhabitants.
• Product designers as such companies are incentivized to maximize time spent using their products. More time spent means more ad revenue.
• These incentives in turn incentivize content creators to try to capture people's attention.
• What is good for us and what we pay attention to are two different things.
• So, product designers and technology companies have an ethical responsibility to design for Time Well Spent, a movement Tristan started.

I didn't hear in the conversation some convincing reason why companies such as Facebook and Apple would operate according to a code of ethics, or make some of the changes that Tristan is proposing (such as ranking apps on the App Store according to their performance in categories such as "morning routines.")

Would these changes be profitable? If not, I don't believe they would make these changes.

I was also surprised that they didn't discuss alternative economic models for content creation. A big source of why it's so hard for creators of honest, balanced, and thoughtful content is because there is so much friction in economic transactions. Tipping platforms don't work, and subscription models aren't clear winners either. Even Netflix has implemented an "auto play next" feature, which, according to Tristan, has tracked to fewer people cancelling their subscriptions.

This is where I think STEEM has lots of promise (and was my motivation behind speaking with @ned on my upcoming episode). The incentives are different on a platform such as Steemit. Users at least report not feeling friction in supporting content.

Steemit's incentives are unlikely to support the kind of "rage porn" and "fake news" that are proliferating on Facebook. These incentives also don't steer directly toward more time spent on the site. There are likely some quirks with the incentive structure – as far as I can tell those quirks remain to be seen. In any case, the incentives are different.

@ned and I will be discussing some of these incentives on our upcoming podcast conversation. "End the Attention Economy" will become available April 27th. If you want to catch it, subscription options are over here.