Thread by @RobertHaisfield

After watching the Social Dilemma, I think that it's generally good at making the point that social media is using behavioral design in a way that is harmful to the individual and society. It did a crappy job at helping people understand how to respond.

Most people aren't going to delete their social media accounts. That's probably not even the best way to deal with this. Heightening people's perception of risk without heightening their belief in a coping response won't change behavior. researchgate.net/publication/23…

I like that they they call out advertising business models as problematic because of misaligned incentives. The problem isn't behavioral design, but companies wanting something different from users. It doesn't talk about alternative business models though.

There are rich debates going on right now that weren't engaged with about whether social media should charge end users for their products. This is an interesting article from @CassSunstein about how much a "facebook membership" would be worth to people. blog.harvardlawreview.org/how-much-is-it…

They didn't even give tips about how to respond to all of the scary information about social media they presented viewers with until the credits. They called for regulation, but only one concrete suggestion (taxing resource extraction from @realjoet) came out, it was 20 seconds.

So what does humane technology look like? Again, that was given a minute by @tristanharris when he talked about how tools are there when you need it and not trying to pull you in for more, but other than that, the question was unaddressed.

The documentary didn't even give people recommendations about what they could do on their own with respect to social media usage behavior until the credits.

I'm fully onboard with social media being problematic in pretty much all of the ways they point out in the documentary. I was just annoyed that all the doc cared about doing was scaring people, rather than actually engaging with the issues.

My favorite documentaries are the ones that explore questions, rather than try to just present a "complete" view. There was nothing new in this documentary for people who have read an article or two about the same subject. Plenty of thinking out there.

This is fair. As a behavioral designer, I’m more plugged in to this world than most. Many Netflix viewers will find this novel. Still think that it would have been more effective with a better scare/response balance. Hopefully the funnel of documentary—>website is significant 🤷‍♂️

Part of what bothers me so much about this is that I know all of the speakers in the documentary have thought seriously about the responses to the threat. We’re just hoping people end up on the thesocialdilemma.com and stay involved with it as they release more resources

Here's a concrete action that social media sites could take to more clearly align themselves with user intentions: don't over-orient towards revealed preferences. Balance revealed preferences with UX that allows the user to declare preferences influenceinsights.io/post/what-soci…

Humane tech (to me) helps people accomplish a goal they were previously struggling to achieve on their own. I've used behavioral influence in apps that help users overcome depression, be more intentional about social relationships, and talk about death with their adult children.

In these sorts of contexts, behavioral design is a moral obligation. People can't just download an app and suddenly have fulfilling social relationships. They need to change their behavior. People pay for products to help them, incentives are aligned here robhaisfield.com/notes/user-inv…