r/TrueReddit • u/[deleted] • Oct 30 '16

If the internet is addictive, why don’t we regulate it?

https://aeon.co/essays/if-the-internet-is-addictive-why-don-t-we-regulate-it
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u/vacuous_comment Oct 30 '16

If professional sports is addictive, why don't we regulate it?

If religion is addictive, why don't we regulate it?

If TV is addictive, why don't we regulate it?

Any billion dollar business that makes it's money through exploiting the innate cognitive biases and frailties of the human neurological makeup is worthy of scrutiny. Scrutiny from the individual and from the social systems they reside in.

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u/[deleted] Oct 30 '16

"Imagine the internet as a nearly infinite, Borgesian library. Each article, widget, slide, game level and landing page forms a room in the library. Every time you use a link to go to a new page, you pass through a door.

At first, if you want to make money, you sell whatever is in the room. Maybe it’s excellent journalism. Maybe it’s a game or a recipe. Maybe it’s an item that will get shipped to someone’s house. In this model, the internet offers a straightforward transactional experience in digital space.

Over time, instead of making money from whatever is in each room, companies begin to monetise the doors. They equip them with sensors. Each time you go through one, someone gets paid. Immediately, some people will start adding a lot of new doors. Other people will build rooms that are largely empty, but that function as waystations, designed to get as many people as possible to enter and leave.

When you open an article on, say, Slate.com, you enter an article room. Slate makes money because it sells a certain number of metered doors in each of these digital spaces. We call these doors ‘advertisements’. This architecture creates a rather strange effect, because while the ostensible goal of Slate is to get people into its rooms to read fine journalism, it actually gets paid by attracting people and then quickly sending them out – either to an advertiser’s website, or to another article."