Profiting from convincing (or, perhaps more accurately, “manipulating”) people to pay attention. Big Social Media sites like Facebook are part of the attention economy: you pay nothing to use the site. In fact, you are the product; they sell your attention to advertisers, and therefore design their product to maximize their profits by manipulating you to spend more time on the site. The attention economy is sometimes associated with: loss of free will loss of Privacy psychological harm al...| www.complete.org
This was originally published as a post on my blog. This version is intended to be kept up-to-date with developments, and is edited from the original. There is a whole science to manipulating our attention. And because there is a lot of money to be made by doing this well, it means we all encounter attempts to manipulate what we pay attention to each day. What is this, and how is it harmful?| www.complete.org