There is a saying in the marketing world that “people don’t know what they want, they only want what they know.” The idea being, if the customer does not know about your product or service, they will never want it. One must first make the customer aware of the product before the customer will make a purchase out of wanting it.
When it comes to social media, the same concept is applied.
In Stolen Focus, Johann Hari discusses the idea that large technology corporations – specifically, systems that run social media platforms – have a business model that profits off human use of the service. In short, the longer a person stays on a social media platform, the more profit is generated. The Center for Humane Technology advocates for an overhaul of this system, as part of their series of leverage points.
According to articles by systems analyst Donella Meadows, there are several ways to both intervene and “dance” with a system. For intervention, this can include “regulating negative feedback loops,” “driving positive feedback loops,” and most importantly, “the mindset or paradigm out of which the system – its goals, power structure, rules, its culture – arises,” amongst many others. Dancing, on the other hand, involves “[getting] the beat,” which to Meadows, means understanding how a system truly operates.
Meadows presents the idea that systems are to be observed and intervened in. In other words, systems run themselves, much like a machine. Humans can change how the machine operates, but the machine will run on its own. In the same way, social media corporations have created a gigantic tech machine. The main positive feedback loops lead to profit through the monetization of human attention.
The unfortunate thing is, the negative feedback loops – the thing which counteracts and limits the positive loop – are very few in terms of social media.
What counteracts a large amount of time spent on social media? Spending less time. Which, as Hari points out, is counterintuitive to the whole business model, alongside the main goals of social media companies.
The Center for Humane Technology argues that social media companies say they are “giving people what they want,” but that the companies do not actually know what the users want. Instead, they know what users spend their attention on. The algorithms notice what a user is looking at, so it feeds more of those types of content to the user.
But just because a user looks at a picture of a car, does not mean they want to look at more cars. It could have just been a good picture that caught their eye.
Social media is a machine with a lot to unravel. There is a lack of negative feedback loops, and the positive loop needs to be redefined in light of altering the goals of how tech companies profit.
But one thing is for sure: People don’t know what they want, and neither does social media.
Yet, we keep scrolling away…
Read the articles that I quoted from here:
Perfectly Imperfect 
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