How to Break Up With Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life

by Catherine Price

In 2017, 60 Minutes aired a fascinating interview between Anderson Cooper and Ramsay Brown, founder of a start-up called Dopamine Labs that creates brain-hacking code for app companies. The goal is to keep people glued to an app by figuring out exactly when the app should do something to “make you feel a little extra awesome,” explained Brown, who has a background in neuroscience (and who, for the record, comes across as a thoughtful and un-evil kind of guy). Brown offered the example of Instagram, which he says has created code that deliberately holds back on showing users new “likes” so that it can deliver a bunch of them in a sudden rush at the most effective moment possible – meaning the moment at which seeing new likes will discourage you from closing the app. And when he says “you”, Brown means you. As he explained to Anderson Cooper, “There’s an algorithm somewhere that predicted, hey, for this user right now who is experimental subject 79B3 in experiment 231, we think we can see an improvement in his behaviour if you give it to him in this burst instead of that burst. . . . You’re part of a set of controlled experiments that are happening in real time across you and millions of other people.” “We’re guinea pigs?” asked Cooper. “You’re guinea pigs,” said Brown. “You’re guinea pigs in the box pushing the button and sometimes getting the likes. And they’re doing this to keep you in there.” Interestingly, Brown – who is one of the few technology insiders who agreed to ...

Isso é insano.