User:Rita Graca/thesis outline2

TOPIC

Persuasive design, social media platforms, alternatives

FOCUS

Persuasive social media platforms capitalizing on engagement and the search for better alternatives

INTRODUCTION

Background

Design persuasion is not inherently evil. When I am waiting to cross the street I’m quite happy to have a traffic light warning me to wait. Indeed, manipulating me to stay, with the red colour reminding me of danger, the pictogram telling me to not cross. Even when we are talking about persuasion on online platforms I understand that a lot of the design features are there to glue me to the screen. And if sometimes that’s consuming and stressful, other times the infinite scroll has the kind of numbing effect that makes the 3-hour train go faster.

What worries me the most is not the features themselves, but what they mean in centralised businesses obsessed with our engagement. How my personality, my friends, my likes and thoughts are manipulated to generate profitable transactions. How we are persuaded to engage, every time and everywhere because that means money. Through the promise of connectivity and participation, the mainstream platforms today live off our attention, and to be seen as a target every time becomes exhausting.

As a person interested in the ethics around technology, but also as a media student with enthusiasm over the alternatives, I wonder... what can we do?

Thesis Statement

Mainstream media platforms compel users to participate through manipulative strategies to capitalise engagement. While abandoning these platforms doesn't seem a valid choice for everyone and demonstrates a system of privilege, users can gain agency through other means.

BODY

INTRODUCTION

Our daily lives are mediated through interfaces that are getting increasingly harder to recognise and understand.
D. Norman's idea that “the computer of the future should be invisible”, meaning that the user would focus on the task they want to do instead of focusing on the machine. Much like a door, you go through it to go somewhere else. (Norman, 1990) But Olia Lialina reminds us that computers are much more complex devices, and that closed or opened doors allow different degrees of agency. (Lialina, 2018)
"The irrefutable tendency to make all graphic interfaces as usable, engaging, simple, and social as possible is an expression of the values inherent to the discourse of Silicon Valley and global technoculture elites." ( Belsunces, 2015)
Examples of how design choices regulate our interactions inside the platforms

no unlike button means fewer ways to show discontent; no anonymity means more accountability; no undo/edit/permanent delete button shows less forgiveness.

Clarification on what is manipulative design...

...persuasive tech, weaponised design, technology violence, or other better terms.

FIRST TOPIC — PERSUASIVE STRATEGIES ONLINE

Point A: Certain features on social media platforms exist to influence users on taking certain actions. While some of them seem innocent, like a notification to remind us of a birthday, they also reveal capitalistic, seductive intentions.

In the 20th-century publicists moved past the idea that information drives behaviour to understand how to play with irrational emotions (Edward Bernays, Freud, propaganda))
Short reference on how they can be positive (the idea of "captology" for B.J. Fogg is mostly positive, "motivating users to make better use of the application and supporting them in achieving their goals.", also Michael Lewis's The Undoing Project)
Clear examples of persuasive design features — notifications, auto-play, "what other people bought", ‘next episode’ tab, ‘Buyers also bought these items’, the slot-machine-like interface of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, which always throw up new content on refreshing the page.

Point B: Engagement has turned into currency and, without ethics guidelines, interfaces become aggressive to generate profit.

We are the target in the attention economy. Meaning of engagement for brands, people and algorithms, growing quantification of online life.
The unfairness of this, how persuasion turns into coercion without supervision: Libertarian Paternalism on Obama's Social and Behavioral Sciences Team; Facebook experiment with the manipulation of 700,000 users' feed; Cambridge Analytica scandal, etc. Well explained in Tamsin Shaw's article on Invisible Manipulators of Your Mind.
Some experiences with manifestos — Interface Manifesto by Hangar Barcelona, The Hacker Manifesto by Blankenship, designers oath

SECOND TOPIC — IS IT POSSIBLE TO GAIN AGENCY? DO WE NEED TO RUN, HIDE OR FIGHT?

Point A: Quitting media platforms doesn't make sense for everyone, is determinist and reveals a system of privilege.

"Quitting" overlooks all the political, social and economic conditions that influence social media users.

I find the metaphors between food dieting and social media dieting very interesting. It's often said to overweight people to "just close their mouth" or "put down the food". Which seems the same as saying to "just not use your phone", to quit social media. But these arguments overlook all the political, social and economic conditions that determine obesity rates, and the same applies to depression (or the other effects social media diets are curing). The alternative seemed to be to leave the surveilled platforms, but is exactly ‘the vulnerable populations who are the least able to “quit Facebook.”’ Feminist Surveillance Studies book, especially the afterword "Blaming, shaming, and the feminization of social media"

Point B: Decentralisation can be elitist.

What is the Federation and what kind of projects are being created
Self-hosting or creating a server is difficult, the use of jargon is a way of exclusion. Even for programmers it demands time and work.
Decentralised platforms offer similar interfaces and features. "However, even these alternative networks are often rather similar to Facebook with regards to the features they offer to users; friend lists, group pages and personal “walls” have become a staple of services both alternative and mainstream." (Peeters, 2013)
The number of users that are programmers and can contribute to the platform are not many, so the bottom-up approach is actually just enjoyed by the same group of people. (Peeters, 2013)
This is a big claim and I need more references to back it up. The downsides weight more than the upsides? If tech persuasion is getting obvious why people don't move to better platforms? Who are the alternatives for?

Point C: Public actions, other alternatives

James Williams to overcome the attention economy argues for "(a) rethinking the nature and purpose of advertising, (b) conceptual and linguistic reengineering, (c) changing the upstream determinants of design, and (d) advancing mechanisms for accountability, transparency, and measurement." I would like to discover/explain how these points can translate to actual projects and actions, focusing on the last point (d).

Taking public actions inside centralised platforms.

To fight back, users created blogs (e.g. Fat, Ugly or Slutty or Not in the Kitchen Anymore) that collect and display racist, sexist and homophobic comments that female and queer gamers have received. This polices online spaces with the user’s own rules. Cancel culture is similar.

Search more: Demand for transparency with other movements, hacktivism, users getting together, collective actions.

CONCLUSION