On Us by Mark Scott

Author:Mark Scott [Scott, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melbourne University Publishing

This is not just the view of sceptical journalists. One critic snagged my attention when he told a privacy conference that tech companies were taking personal information and weaponising it against us with military efficiency, with scraps of data—each harmless enough on its own—being assembled, synthesised, traded and sold. Profiles are run through algorithms, which serves up increasingly extreme content that pounds our harmless preferences into hardened convictions. And who was the critic? The man who sells the screens and hosts the apps that steal our time and shape our minds. Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook.

Tech firms talk about engagement, but so many of us know this really means addiction. It seems a harsh word, addiction. I look up a simple definition: ‘a physical or psychological need to do, take or use something, to the point where it could be harmful to you’. And as the early creators of the sites have freely admitted, they were designed using the same psychological insights that had so successfully driven addiction to things such as poker machines. It’s a world we didn’t know we wanted. All this new digital content fills up Infinity Pools: the apps and other sources of endlessly replenishing content. Two former Google execs, Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, coined the term and explain it simply. ‘If you can pull to refresh, it’s an Infinity Pool. If it streams, it’s an Infinity Pool.’ A world always available; a place designed so you could get lost in it forever.

And there is something about negative emotions that means, in an online setting, they seem much more powerful in grabbing our attention, in driving a reaction, in keeping us compelled and clicking. It can be ugly, but it is hard to look away. Negative emotions spiked by algorithms inciting us, ‘bad actors’ seducing us, fellow citizens abusing us.

I remember that back when I was working at the SMH, the letters pages were always a wonderful showcase of the readers’ wit and intelligence. When I started, they all seemed to arrive in the mailbag, although a few may have been faxed through to us. But there was something about having to write a letter, and address an envelope, and find a stamp and then post it, that seemed to provide breaks on the intemperate or splenetic. Once email arrived, the tone of the correspondence changed quickly and markedly. The wonderful letters were still there, but they were buried beneath a torrent of fury or abuse. It was just so easy to press ‘send’; an early sign of the unleashed trolls, who would soon be abundant in the online world.

If you are not a target of such sexist, racist or abusive online attacks, it can be a surprise to learn of this stuff if it hasn’t popped up in your feed. I did a panel about Twitter at the ABC, with Annabel Crabb and Mia Freedman, just as the site was beginning to generate a lot of attention. When questioned about trolls and hate speech, I

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