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How cognitive psychologists shaped social media's addictive design
Original: "Cognitive psychologists, hired by Silicon Valley over a decade ago, played a pivotal role in optimizing interface desig
Cognitive psychologists were hired by Silicon Valley companies more than a decade ago to refine user interfaces, contributing to features now standard in social media: likes, follower counts, infinite scrolling and the shift to phone-based apps. Commenters are revisiting this history to argue that engagement-driven design rests on deliberate psychological optimization rather than accident, renewing debate over the ethics of attention engineering.
Why now: Renewed concern over how deliberately social platforms were engineered to capture attention
Silicon Valleycognitive psychologistssocial media platforms
Evidence
- "Cognitive psychologists, hired by Silicon Valley over a decade ago, played a pivotal role in optimizing interface design such as the shift of social networks to phone-based social media apps with its likes, followers and the endless scroll. In this sense, the language of the… · remixtures@tldr.nettime.org · 8
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