[rozap]

> Doomscrolling, like drug addiction, is largely the product of the holistic social-biological environment of the actor. People generally do not intentionally throw away stimulating, happy, healthy lives to become destitute drug addicts, and a comparison of opening a parking payment application to being offered alcohol seems hyperbolic.

Even taking this statement at face value, it's easy to point out how absurd it is.

A huge segment of opiod abusers started off with prescriptions. These were functional members of society and availability to dangerous substances absolutely led to bad outcomes. [1]

Or take another vice, gambling. Recently legalized pretty much everywhere, gambling help lines have seen a huge uptick in traffic [2]. It's only been a few years since sports betting has become mainstream, and already it's a drag on society.

But going beyond the face value of that statement, there's a deeper issue which is, huge segments of the population are not leading "stimulating, happy, healthy lives". There's a reason why purveyors of drugs, scams, cults, gambling tend to go after these demographics; people that are desperate for relief. Does that make it okay? Does it excuse the peddling of harmful wares? Because it sounds like you're saying it's fine to sell harm because these people should know better. I think that's a rotten way to live.

You are entitled to your opinion, but I think this line of thinking is wildly antisocial. It's absolutely the "fuck it, i just gotta get my bag" thinking that is ruining trust in our industry.

[1]https://www.cdc.gov/overdose-prevention/about/prescription-o... [2]https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl...

[aeblyve]

That wasn't my intent at all. Because we actually /create/ that social-biological environment, it very much places the ball in the court of people creating these things.

[rozap]

I apologize for misinterpreting, and I admit that my frustration with our industry probably colored how I read your post. To be clear I'm not saying smartphones should go in the trash and we should go back to pagers, I'm just saying that there's a lot of power here, lots of sharks in the water, and we all have monkey brains.

But to your point - who creates this environment, or what incentives are there for creating a less antisocial environment? I don't think collective willpower exists; there are only incentives. The ball may be in our court as creators, but due to the prevailing incentives, we've chosen to use the ball to extract as much as we can from every little piece of everyone's life. And such a powerful tool allows for efficient extraction!