Former Google Design Ethicist: Big Tech in Schools Is Race to the Bottom (2018)

Software has existed for grading and primary classrooms since the early 2000s. The software was awful, and expensive. When you look at Microsoft's new Office 365 offerings for schools...it makes me pretty enthusiastic for the future. I don't see this as a race to the bottom at all. Though I can see some problems with ecosystem lock-ins. But, US schools have long been teaching for the past, Microsoft and Google's new offerings should help schools to lift themselves out of that rut. There are trade offs, but I think the benefits outweigh the bad. My first computer courses in school were on an Apple, that doesn't mean I used Apple for the rest of my life.

Interesting comparison to the food industry's race to the bottom, only to be supplanted at the top by retails such as Trader Joe's. Could Facebook's addictive algorithms eventually be supplanted by something more wholesome? The difference between the food industry and social media is that a single person can switch grocery stores on a whim, but social media platform migration requires a crowd.

I can see how forcing kids onto FB is a major issue, but the article seemed to imply the same was true for other Big Tech EDU platforms (AFAIK the main ones being Google Classroom and Microsoft Teams for Education)<p>Do the same issues exist in these platforms?

I got a young friend that is quite bright minded. He is an engineer, graduated from a top school. He works for Microsoft <i>selling</i> software, mostly the Office suit to <i>schools</i> ... Meanwhile I&#x27;m a FOSS &quot;enthusiast&quot;. There are a lot of money in the school enterprise sector.

We applaud it but when big companies support this with tons of resources it&#x27;s just them trying to drive labor costs down aka lower salaries for us.

Check out Shoshano Zuboff&#x27;s new book - survelliance economy. pretty fascinating stuff.

Here that same Google design ethicist explains in detail how technology hijacks your mind [1].<p>TL;DR:<p>Hijack 1: If You Control the Menu, You Control the Choices. Ask yourself: What’s not on the menu?, Why am I being given these options and not others? Do I know the menu provider’s goals? Is this menu empowering for my original need, or are the choices actually a distraction?<p>Hijack 2: Make apps behave like Slot Machines - give a variable reward. If you want to maximize addictiveness, link a user’s action (like pulling a lever) with a variable reward. You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing. Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable.<p>Hijack 3: Fear of Missing Something Important (FOMSI). If I convince you that I’m a channel for important information, messages, friendships, or potential sexual opportunities — it will be hard for you to turn me off, unsubscribe, or remove your account — because there is a 1% chance you could be missing something important.<p>Hijack 4: Social Approval. When you get tagged by my friend, you think s&#x2F;he made a conscious choice to tag you, when actually s&#x2F;he just responds to Facebook’s suggestion, not making an independent choice. Thus Facebook controls the multiplier for how often millions of people experience their social approval on the line.<p>Hijack 5: Social Reciprocity (Tit-for-tat). You follow me — it’s rude not to follow you back. When you receive an invitation from someone to connect, you imagine that person making a conscious choice to invite you, when in reality, they likely unconsciously responded to LinkedIn’s list of suggested c ontacts.<p>Hijack 6: Bottomless bowls, Infinite Feeds, and Autoplay<p>Hijack 7: Instant Interruption vs. “Respectful” Delivery. Messages that interrupt people immediately are more persuasive at getting people to respond than messages delivered asynchronously.<p>Hijack 8: Bundling Your Reasons with Their Reasons. When you you want to look up a Facebook event happening tonight (your reason) the Facebook app doesn’t allow you to access it without first landing on the news feed (their reasons), so Facebook converts every reason you have for using it, into their reason which is to maximize the time you spend consuming things. In an ideal world, apps would always give you a direct way to get what you want separately from what they want.<p>Hijack 9: Inconvenient Choices. Businesses naturally want to make the choices they want you to make easier, and the choices they don’t want you to make harder. NYTimes.com claims to give you “a free choice” to cancel your digital subscription. But instead of just doing it when you hit “Cancel Subscription,” they force you to call a phone number that’s only open at certain times.<p>Hijack 10: Forecasting Errors, “Foot in the Door” strategies. People don’t intuitively forecast the true time cost of a click when it’s presented to them. Sales people use “foot in the door” techniques by asking for a small innocuous request to begin with (“just one click”), and escalating from there (“why don’t you stay awhile?”). Virtually all engagement websites use this trick.<p>===<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tristanharris.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds%E2%80%8A-%E2%80%8Afrom-a-magician-and-googles-design-ethicist&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.tristanharris.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;how-technology-hijacks-...</a>

Big tech is a race to the bottom in general.