There are also users whose use of a service is driven by direct value received (connecting with families, for free). Both can be asserted as true, both carry very little informative value as statements. The strongest statement that this leads to is something like "some users are manipulated, some receive value."
> "some users are manipulated, some receive value."
Sure. That brings us back to my original question. Why invest in "providing value to users" when psychological manipulation is so much cheaper? So long as psychological manipulation has a greater ROI, there's no incentive to invest in providing value. Why pay $200 for a fishing net when a $20 one is easier to use and catches just as many fish?
Because the people in charge of those companies understand the value in users returning to use their service. And that short term trickery isn’t really a good route to building value over decades, which is what these companies are eying.
Can you give a concrete example of short term thinking that has surfaced in product? I see a lot of hand waving (in general, not from you) about BJ Fogg’s work, but I’d like to know what you specifically think was a decision made to favor “short term trickery” instead of investing in a long term quality product.
The mobile games market is an excellent, concrete example of service providers which not only favor "short term trickery" over "long term quality", but actively reduce the long term quality of their services to engage in that trickery and are wildly successful for doing so.
Modern mobile games are chuck full of time gates, grinds, fake currencies, and many other dark patterns designed to physiologically manipulate their users. They usually give users just enough value for them to become invested. After that, the sunk cost fallacy keeps them "engaged" despite the terrible value proposition. Some users tough it out and consume a torrent of ads to keep playing for "free", while others fork over money for microtransactions to keep up with the game's demands without wasting so much time. Either way, it's a terrible experience for users that makes mobile game developers tons of money.
Ahh, that is a great example. Zynga (when I was a game player) did this a lot. But they also strike me as materially different in behavior than the massive tech companies that often are labeled as manipulative.
No disagreement from me that games, like gambling, use this technique a ton. I’m just not sure this menta mode applies to the decisions made by big tech.
