Sins of the Internet
What the Platforms Did to Us
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Somebody decided to build addiction into these platforms BUY FROM INGRAMSPARKAMAZONKOBOREAD A CHAPTERTABLE OF CONTENTS 168 pages · Paperback ISBN 978-1-946458-52-0 · ebook ISBN 978-1-946458-73-5 |
| 168Pages | 7Deadly sins | 6xEngagement on anger, per Facebook | 280Characters that killed nuance |
Somebody decided to build addiction into these platforms
Somebody decided to amplify anger over empathy. Somebody decided engagement mattered more than wellbeing. Somebody decided human attention was a resource to be strip-mined. None of that was an accident or an emergent property. People sat in rooms and chose it.
Facebook’s own researchers found in 2018 that posts generating angry reactions got six times the engagement of posts generating happy ones. They did not fix it. They leaned in, because furious users are profitable users.
Twitter took the logic further and built a product around hot takes, where 280 characters forces nuance out of every exchange by design.
The internet promised to make us more human and has been doing the opposite on a schedule. We can make different choices, but not before we have named what happened. So this book catalogues the sins, one per chapter, starting with wrath.
What is inside
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The seven
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The rest of them
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The machinery
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Getting out
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Who this is for
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Worth your time if
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Not for you if
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Why me
Richard Lowe, the Writing King
Thirty-three years in enterprise technology, twenty as Director of Computer Operations at Trader Joe’s. I have built systems that shape behaviour and sat in the meetings where those decisions get made. What the platforms did was not inevitable. It was chosen, and I know what choosing looks like from the inside.
Questions people ask
Also in Digital Self-Defense
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Ridiculous Things People Actually Believe A Tour of the Indefensible |
The internet promised to make us more human
Taking that back starts with understanding exactly how it was taken.
BUY FROM INGRAMSPARKAMAZONKOBOREAD A CHAPTERTABLE OF CONTENTS
Paperback and ebook.
A chapter
Sins of the Internet
Technology companies hired the same psychologists who design casino games to make their products as addictive as possible. They studied behavioral psychology, addiction science, and human neurology, then engineered every aspect of their platforms to exploit what they learned.
The infinite scroll eliminated natural stopping points that might allow users to put their devices down. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok removed the friction of pagination because stopping to click “next page” gave users a moment to reconsider whether they wanted to continue.
Streak mechanics borrowed from gaming psychology to create artificial urgency around maintaining daily usage patterns. Snapchat streaks turned casual conversation into an anxiety-producing obligation where users felt compelled to send messages daily to avoid losing their streak count.
Red notification badges created visual anxiety that demanded immediate attention. The bright red circles triggered stress responses and compulsive checking behaviors that kept users returning to apps throughout the day.
Autoplay features removed the decision-making friction that might allow users to stop consuming content. YouTube automatically plays the next video before you’ve consciously decided to watch it. Netflix begins the next episode during the credits of the one you just finished.
Social validation addiction turned likes, comments, and shares into digital drugs that triggered dopamine releases in the brain’s reward centers. The unpredictable timing of these rewards, sometimes you get lots of likes, sometimes few, created the same variable ratio reward schedules that make slot machines impossible to walk away from.
FOMO algorithms deliberately withheld content to create artificial scarcity and urgency. Instagram stories disappeared after 24 hours. Limited-time offers and ephemeral content trained users to check apps constantly to avoid missing something.
Social media withdrawal created genuine physical and psychological symptoms when users tried to disconnect. People experienced anxiety, restlessness, irritability, and difficulty concentrating, the same symptoms associated with substance withdrawal. Because they were withdrawing from the same neurochemical processes.
Table of contents
Sins of the Internet
- Introduction: The Digital Fall from Grace
- Chapter 1: Wrath – The Rage Machine
- Chapter 2: Greed – The Attention Economy
- Chapter 3: Envy – The Comparison Trap
- Chapter 4: Pride – The Echo Chamber
- Chapter 5: Lust – Digital Desire Gone Wrong
- Chapter 6: Gluttony – Information Overconsumption
- Chapter 7: Sloth – The Death of Effort
- Chapter 8: Deception – The Age of Unreality
- Chapter 9: Vanity – The Performance of Self
- Chapter 10: Tribalism – Digital Division
- Chapter 11: Amnesia – The Memory Hole
- Chapter 12: Apathy – The Illusion of Action
- Chapter 13: Addiction – The Dopamine Trap
- Chapter 14: Children – The Intended Targets
- Chapter 15: Commodification – Everything for Sale
- Chapter 16: The Metaverse – Escaping Reality Into Digital Nowhere
- Chapter 17: Artificial Intelligence – The Automation of Everything
- Chapter 18: Digital Divide – The New Inequality
- Chapter 19: Cyberbullying – Digital Cruelty Without Consequences
- Chapter 20: Cyberterrorism – Digital Weapons of Mass Disruption
- Chapter 21: Cyberwarfare – The Invisible Battlefield
- Chapter 22: Cybercrime – The Digital Wild West
- Chapter 23: Hacktivism – Digital Vigilantes
- Chapter 24: Cyber Espionage – Digital Spies
- Chapter 25: Digital Penance – Recognizing the Damage
- Chapter 26: Digital Virtue – Building Better Online Habits
- Chapter 27: Systemic Solutions – Fixing the Machine
- Conclusion: Reclaiming Your Humanity
- Glossary