Can adding a little friction back to user interfaces save us?

Show notes

We talk about the currently-trendy concept of (design) friction and how it is necessary but not sufficient for right action on the Internet.

Links

• Facebook admits that it intentionally defrauded children by making it easy to buy in-game purchases
• The creator of the retweet button now thinks it was a bad idea (Mea culpa: We stated this article was written in Wired but it was in BuzzFeed)
• Dark patterns
• Alt-Meat Trounces Animal Meat’s Massive Inefficiencies
• The Launch: After two decades of research and development, WA 38 lands this fall. It could disrupt an entire industry.—It’s an apple.
• Manton Reece on hashtags and curation—note that Chris said these were totally curated, and they’re not; but they’re also designed not to behave like trends and hashtags on Twitter.
  • Search in Micro.blog
  • Books on Micro.blog
• A short history of Gamergate
• A compendium of articles concerning how Gamergate changed the Internet
• Data arguing that Gamergate was more about harassment than ethics
• A growing list of former tech company workers who regret their design decisions
• The Center for Humane Tech’s podcast Your Undivided Attention
• Tim-Berners Lee on his disappointments and frustrations with what people did to the world wide web

Things Chris has written in relation to this episode:

• Friction is the Friend of Serendipity

Previous episodes:

• 2.03: Impervious Scale—The Roman Empire and Friendster Have Things to Say to You
• 6.08: People Do Reject Technologies, Part 2—Nuclear weapons, nuclear waste, and how to argue well with intractable disagreements.
• 7.01: Do We Really Need to Keep the Internet Around? Season 7’s charter—by way of a rollicking argument about Alan Jacobs’ The Year of Our Lord 1943 and Tolkien’s idea of eucatastrophe.

Music

• “Stig of the Dump / Ogglet (Live)” - El Toppo (By the way, Stig of the Dump is a classic British children’s story, just in case you were wondering. Stephen looked it up after the show.)
• “Winning Slowly Theme” by Chris Krycho.

Sponsors

Many thanks to the people who help us make this show possible by their financial support! This month’s sponsors:

• Daniel Ellcey
• Jake Grant
• Jeremy W. Sherman
• Marnix Klooster
• Nathaniel Blaney
• Spencer Smith

If you’d like to support the show, you can make a pledge at Patreon or give directly via Square Cash.

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