Attention Economy

Parnell shows that authors of color and queer authors are much more likely to have their work flagged as “adult content,” largely due to problems with Rekognition, the algorithm used to analyze the book covers uploaded by authors.

Business model shapes outcomes. In a subscription based model, you build tools people use and pay for. In an ad-based model, you build engagement hacks. As Tristan Harris put it: “we've moved away from having a tools-based technology environment to an addiction and manipulation based... See more

Gloria Mark, a professor of information science at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of “Attention Span,” started researching the way people used computers in 2004. The average time people spent on a single screen was 2.5 minutes. “I was astounded,” she told me. “That was so much worse than I’d thought it would be.” But that was... See more

Something I’ve noticed, however, is that exclusively using TikTok doesn’t mean I’m only exposed to TikTok-specific trends and culture. In fact, many of the dust-ups from other platforms still make their way onto my For You page. Rather than a standalone platform, as it was in its early days, TikTok has become the ocean into which—and out of

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