Blatantly wrong the bottom line on us politics and policies and their effect on the world. There is a huge group of people at work behind our screens they called behavior architects dissuasive designers or User Experience specialists and the power they have is massive that urge to keep swiping through a twitter feed thats designed the way we all click i agree to the terms and conditions thats designed swiping left or right on tinder thats designed to. We live in an online world of someone elses making and most of us never even give it a 2nd full and actually thats design is what. San francisco its the mecca for tech design is home to Silicon Valley this place pioneered the art of constructing optimizing and enhancing a lot of the technology we use every day its turbo charge the speed at which we use the internet and made navigating the way more ensuring but its also given us a full sense of security. But. Ive lost count of the number of times ive clicked i agree to get into a website we all have to do it as we speed around the internet we face hundreds of these annoying pop ups and consent forms all demanding a response from us and yes i call them annoying because that is exactly what they are they may look like that theyre there to provide us with control but the reality is far from it when users click on i agree to the terms and conditions when they see a Privacy Policy may click on it they may think that theyre actually being given control of their personal data what to collect it how would she and its advantageous to companies for them to do that because if something bad happens the tech company could then say yeah i actually agreed to this nobody ever reads the terms of service no one should ever be expected to if we actually tried to read every terms and conditions agreement that we came across its probably the only thing we would do we would have to be our day job because theyre so long we come into so many and may have the veneer of giving control to data subjects but ultimately its window dressing what a hot saga is what youd call a school of design hes been studying the psychology ethics and legal implications of new technologies one area he specializes in is start of protection and privacy now before we get into this theres a key time you need to know informed consent this is a principle that comes up a lot in discussions of our rights online but its easier to explain in the context of medical so. A doctor explains potential risks and worst Case Scenarios to the patient once you fully informed you have the option to consent to sergio not in the online world the informed consent is what everyone says ideal but he said even possible consent only works under a very narrow set of conditions and thats when the decision is infrequent like with surgery so we dont have surgery all the time its when the risks are visceral there are things that we can easily conjure up in our minds and then finally the harm is possibly great so if things go wrong with surgery you could get sick or you could die so weve got an incredible incentive to take that decisions seriously but of course none of those things are present in the data ecosystem we make decisions quite frequently 1100 times a day. Gee harms are not visceral at all they are incredibly opaque and finally the harm is not even that great because the private modern privacy harms arent huge their death by a 1000 cuts the spin from Silicon Valleys that their own asaad when it comes to how we control our long privacy policies are very confusing and if you make it long and spell out all the details then youre probably going to reduce the percent of people who read it however take a closer look at the design of the buttons in the pups that when they click and its clear that the Tech Companies have the. Design is power and every Single Design decision makes a certain reality more or less likely and what Tech Companies and psychologists and other people have known for years is that defaults are notoriously sticky and so if you design the interface so that all the defaults are set to maximize exposure then youre going to get a lot more data in the aggregate than you would if you said all the defaults to privacy protective because people dont go in and change them so until we fundamentally change the incentives were still going to see companies manipulating the design of these buttons and these technologies to ensure that you still keep disclosing data and that they still keep getting whats the lifeblood of their business most of us assume that when we go on a website and click that i agree but the site simply collects information that we voluntarily choose to share in reality there are many ways to dot a collection and the mechanics of it are invisible hidden by design the study it isnt just the website you are on thats money inclination there are socalled 3rd party advertises marketers and analytics agencies also tracking using tiny bits of so when cookies beacons pixel tags they scoop up incredibly detailed information everything from the computer using to how long you hold for a fairly honestly its a bit mind boggling. And all you really do is click about. Informed consent is a fundamentally broken regulatory mechanism for algorithmic accountability it allows companies to continue to throw risk back onto the user and say you know heres a heres a pop up ad heres a pop up banner that tells you about cookies that no one reads and nobody really even cares about yet we push forward this regime as though it matters to people as though. If if someone clicks i agree even there magically ok with all the Data Processing thats going to come afterwards which is a little bit of a joke and if a little bit of a legal fiction yet its a major component of every almost every Data Protection framework around the world once youve crossed the i agree hurdle now in the clutches of the web site and this is where design takes on a whole new level of importance the job is to keep. One of the most successful innovation in marbling website design is something called internet school. We all use it every single day legally school you sit through your feet without even needing to click. Im on my way now to meet the creator of this function his name is as a rascal now he no longer works inside be tickled gratian in early 2018 he cofounded the center for humane technology. All of our apps all of so Compelling Companies are competing for our attention and because its such a cutthroat game trying to get our attention where you know tens of billions of dollars they have to increasingly point more powerful computers at our heads to try to frack us for that attention and weve all had that experience of going to you tube and you think im going to watch one video and then like somehow. Like you shake your head an hour has passed like what why how is that the technology has hypnotized us this tech unitized nation is key to whats called the attention economy our attention is a finite currency in the online world and its only as long as websites and apps have no attention that they have no business and our Data Retention economy is just this it says if we are not paying for a product well the come to have to make something money somehow. How do they do it they do it by. Selling our attention to advertisers or to other groups that want us to do something theyre trying to make these systems as effective as possible at influencing your decisions quite as much information is about you as they can like who your friends are how you spend your time off from the munged with like. How you spend your money if you take all of this data to build a model of you imagine like a little simulator of you that lives in the facebook server and then they can put things in front of it be like are you more likely to click this this or this or if we want to get you to hate immigration what kind of message would you are going to resonate with this message or this message and you can see how this like this or the begins just this race for it for your attention ends up becoming. An entire economy is worth of pressure with the very smartest minds in engineering and the biggest supercomputers trying to make a model of you to be able to influence the kinds of decisions youre going to make. A few years ago you tube set a company wide objective to reach 1000000000 hours of viewing a day Netflix CreatorReed Hastings has also said multiple times that the companys biggest competitor isnt another website its sleep so what happens when you give algorithms the goal of maximizing our attention and time online they find our weaknesses and exploit them in 2017 sean parker a Founding Member of facebook and its ghost president literally confessed to this at an event how do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible and that means that we need to sort of give you a little dope i mean here every once in a while because someone like her commented on a photo or a post or whatever and thats going to get you to contribute more content to a social validation feedback loop that its like i mean its exactly the kind of thing that a packer like myself would come up with because youre exploiting a vulnerability and in human psychology now its not as though Silicon Valley pioneered the tricks and tactics of addiction a persuasive design many tech designers openly admit using insights from behavioral scientists of the early 20th century right the concept of randomly scheduled rewards study developed by american cycle of just b. F. Skinner in the 1950 s. He created whats become known as the skin of books a simple contraption he used to study pigeons and even raccoons at the start of the process a pigeon is given a food every time it picks the would pick or turns a full circle when the word turnip is as the experiment proceeds the rewards become less frequent they take place at random but by the. Time the behavior has been established the pigeon keeps picking or turning not knowing when it might get through but in anticipation that or would could become skinner boxes with pivotal in demonstrating how design had the power to modify the hevia and if randomly scheduled rewards work for pigeons why not if humans skinners concept is in fact at the heart of a lot of addictive design from casino machines such as slot machines to social media. Smartphones are unnervingly similar to stop machines think about your Facebook Instagram a painter speeds we all swipe down pause and then wait to see what will appear went back to those randomly scheduled boards again youll swipe could result in a new comment on a photo when you like or a piece of spam will Software Update you dont really know and if that unpredictability that makes it so addictive. Natasha dow should lose a cultural anthropologist who spent more than 15 years studying the algorithms behind this waste of design just like on a slot machine when youre texting or when you are looking through the news feed you really never know whats coming down the pike you never know when youre going to sort of hit that jackpot so to speak when its coming and how much it will be so the randomness is very important to keep you hooked and i think the fact that were down bullying money in a casino isnt really that different than what were doing because in both cases what were really gambling is our attention and our time right and across the board were sitting there sort of hoping for some little reward to never knowing when its going to come in all cases where were sort of sitting alone with the machine theres no natural stopping point i think that the similarities are. Quite striking we check our phones over 150 times a day or it is like put up put up its the 1st thing we look at when i wake up the last thing we look at before we go to sleep its like were glued to it and thats thats by design we now have like over 2000000000. 00 scanner boxes and peoples pockets we are running the largest experiment like psychological experiment that the world has ever seen by orders of magnitude one out of every 4 human beings on earth has a skinner box which is learning how to uniquely target that. Super fascinating in the abstract but sort of terror when you think about what its doing the research is being done and the evidence is clear that Digital Technology is being designed with the intention to make us attics its not a secret in the Tech Industry that 2 of the biggest tech because bill gates and the late steve jobs admitted they consciously limited the amount of time their children were allowed to engage with the products they helped create the problem is real but the media can often sensationalize the issue of tech addiction and make it harder for us to understand. I think that the reason people read maybe reach for the metaphor of crack cocaine is because they see that as a sort of high speed hyper intensive form of addiction and you know while i dont use that metaphor myself i do think that within the spectrum of media addiction there are certain ones that are more high potency you could say and those are you know if were going to use the language of addiction they have a higher event frequency think about horse race you go to the track youve got to really wait for that event to happen if you are rapidly engaged in an activity a twitter thread. That is more high potency it has a higher event frequency which means each event has an opportunity to draw you in more to reinforce that behavior more so i think we really can apply the language of addiction to the different media i have a an ongoing. Frustration which is that whenever. I am still for a 2nd i have this impulse to reach into my pocket and pull out my phone and then i get angry at myself because i say thats not right just just enjoy this moment i just do you deal with yourself for a 2nd and then i get angry at myself that my phone has that much power over me right im angry that im subject to the design of a technology in such a way that i have difficulty sort of resisting its allure but of course everything about these technologies is built to to to create that impulse to make it feel as though its irresistible theres such emphasis put on free choice and be able to be a consumer and you make decisions in the marketplace about what you want to do can you have free will but at the same time the very people who are promoting that new. Of the person as a consumer sovereign are operating and designing their technology with a very different human subject in mind its somebody who can like a rat or a pigeon or any other animal be incentivized and motivated and hooked and have their attention redirected and thats really interesting to me because it is a kind of return to skinner i think you wouldnt have heard that in the eightys or ninetys that would have even been creeping you to think about someone designing your behavior but now its become accepted that you can be a behavior designer and behavior design was one part of what as they used to do in a previous life however he is now one of a growing number of industry insiders who are taking a more critical stance towards silicon just. Talking to him let me wonder does he regret his pot. And want to be like humble about it if i had invented it it would have been invented i just happen to be in the right place at the right time think about the right kind of thing. Yes i do regret it but i do think it talks to like the naive 80 being like oh heres just a cool feature. And making it and even if its great for the user without thinking about the effects itll happen if you can scale it up 100000000 people or 1000000000 people where this little thing that i went around to like twitter and google and all these other companies are like guys you should adopt this now is wasted quite literally hundreds of millions of human hours. Im sure all of us have had someone say to us stop looking at your phone or why are you so addicted to social media and before i started this series i thought maybe there was something wrong with me i just had no idea how deliberately designed our online experiences and how these design algorithms are made to lessen. Its i asked everyone i spoke to how do we change this can we change how Online Design works regulation cannot be expected to happen on its own within. These corporations right who are profiting from this because there is just too deep of a conflict of interest and so the only viable kind of regulation is going to have to come from the outside we have to have a public conversation about what is actually going on in these products how are they working and once we understand that as a collective what do we want to limit and constrain so if you start with the assumption that people are never going to fully understands the risks of algorithms and the way in which that interacts with the data then we have to think about what else might work in its place and the Data Protection regimes like the general Data Protection regulation are a Great Foundation and one of the ways in which we could really improve upon that is to embrace a trust basis so instead of putting all of the risk on the user the requirements of protecting people would fall on the big company that is using the algorithms thats using the data i think there is going to be a huge shift from just human centered design as we call it in our field is like put the human at the center which is was a big movement to thinking about human protective design we say that the tools that are big. They are so powerful that they cause real damage to us individually for Mental Health to our relationships to our children and to us society toward democracies to having civil discourse. And that move to human protective doesnt mean. I think its super hopeful because then we can actually have technology which does what it was supposed to the 1st place which is extend our best selves. So if youre concerned about the ways in which data is being collected and algorithms are being used to affect your life there are 3 things i think you can do one used the tools that are given to you use privacy dashboards use to factor authentication which is really valuable to be more deliberate in critical about the ways in which Companies Companies are asking for your information and the devices that you adopt from the services you participate in understand that companies are trying to tell you things through design and theyre trying to make things easier or harder and think about whether you want things to be easier and one of the costs of making things easier and i understand that companies are trying to get your consent because their entire business depends on it and so think about that as you go forward and finally i think that design and consent and privacy and algorithms need the political issues and so if someones running for office ask them what their stance is on algorithmic accountability ask them what their stance is on privacy and Data Collection because if we get better rules about how the data is collected an algorithm is are used and we might all be better off were at this Inflection Point where our technology is beginning to make predictions about us that are better than the predictions we make about ourselves and so one of the best ways of inoculating is by learning about ourselves more dislike stuff and really ask yourself before you post something to facebook or into im like what why am i doing this like what are my motivations if you sort of like slow down your thought process often ive found that itll be like oh i am pulling this ad because im a little bit bored or everyone else has pulled up their phones and feeling a little socially awkward oh thats curious. Or maybe like im having this experience and i sort of want to show off just a little bit and just like stopping and thinking about like what are my motivations for doing things i found to be a great inoculation. And poorer for spending my time in ways that i wish i had. Ill just say that i recommend having a general attitude shift where you understand yourself as an organism as a creature that can like any other number of creatures and animals be turned in certain directions have your attention swayed caught captured hooked i find it liberating to recognize all of the forces that are exerting these these different powers on mean she turned my attention in one way or another and somehow realizing that helps me to disconnect a lot because it makes me a little bit angry. And i dont feel so bad about myself i feel bad about whats being done to me and then i am more able to disconnect. March on aljazeera. Up to theyre also going on the nation witness brings a new film this time from africa for International Womens day a crucial day in the race to challenge donald trump when live across key u. S. States for a super tuesday studio b. Unscripted brings a fresh approach to discussing contentious issues and finding Common Solutions as Benjamin Netanyahu prepares to go on trial for corruption israel heads into its 3rd election in less than a year the listening posts 6 the worlds media how they operate and the way they cover stories march on aljazeera. The 70 is after one tribes and that journey from palestine to the nile delta aljazeera world meets the largest concentration of 948. 00 refugees in egypt. Is socially isolated community with your rights fighting to survive and palestinian heritage alive in a world where that was and is increasingly marginalized egypts while the island on aljazeera. Trade tensions could cut Global Economic growth by more than 48 percent well bring you the stories and developments that are rapidly changing the world we live in to what extent will try to be a drag on the Global Economy in 2020 counting the cost on aljazeera. It doesnt display of opulence and fantasy fans a campus fashion it isnt only a lesson in creativity but also in sustainability all these clothes are made from recycled fin teach all riposte fabrics were leading the way to make it sustainable the new the new normal because thats what it is to be some of the worlds most prestigious fashion houses are based in paris most say that theyre trying to become more environmentally friendly changing a multibillion dollar industry is a challenge but in an environment driven by trends where responsibly make clothes maybe company ultimate fashion statement. Aljazeera. Hello there i am how my heads in endo how with the aljazeera news are coming up in the next 60 minutes iran reports 4 more deaths from the corona virus bringing the total to 19 dead france records its 1st fatality japans Prime Minister says major sporting events should be suspended because of the corona Virus Outbreak the pressure is on to decide about the Tokyo Olympics indias Prime Minister appeals for calm and troops patrol the capital after at least 20 people or killed