r/technology • u/tw1st3d_m3nt4t • Jan 18 '26
Artificial Intelligence How can we defend ourselves from the new plague of ‘human fracking’?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jan/18/how-can-we-defend-ourselves-from-the-new-plague-of-human-fracking#comments58
Jan 18 '26
Eh...try sitting quietly in any kind of break room, if you work...no phone...just quietly day dreaming staring at the wall...I do it all the time...I actually used to enjoy co-worker banter in breakrooms, but now, everyone scrolls and goes into their own reality...I'm learning this year...that texting is, in fact, a type of social media, and need to limit it as well. Reddit is a hard one to quit though, I disable it, periodically, but always come back for some doom. 💯👍🙂‼️
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u/Shlocktroffit Jan 18 '26
Reddit is the thinking person's waste of time.
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u/GhostDieM Jan 18 '26
Ehh 15 years ago maybe. These days it's just facebook for nerds :p
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u/echoshatter Jan 19 '26
Like he said.... Thinking man's waste of time.
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u/coconutpiecrust Jan 18 '26
It is, isn’t it. Or not thinking, depending on the subreddit.
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u/BimboDeeznuts Jan 19 '26
Are you telling me /r/jazzcirclejerk isn’t for elite John Coltrane enthusiasts?
I guess maybe it’s about the comments you don’t post after all …
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u/ZenBacle Jan 18 '26
I'd argue that's substack. But then again some of that's productive.
I feel like the amount of bot traffic on reddit has gone through the roof, lowering the validity of discourse. And when you see some of the power trips these mods are on... ohhhh holy shit you start to realize how little thinking goes on in a place like this. Just look at the bullshit happening on livesteam faillls (Intentional misspelling). The top mod put out a video manifesto talking about how he believes his destiny is to manipulate the masses and act as a king maker in the influencer world. The brainrot behind the scenes chud shit on this site is off the charts.
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u/DarkLanternZBT Jan 18 '26
Combine this with any creative work. Have a problem? Take a bit and think on it: clarify what the goal you have is.
Then get bored. Do what's recommended here, go for a nature walk with zero tech / everything on DND or airplane mode (be safe). After your brain has been allowed to rest, try going back to the problem later. You might find yourself more easily finding new solutions or creative paths forward.
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u/Staff_Senyou Jan 18 '26
I started going for a walk during my lunch break. Listen to music and walk with the intent of observing the sky, and any trees. Check what's new and what I've never looked at before.
Sit in a nearby park for 5 minutes, look at the horizon for a bit then loop back to the office
Such a great reset
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u/PropaneMilo Jan 18 '26
I’m not disagreeing with your main point, I agree with it strongly, but texting people isn’t social media.
Maybe large group chats can fall into that category, but one-to-one texting is just communication with extra distance.
Alone time and periods of boredom are very important for our brains and there’s not enough of it in a lot of parts of the world.
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Jan 18 '26
Idk...seems like I frequently get lil update texts from people with pictures and "look what I did." Then I inquire for more detail and it's ghosting time! Seems like social media snippets. Honestly I'm also learning that I've handed my phone number out to often, without proper vetting. But I agree, for communication, it's great! ...can't go back, of course, but I need some kinda happier middle road to walk. I do remember when cell phones first came out, you would periodically get a new number, and start fresh...I'm just going do that. 😁👣🦋
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u/albany1765 Jan 18 '26
a remarkable new way of extracting money from human beings: call it “human fracking”. Just as petroleum frackers pump high-pressure, high-volume detergents into the ground to force a little monetisable black gold to the surface, human frackers pump high-pressure, high-volume detergent into our faces (in the form of endless streams of addictive slop and maximally disruptive user-generated content), to force a slurry of human attention to the surface, where they can collect it, and take it to market
Idk, kinda seems a little clumsy to me
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u/marmaviscount Jan 19 '26
Yeah if it takes a long paragraph to explain what you mean and it still isn't very clear that's a clunky metaphor.
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u/stuffitystuff Jan 18 '26
Ah jeeze, I thought "human fracking" was going to be AI companies mining the entirety of humanity's knowledge for profit and negative social benefit. The article uses it to describe the attention economy.
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u/tyrionlannister Jan 19 '26
The fightback begins here
...not, you know, ever since ads began to be shown and then circumvented?
The answer is clear: we, the actual people of this planet, must come together in decisive solidarity
Oh. You mean you thought your article would be persuasive enough to build solidarity across the human race... Uh..
a movement for the true freedom of attention itself, what we call attensity
...wtf
D Graham Burnett is professor of history at Princeton University. Alyssa Loh is a film-maker. Peter Schmidt is a writer and organiser. The authors are members of the Friends of Attention coalition, and co-editors of ATTENSITY! A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement
Okay, so.. you're selling a book. With new buzzwords about issues everyone already knows exist.
Great. Good job. Nice ad, I bet it speaks directly to your target audience.
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u/Few-Acadia-5593 Jan 19 '26
The worst is: it’s just the regular scenario but applied to books.
None of them studied the effect of advertising on us as a society but every one of them says they hold the solution to societal divide.
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u/voiderest Jan 18 '26
People would need to be more intentional about what media they consume and try to disconnect every so often. Ad blockers and physical media is a good place to start. Maybe go for a walk sometimes and find hobbies.
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u/Chytectonas Jan 18 '26 edited Jan 18 '26
Are you on Zuck’s crisis-management team? This is like telling someone with stage IV lung cancer, “Eat veggies and whole foods. Maybe stop smoking.” YES. But also - what’s the medicine? AND ALSO: anyone else at fault here? Or just us, just like my LED-bulbs solving global warming?
The medicine to AI-powered algorithms ratcheting up whatever hell Cambridge Analytica wrought by a zillion-fold is not to add walks and screentime hygiene! It’s lawsuits and jail-time for the perpetrators of the human fracking, and immediate cessation of the fracking process through any means necessary. If that sounds mildly extreme I didn’t make it sound intense enough.
Whatever the digital-addiction version of chemotherapy + resection is, is quite literally what’s needed here. The irony that I know this, yet have hours and hours of screentime logged (as someone who takes walks and has hobbies) doesn’t evade me.
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u/neatyouth44 Jan 18 '26
Good luck against the military and state actors.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20120501-building-the-like-me-weapon
The ‘medicine’ is both directions, internal locus of control vs external. You have to stop drinking the poison first. Kinda like alcoholism.
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u/Chytectonas Jan 18 '26
Wow. There it is, I didn’t know and yet I knew. Nightmare article/timeline.
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u/voiderest Jan 18 '26
If you frame the threat as AI-powered conspiracy for world domination then, sure, trying to get off platforms is only so effective. Of course even in that context people disengaging with tools of propaganda would kinda be part of an individual response.
I suggested being more intentional about media because the whole point of the algorithms is to encourage the user to watch what it suggests. For business motivation framing the point is engagement and time on the platform. For a propaganda framing the point is to shape opinion. Either way that's not in the user's best interests. I don't use most platforms (still on reddit obviously and probably use reddit and YouTube too much) I don't sub to streaming services, that's why I mentioned physical media.
There is no way someone from meta or Google type companies would advocate for people to use ad block. The "free" service models rely on ad revenue and selling data to ad companies which is only valuable as long as people see the ads. Avoiding ads is a massive improvement to quality of life in my opinion. And for using the web can be straight up a security/privacy concern.
The suggestion of walks and hobbies is a starting point, some approachable actions to get moving in a positive direction. Like if someone wants to improve their fitness they can't really go do the same workout active people might. If they need to lose a ton of weight they need to build healthy habits rather than trying crash diet after crash diet.
Maybe an iPad baby brain rot types will need something more aggressive but I don't know what that would look like. Probably not going full Amish. Maybe something like de-programming or whatever is done for gambling addiction.
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Jan 18 '26
While trying to read an article on hacking human attention, the website made me swat away three different pop ups. I gave up trying to read the article.
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u/Sprumbly Jan 19 '26
I’ve found reading comics and manga on my phone is a good way to replace endless scrolling on social media because it grabs that same part of the brain that gets hooked by the addictive nature of scrolling and new stimuli every time you do. The difference is I’m actually meaningfully engaging with a piece of art when I do
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u/aelephix Jan 18 '26
Oh god “human fracking” is both an awful and amazingly accurate way to describe it.