{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"TinfoilHatsMatter","title":"Same Clown Different Tent","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1093,"description":"# EP006 – Same Clowns, Different Tent\n### Tech, Social Media, and the Business of Attention Addiction\n---\n## Episode Summary\nIn 2006, a frustrated software designer named Aza Raskin got tired of clicking \"page 2\" on Google. So he built infinite scroll — a feature so seamlessly engineered for frictionless content consumption that it would later call his own invention \"behavioral cocaine.\" That one design decision, handed to companies whose business model depends on you never leaving, is where this episode begins.\nBut the story is bigger than one engineer's regret.\nThis episode maps the full architecture of attention extraction: how B.F. Skinner's variable ratio reinforcement became the blueprint for notification design, how Howard Moskowitz's \"bliss point\" research moved from processed food to algorithmic feeds, how Tristan Harris tried to warn Google from the inside before going public, and how Frances Haugen walked out of Facebook with 35,000 documents showing the company knew — with its own data — that Instagram was causing measurable harm to teenage girls, and kept optimizing for engagement anyway.\nThe through-line is simple: tobacco, food, tech. Three industries. Three timelines. The same playbook. The same defense (\"we give people what they want\"). The same documented internal awareness of harm. The same delay in accountability.\nThe uncomfortable conclusion isn't that the executives are evil. It's that they don't have to be. Misaligned incentives, applied consistently, at scale, over decades, produce harm without malice. That's what makes this hard to fix — and why \"just use it less\" is the structural equivalent of telling someone in a food desert to eat healthier.\n---\n## Key Figures\n- **Aza Raskin** — Designed infinite scroll at Mozilla (2006). Later called it \"behavioral cocaine.\" Has since testified about its effects and advocates for humane design.\n- **Tristan Harris** — Former design ethicist at Google. Left in 2016. Founded the Center for Humane...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/-glpmAsVCFY-EfsGN-A8fxw_UdMIBMxTpkR5sEYti4c/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS8zOGM0/ZDE4YTI4MGE1Y2U4/YjRhMTA4NWQyZDY2/MDIxMC5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}