A small group of people are fighting over a button somewhere in a glass-walled office in Tel Aviv, Seoul, or San Francisco. It’s not precisely its color or location, but rather the emotion it ought to evoke. Should it sound like a car door closing with a soft click? Is it supposed to vibrate? Is it better to give you a flicker of confetti as a reward or to withhold it long enough to force you to tap again? Every day, these discussions take place in rooms that the majority of us will never see, and the choices made there ultimately determine how millions of strangers spend their evenings.
It’s simple to assume that engineers write code to create apps. Of course they are. However, product designers, behavioral researchers, growth specialists, and a more subdued group known as retention leads make up the deeper architecture, which determines whether you open Instagram twice an hour or twelve. They research what draws you back. They frequently openly appropriate elements from slot machine timing, casino design, and the psychology of variable rewards. Walking through any modern product team gives the impression that the distinction between manipulation and persuasion has been allowed to become hazy, primarily because no one has been formally asked to draw it.
Some of this was unusually visible in the court documents from the Match Group case. According to internal documents, the apps were intentionally designed to create habits, with engagement loops designed to give the impression of progress even when none was being made. These days, engagement loops are a ubiquitous term. It can be heard in pitch decks, founders’ podcast interviews, and executives’ somewhat defensive responses when reporters inquire about screen-time statistics. Few people find the phrase offensive. Fewer still inquire as to who approved it.
Silicon Valley has a long-standing practice of viewing these decisions as neutral, almost weatherlike. The app just keeps getting better. Naturally, users spend more time. Notifications establish a rhythm. However, each of those phrases conceals a meeting, a Slack thread, or a Figma file with the initials of a senior designer in the corner. Someone made the decision that the icon would have a red dot. Pull-to-refresh was thought to resemble a slot machine lever. After viewing a heatmap, someone somewhere came to the conclusion that the dopamine cycle needed to be shortened by 0.5 seconds.
It’s odd how few of these individuals think of themselves as powerful. When you speak with product designers behind closed doors, you’ll frequently hear something that verges on embarrassment. They are skilled at what they do. They have seen the same Tristan Harris talks about attention, attended the same conferences, and read the same books by Nir Eyal. But the incentives are stubborn. Growth is what investors desire. Growth entails retention. Triggers are necessary for retention. Practically speaking, a designer who declines to construct the trigger is replaced by one who does.
Slowly, regulators have started to circle. The issue is hinted at in the EU’s Digital Services Act. Some US state attorneys general have begun to ask more pointed questions, especially when it comes to teenagers. However, there is still a huge disconnect between what designers are aware of and what users are told. The majority of app stores request permissions for contacts and location. None seek your consent to mold your habits.
Observing this from the outside, it’s difficult to ignore the fact that we’ve subtly transferred some sort of authorship of day-to-day existence. Not to one villain, not to a cabal. Just to a dispersed network of well-considered, well-paid, and primarily young professionals who make tiny choices that culminate in something that none of them personally intended. It’s still genuinely unclear if that’s a scandal or just the nature of contemporary life. The architects continue to work. The structures continue to rise. The majority of us have already entered.
