The Ethics of the Attention Economy.

The attention economy is thriving. Online giants such as Google and social media companies invest huge amounts in developing innovative ways to keep eyes glued to their screens and to trade our private data and preferences to advertisers to grow profits. The time spent interacting with content has been transformed into a valuable commodity in an age when human attention is increasingly difficult to attract.

There is enormous competition for the increasingly scarce resource of human attention. Maintaining eyes on screens and gaining new customers, demands making content as alluring as possible. ?It has been quantified fairly accurately that on average, consumers spend between four and five hours glued to their mobiles. This interaction time is leveraged for free and translates to highly lucrative advertising revenue.

Our attention is being harnessed for free and translated back into advertising revenue. In a strangely circular system, we are simultaneously the product and the target of a huge ad-generating industry. As more attention is harnessed, more viewers or followers are added, and the price of the ad revenue increases.?The now cliched truth that the reason that these platforms are mostly free is that ‘we are the product’ is undoubtedly one part of the problem.

Certain platforms such as?YouTube?and?Spotify?offer paid subscriptions where ads disappear. The thought occurs that ads are the punishment for availing of the free service, however, the truth is that we are either paying directly for a subscription or indirectly paying with the currency of our attention.

Is it possible to redefine the parameters of this highly profitable model??Is it feasible to not click on the YouTube clip recommended for us or to not give in to the constant barrage of clickbait, endlessly scrolling down to reach the brief spark of endorphin at the end of often meaningless content? The products have been designed to be highly addictive. The types of tricks used by casinos pale in comparison to the manipulative strategies of many online platforms. Anecdotally, there are regular reports of people crossing roads without even taking their eyes off their phone screens.

Is there a way to modify the system so that we can at least be compensated for our attention, without selling our private data in the process? The nexus between attention and revenue is perfectly expressed in the form of a cryptocurrency called?BAT?or?Basic Attention Token, which is the ad revenue system used exclusively by the?Brave browser.

The name of the currency tells the story. Basic Attention Token is a cryptocurrency based on the premise that your attention, according to the sites you visit and spend the most time on, can be quantified and monetised into units of BAT.

In opposition to the systems of advertising used by?Google Chrome,?Brave Browser?offers a system called?Brave Rewards. Users are given the option to?opt in?to view ads. Brave browser can calculate the attention spent by people on various websites. Brave then takes the automated calculation of attention spent on visiting sites and distributes the BAT to the visited sites.

We can essentially exchange our attention for payment while maintaining higher levels of privacy. Users can earn BAT for every ad viewed in the Brave browser. Importantly, Brave?states?that personal data will remain private and anonymous. ?Essentially, attention is still a commodity, however, it is explicitly part of this more privacy-conscious system.

The current model being primarily used By Google is based on collecting as much data as is feasibly possible. Sharing your private data with advertisers to bid on, is the primary way that your data is monetised.?The profile constructed under this vast data collection means that advertisers can target the right person with the ad that has the greatest potential to be turned into a sale.

Brave is attempting to transform the advertising model fundamentally by compensating online creators, and users choosing to watch adverts. ?It is experiencing significant growth due mainly to its privacy-preserving model by blocking ads and trackers.

There may be a little hope for some improvements in the future, as the effects of some of the more pernicious design elements of social media become more apparent.?The Centre for Humane Technology?was launched to help educate users about the insidious effects of what they call ‘extractive’ or ‘persuasive’ technologies employed by the largest social media corporations. At least through education, users can recognise the types of gimmicks being employed to monopolise their attention.

The drive to create a truly ethical online ecosystem may not be strong enough when the prevailing system is returning such large profits to the gatekeepers of the internet. The tweaks being made in the background are primarily concerned with what the companies refer to as ‘enhancing user experience’. This translates to the means to keep people’s attention for as long as possible thereby converting this into higher advertising revenue.