The Tyranny of the Thumb: Or, How to Unplug Leviathan Without Pulling the Plug on Liberty

Let us begin with an uncomfortable confession, one that would make even the most hardened libertarian reach for his smelling salts: the free market has produced a product so perfectly addictive that even its creators will not let their own children touch it. This is not a market. This is a menagerie.

We are told, by men in hoodies worth more than your house, that social media is merely a neutral “platform” — a town square, a public forum, a digital agora. Nonsense. A town square does not follow you into the lavatory at 2 a.m. whispering, “Just one more video. Just one more outrage. Just one more dopamine hit, darling.”

The algorithm, that shy, retiring, multi-billion-dollar beast, does not elevate what is true, or good, or even interesting. It elevates what is engaging, which in the debased lexicon of Silicon Valley means whatever makes you angry, envious, anxious, or — best of all — angry, envious, and anxious at the same time.

So, what is a government — that lumbering, well-meaning, occasionally competent beast — to do? Banning the whole damn thing would be the act of a prude, and, worse, a bore. We do not need a Ministry of Memes. We need a few practical, mischievous, and thoroughly un-Silicon-Valley interventions. In short, we need to make attention-grabbing less profitable than attention-keeping.

The infinite scroll is not a feature. It is a felony against the human will. It is designed on the same principle as the bottomless brunch: you did not intend to stay for six hours, but here you are, drunk on mimosas and outrage.

A sensible government could simply legislate friction. Require a natural stopping point. After 30 minutes, the feed must end. Not pause. End. With a little message: “Congratulations, you have reached the end of the internet. Go outside. Touch grass. It is, I assure you, still there.”

Call it the “You’ve Had Enough” Act. Tech executives will call it censorship. It is not. It is architecture. We require seatbelts in cars, not because we hate driving, but because we understand momentum. The infinite scroll is momentum without brakes.

Have you ever tried to delete a social media account? It is easier to leave the Mafia. You must click through seventeen screens, each one weeping, “Are you sure? Your friends will miss you! Brenda from high school will be devastated!”

These are called “dark patterns,” which is a polite euphemism for lying to people with user-interface design. A government that can regulate the font size on a cigarette packet can surely regulate this. Mandate that deleting an account be as easy as creating one. Mandate that turning off notifications be a one-click affair, not an archaeological expedition. Mandate that “Do Not Track Me” actually means “Do Not Track Me,” not “Do Track Me, But More Sneakily.” If a casino made it impossible to find the exit, we would call it false imprisonment. Why do we give an app a pass?

Here is a heretical thought for both left and right: do not regulate speech. Regulate business models. At present, a platform makes money when you are miserable for longer. Misery is monetizable. Calm is not. What if we reversed the incentive? A small levy on advertising revenue derived from algorithmic amplification — from content the user did not explicitly choose to follow — would do wonders.

Think of it as a Pigouvian tax on pig-headed design. We taxed leaded petrol because it poisoned the air. Why not tax algorithmic lead because it poisons the mind? The tech lobby will howl that this “stifles innovation.” Let them howl. The guillotine also stifled innovation in neckwear. Some innovations deserve to be stifled.

We would not allow a pharmaceutical company to sell a pill and refuse to disclose its ingredients. “Trust us, it makes you feel something,” would not pass muster with government regulators. Yet we allow the most powerful persuasion machines in history to operate as black boxes.

Governments should demand independent audits. Not of the content — perish the thought that a minister should decide what is a joke — but of the mechanism. How does the algorithm rank outrage versus information? What percentage of a teenager’s feed is designed to induce social comparison? Publish it. Let researchers, journalists, and nosy Karens of all races inspect the wiring. Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and also the worst thing for a vampire business model.

Finally, and most radically, give users a real choice. By law, every platform must offer a default setting that is chronological, non-algorithmic, and blissfully boring. No “For You” page chosen by a robot. Just “What Your Friends Actually Posted, In Order.”

Will any of this solve the problem? Of course not. Human beings are vain, tribal, and easily distracted — social media did not invent these vices, it merely industrialized them. The government cannot legislate wisdom, and anyone who promises to is selling you something, probably a course on mindfulness.

But government can do what it is supposed to do: set the rules of the road so that the road does not lead directly off a cliff. It can insist that a product sold to billions be less like a slot machine and more like a tool. A hammer does not try to seduce you into hammering all night. A book does not ping you at midnight to tell you that someone you barely know has an opinion about you.

We have allowed a handful of corporations to privatize our attention and socialize the anxiety. It is time to take the attention back — not by banning speech, but by breaking the business model that profits from our worst selves. After all, if the algorithm wants our attention so badly, let it learn to earn it. Like the rest of us poor sods have to.

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka is the founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center and the author of Deliver us from Distractions: How to Love Your Family More Than Your Phone.