Post AS8ZfGQv35OS5FoICG by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
 (DIR) More posts by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
 (DIR) Post #AS8FkynzVHRG4A39ge by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
       2023-01-29T09:55:49Z
       
       1 likes, 2 repeats
       
       #Facebook runs experiments that literally drain the battery of your phone on purpose to see how you change your behaviour in those situations - or how it changes the way videos and images are rendered. It calls it "negative testing".I'm appalled that a large business can run experiments that actively harm their users for no obvious benefit, get away with it, and people still believe in the mythology of the free market that eventually ends up rewarding the best product - with users eventually picking the winners among a pool of comparable competitors.In an ideal and balanced capitalist market with low entry barriers for competitors, a company like Meta should already have burned in a big ball of fire long ago for all of its sins. The fact that Meta is still alive, can get away with basically anything and it actively pushes away competitors (usually by purchasing them) is the most macroscopic failure of that rotten economic system called capitalism.https://www.phonearena.com/news/facebook-drains-phone-batteries-intentionally_id145227
       
 (DIR) Post #AS8ZfGQv35OS5FoICG by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
       2023-01-29T13:24:50Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       This whole idea of "negative testing" actually gave me a lot of food for thought.The philosophy behind user experiments (A/B, A/A and all the variants in between) is usually that you want to try out new features assuming that those features will have a *positive* impact on the user experience. That is "positive testing".For example, you have a UI with a date picker made of multiple <select> elements. You believe that a calendar-like date picker will be easier to understand and use? Just wrap it up an A/B experiment. If more users are likely to go ahead with the process after being shown the new picker over the old one, you have proved your case - and improved the user experience."Negative testing" goes in the opposite direction. You want to provide users with a different experience, under the hypothesis that that new experience will be *worse* for the user - for example, by removing popular features, hiding relevant content, or draining the battery. And you want to monitor how users change their behaviour in this new environment.The proponents of this approach apparently argue that the collected data provides insights that eventually make the overall experience better for the majority of the users. But is this really a price worth paying?Would you appreciate it if your car's speed was suddenly capped while driving on a highway, or if the connection to the brakes was temporarily interrupted, so the producer of your car can collect better data on how drivers react under conditions of stress?If we wouldn't accept this in the real world, why should we accept it in the digital one?The purposeful crafting of a worse experience for some customers, no matter the goal, is the absolute negation of one of the founding principles of a capitalist market - that the customer is always right, and it should be the mission of a business to be in good faith and to provide a good user experience.And the fact that Facebook can get away with literally draining the battery of your phone for their experiments (and even much more than this) is the negation of another founding principle of a capitalist market - that in a competitive market users should be able to just walk away to another comparable competitor if their user experience deteriorates.In an ideal market, the only sensible response to the question "how do users change their behaviour if my app starts draining their battery?" should be "users will stop using your app and switch to a competitor". The fact that this is not the most likely outcome of their experiments proves that our economic system is deeply flawed.
       
 (DIR) Post #AS8ZfH14seJhtOjAYa by michel_slm@floss.social
       2023-01-29T13:43:47Z
       
       0 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @blacklight the FB UX is not great (a lot of it due to experiments, indeed) but I wonder if there's really one intentionally gobbling up the battery? I suspect it's more a 'tragedy of the commons' situation with many teams pushing their own thing without regard for overall power usage.Agreed on your points broadly though.Disclaimer: I work there but miles removed from anything product related
       
 (DIR) Post #AS8ZfHgYORUfy28ICm by blacklight@social.platypush.tech
       2023-01-29T13:54:24Z
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       @michel_slm the author of the article is apparently a former employee who was allegedly fired for refusing to run negative experiments.Of course I can imagine that the reporting from somebody who has just been fired may be biased. But, knowing a bit of how the company operated in the near past, this idea of negative testing doesn't seem so far fetched.I definitely see a scenario where some teams may want to investigate how users change their behaviour when e.g. their phone battery is low - which conversations do they prioritize? How does it change the time that they spend on the app? What can we display first in the app so that users won't waste too much of the remaining time searching for things?And there can definitely be some noble intentions behind these experiments to improve the UX, don't get me wrong.However, if you have limited budget or time resources to run this experiment, and a user running out of battery is a relatively uncommon scenario, what do you do? Well, you just drain the battery for more users, so you can collect more data points in a shorter time.This raises an interesting question: is it even ok to run experiments where the variant group is given a worse UX, to the level that it may even put them in situations of danger, so you can improve the long-term UX for more users? In my opinion, the answer to that question should be a straightforward no.