[HN Gopher] "User Engagement" Is Code for "Addiction"
___________________________________________________________________
"User Engagement" Is Code for "Addiction"
Author : wilsocr88
Score : 518 points
Date : 2021-02-16 12:42 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (craigwritescode.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (craigwritescode.medium.com)
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| The author knew that adding a strong and clickbaity title is code
| for "addiction" still used it and published it in various places
| for getting the engagement. The companies and their managers are
| driven by same sort of metrics as the author.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I also tell some of my cousins to get less of their news from
| Facebook and, in general, use Facebook less.
|
| On Facebook.
| werber wrote:
| I recently joined tiktok and their algorithm really freaked me
| out. It took maybe twenty minutes for it zone into some
| incredibly specific interests of mine. I enjoy the app, but I've
| never felt so pushed into the content I want to see so quickly.
| I'm quite A bit older than their average user but the mental
| impact on a child seems immense.
| rkangel wrote:
| Where is the line between engineering for addiction and
| engineering for a quality user experience?
|
| Everything we are told about building modern services is about
| optimisation. You have metrics, you experiment, you tweak things,
| you see what helps and what doesn't. This is as true for business
| models as it is for interface design.
|
| Some of this is good - it is positive to improve your UI to
| reduce friction and make it more usable by your customers. Some
| of it is fine - choosing a landing page design that gets more
| people to sign up. Some of it is bad - things you do that mean
| people don't close the app as readily.
|
| All these changes are the result of the same process, that is
| built into how modern businesses operate. How do you draw the
| line between optimising for good UI and optimising for addiction?
| If you're writing legislation, do you outlaw specific practices?
| If you're trying to operate companies ethically, do you just
| avoid certain metrics?
| m4r35n357 wrote:
| Similarly "User Experience"
| s_dev wrote:
| Anything that provides a 'hit' stands a chance of being
| addictive. Including cheeseburgers and fun video games.
|
| >Most alarming is the "internet points". On Reddit, this is
| called Karma. On Twitter, it's likes and retweets. Ostensibly,
| this simple numeric score displays the community's overall
| attitude toward a given piece of content. On its face, this
| appears to be a radically democratic concept; Everyone can vote!
| The reality is very different. Reddit, for example, has always
| obfuscated the true Karma score ("to prevent vote brigading"),
| and the position of a piece of content within the feed can be
| purposely decided by the Reddit home office, not by the
| community. This is incredibly, deeply sinister.
|
| Why is it 'deeply sinister' -- he just seems to assert it, reddit
| home office isn't putting other content there that isn't
| sponsored -- astro turfing exists and explains a lot of that but
| I don't think it's the reddit admins. The voting mechanism is
| pretty good at determining interesting content from uniteresting
| content.
|
| This whole article reads like a conspiracy theorist rant like
| some luddite against tech. There are negative behviors associated
| with modern technology but this article just asserts that without
| really elaborating exactly why. It just blankly gestures "you
| know -- bad tech, feedback loops, doom srolling" all the
| keywords!
| noahtallen wrote:
| I think you are missing the point. Yes, cheeseburgers can be
| addictive. Consider if $burger_chain provided an unlimited
| burger, which you could eat forever. This would certainly be
| very problematic, but at least you have the biological function
| of "too full to eat" which gets you to stop. But you can
| imagine how bad this could be for many people even with that
| function.
|
| Social media is even worse. It's an unlimited hit for hours and
| hours and hours with hardly any short-term consequence which
| causes you to break out of the loop.
|
| The other point you are missing is that the incentives are all
| wrong. The incentive for posts on social media is engagement,
| which means polarizing content, which means radicalization.
|
| At least with a fun video game, you might have fun playing it
| and learning new skills and stories! But I can admit that I
| often spend too much time captured in the game loop a because
| it's unlimited -- that's problematic.
|
| It's still fair to point out that the incentives for
| $burger_chain are all wrong too -- hence why fast food is so
| full of sugar and other ingredients which are bad for you, but
| taste good in the moment to many. It's to drive addiction,
| which drives recurring sales. I think that's messed up to.
| goalieca wrote:
| Reddit also has purchased up/downvotes (through click-
| farms/bots), opaque moderation, and the real-time public
| display of these promote mobs and groupthink even if it were
| actually organic. I don't think for a second their algorithms
| do a good enough job of mitigating these clickfarms.
| asidiali wrote:
| https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.04206.pdf
| goalieca wrote:
| > Even though the environment of r/unpopularopinion
| encourages users to freely express their opinion, the
| dominant population of this community is young white males,
| and only the opinions representing them are supported by
| general users and brought up to the front page.
| Consequently, the minority opinions are neglected and it
| results in another spiral of silence phenomenon in the
| community
|
| I don't know if young white males needs to be said or if
| that's just speculation. What matters more is the outcome
| which is actually just more groupthink.
| asidiali wrote:
| I mean, they took a sample of the sub, and that is what
| they found (see their notes on data collection process
| done via Reddit Chat)
|
| Regardless, I agree with you, the groupthink is the issue
| here - I do think it is telling though, that it is a
| groupthink (allegedly) skewed by the white male
| perspective. Which I think is also an issue, lack of
| representation in such echo chambers. But you're right -
| two separate issues that happened to be intertwined here.
| Anti-racist echo chambers are still echo chambers.
| s_dev wrote:
| There is an arms race between reddit admins and spammers in
| general -- who will ruin any platform with eyeballs on it.
|
| This article does not address that all -- vote fuzzification
| apparently only serves "brigading" -- thast not what it's
| for. It's for spammers so they can't judge the effectivness
| of their bots.
|
| The author misses the wood from the trees. I'm not seeing
| valid criticisms either which means he didnt' even Google to
| see what others said of reddit, e.g. poor moderation tools
| for large subs.
| Fricken wrote:
| Marshall McLuhan, the media theorist, pointed out the hazards
| of "Peer to peer electronic media" in the 1960s with uncanny
| accuracy. Calling someone a luddite when your own views are as
| anachronistic as they are is ridiculous.
|
| And stop flattering yourself by calling social media 'tech'.
| Every industry uses technology, calling it 'tech' doesn't
| distinguish it in any way. Social media is a medium for a
| exchange like a book, or a campfire. Different media have
| different effects on how information is conveyed and how the
| world is understood by the users of said medium.
|
| Social media has been overwhelmingly influential to the way
| people communicate and understand one another and denying any
| questioning of it's effects outright is telling. Your tribalism
| is showing. Marshall McLuhan warned you about this, you should
| have listened.
| slothtrop wrote:
| > stop flattering yourself
|
| What does this even mean? Why would it be flattering himself?
| halfmatthalfcat wrote:
| This comment is as equally polarizing as GP, just in the
| opposite direction. You can have social media be tech, have
| some net effect on society (whether that's good or bad is
| literally being debated right now) and be addictive.
|
| As with anything in life, there is nuance. Social media isn't
| a great satan and it isn't god's gift, it's somewhere in
| between.
| Fricken wrote:
| Well yes, case in point, social media has a tribalizing
| effect on people. I don't disagree that comments on the
| internet tend to be polarizing. I wouldn't have commented
| at all if it wasn't to disagree with somebody, that's
| normal in these parts.
|
| I wonder what happens when most of the population is
| relying on such a medium for their understanding of the
| world beyond what they can see and touch? I don't think me
| setting a good example here on HN is going to have much
| effect against the basic human impulses that social media
| selects for.
| maest wrote:
| > I don't think it's the reddit admins
|
| It's actually the mods. A select small number of people are
| mods on the top 50 or so subreddits by size. They can control
| what gets posted, what gets upvoted and what gets silently
| censored. It's also an (unpaid) full time job, it's naive to
| think they're not monetising their power in any way.
| s_dev wrote:
| >It's actually the mods.
|
| Mod means nothing -- I'm a reddit mod. Admin is paid employee
| of reddit with completely different access level. A planted
| story by a mod is still within the grounds of "astroturfing"
| accusing reddit admins is another order of magnitude of
| corruption higher. Like I said I don't think reddit admins
| are doing it but the author does seem to imply it.
| yanderekko wrote:
| Mod doesn't mean nothing. A lot of the powerusers also
| moderate major subs and can spike opposing content and
| users who would interfere with their clout-chasing, and
| appeal to sympathetic admins to enforce "harassment"
| provisions if their manipulations were being critically
| discussed in places on Reddit that are beyond their reach.
|
| I mean, is there any defensible reasons for why we often
| see the top powerusers on these subs also act as mods? I'm
| sure that they aren't behaving as "normal" mods.
| crumbshot wrote:
| > _This whole article reads like a conspiracy theorist rant
| like some luddite against tech._
|
| Your whole comment is a rant. At least the article you're
| complaining about had some points to make.
|
| Much of what the author mentions has its roots in behavioural
| addiction research. In particular, there are many parallels
| with the gambling industry, and how it profits from maximising
| user engagement and potential for addiction.
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| > Anything that provides a 'hit' stands a chance of being
| addictive.
|
| Also holds for the edit-compile-test cycle, I suppose.
| salawat wrote:
| In intelligence circles, you evaluate an adversary in terms of
| capabilities as a rule, then figure out the impact of those
| capabilities when employed against you.
|
| I find it interesting that so many people in the world have a
| knee jerk reaction specifically against doing this. Especially
| when it comes to tactics around manipulation. The fact is,
| everyone is vulnerable to it. You don't spend all your time
| worrying about it mind, but it behooves one to evaluate and
| maintain a sense of perspective. No, Reddit probably isn't
| always actively engaging in some direct form of manipulation.
|
| Oh wait, yes they are, they advertise, and they moderate. Both
| of those are active measures to shape discourse, the difference
| in whether this is positive or negative tends to come into play
| based on who the shaping of discourae benefits, and who it
| maligns, and where you are in respect to that divide. They
| aren't a hands off neutral platform.
|
| The more interesting article, in my mind, would have been one
| less focused on particular tech, and moreso the role of
| manipulation in the modern world.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Tech and "tech companies" are a huge red herring in these
| discussions. These are business models and business
| decisions. The algorithms aren't doing this on their own -
| there are humans there, making decisions to mess with
| people's heads and make money through tricking other people
| to part with their money.
|
| It's the same problem as we had 100+ years ago - and really
| even the same problems real (not stereotypical) Luddites rose
| against: business decisions. But talking about this is
| boring, we've been having this discussion for generations.
| Focusing on "tech" generates more clicks.
| op03 wrote:
| Cheese burgers and video games aren't free dude.
|
| Bad enough they are handing out free drugs. On top of that look
| at the behavior it produces. Algo amplification of all the
| content that generates polarization, misinfo, mob justice etc
| is not possible without a corral of people addicted to and
| conditioned by the Like/Click/Upvote/View/Follower count.
|
| When their behavior is unproductive. They point at their Like
| counter as validation. Thats how Trump end ups thinking he is
| doing something productive.
| u678u wrote:
| My smartphone is a now a net negative for me. I need a token
| apps, maps, uber but everything else really is wasting my time.
| Sure I've tried a bunch of things but the addictive apps keep
| coming back.
| montenegrohugo wrote:
| I'd add that algorithmic feeds are another part of the triad
| (quartet?), and probably the worst offender. Personalized
| addictive content is on the rise (tiktok, YouTube, even Facebook
| and Twitter curate your newsfeed "for you" ), and these ml-
| determined feeds drive engagement to the highest possible levels,
| leading to an incredible waste of time, a distorted world view
| (mostly the posts with the highest engagement will be those that
| call for outrage, which leads to radicalization [1]), and just in
| general a society where our information consumption is determined
| by black boxes with opaque goals that do not optimize for the
| common good.
|
| I attribute a significant part of the political rift and
| radicalization that has occurred in the western world in the past
| few years to specifically this feature, the algorithmically
| determined, engagement maximizing, feed.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-00550-7
| api wrote:
| I definitely think personalized feeds are the worst in terms of
| "negative value creation." I don't think Qanon for example
| would be a popular movement without having ridden the YouTube
| recommendation algorithm and Facebook's personalized feeds
| before those companies were forced to ban it.
|
| I think of it this way. Lets say I walk past someone on the
| street and say "hi." Now lets say I punch them in the face.
| What creates the most engagement?
| ghoward wrote:
| I agree. In fact, I wrote about that fact on my blog.
| https://gavinhoward.com/2019/11/recommendations-and-radicali...
| throwaway29389 wrote:
| Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radicalization I'm
| honestly surprised to see the world "radicalization" used as a
| net negative thing, rather than positive/negative/neutral
| depending on context.
|
| E.g. Gandhi would have been called "radical" without implying
| any violent tendency.
| Spivak wrote:
| I think this emerges as a collective version of the "my views
| are always normal" fallacy.
|
| * Anyone who drives slower than me is an idiot and anyone who
| drives faster than me is reckless.
|
| * Anyone who's worse than me at me at Overwatch is a noob,
| anyone who's better than me has no life.
|
| * Anyone who's views are less extreme than me is a sheep,
| anyone who's views are more extreme than me is a radical.
|
| It takes a lot of effort to realize that I'm on the "radical"
| spectrum for a lot of my political views (I'm hella
| progressive) and that that isn't a bad thing, but neither are
| other people's, in my view less aggressive, ideas for
| tackling problems.
| gugagore wrote:
| It certainly feels tricky because "radical" can apply to
| ideas about goals and also to ideas about ways of achieving
| goals ("tackling problems").
|
| It's hard to suss out people's goals. They might not
| understand their goals themselves, and "goal" may be an
| abstract and unknowable thing. But I think it's necessary
| to find some goals to be a bad thing in order to figure out
| your own politics.
| michaelt wrote:
| Since 9/11 it's been common to use "radicalization" to refer
| to crossing the line between regular Islam and Radical Islam.
|
| And (to a lesser extent) the equivalent process for other
| domestic terrorist groups.
|
| People will still understand what you mean if you use
| "radicalization" to refer to positive things, but they'll
| wonder if you're making a very dry joke.
| toto444 wrote:
| I have moved from using reddit to frequenting a traditional
| forum where the content is ordered chronologically and that
| makes an insane difference to the quality of the conversation.
|
| You go from the most outrageous at the top to the most
| discussed at the top. All content gets a chance to be read.
| Even if it the first user find it uninteresting. On reddit, if
| what you post gets a downvote very quickly, you're basically
| done.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Yes, Reddit basically encourages flashy comments.
|
| But the rub with traditional message boards is, that they
| don't scale well. Some subreddits have many, many thousands
| of active regular participants. It's hard for a single
| subforum to operate at that scale.
| starpilot wrote:
| Isn't this the same as the algo-driven placement of HN
| stories and comments?
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| To a certain extent, yes, though my understanding is that
| HN's comment ranking algorithm is substantially different
| from Reddit's.
| gibspaulding wrote:
| Also, HN is more of a news feed than a forum, so it makes
| sense to favor newer posts over knowledge-base type
| threads.
|
| Makes me sort of want an HN forum though. Maybe limited
| to self posts and with a more chronological feed.
| mdoms wrote:
| It's such a shame that most hobby-related content has moved
| to Reddit. Because of the way the algorithms work there are
| no long-running threads and recent content is heavily
| favoured.
|
| This is terrible for hobby boards because it means that
| content from long-timers gets drowned out by newbies asking
| the same questions over and over. In my experience hobby
| subreddits are completely dominated by inexperienced newbies
| giving one another the same cargo-cult advice. That, and
| straight up image posts with literally 0 value (for example
| the front page of /r/simracing at any given moment is usually
| about 30-50% pictures of just a steering wheel / rig from
| someone saying "got my new wheel/rig today").
|
| The old days of forums were great for hobbyists because the
| long-running threads would stretch into the dozens or
| hundreds of pages of comments. Newbies could be directed to
| the longer threads or deep-linked directly to older comments.
| The format surfaced all posts, but did not favour recency -
| old threads could be revived (necro'd) or kept up top
| indefinitely. It wasn't perfect but it was a system that
| favoured long-timers over newbies.
| wott wrote:
| > I have moved from using reddit to frequenting a traditional
| forum where the content is ordered chronologically
|
| Chronologically by _last update_ , otherwise you could always
| read /r/yoursub/new, but that's only chronologically by _last
| original post_. By _last original post_ doesn 't help much.
| For slow-moving subs, it doesn't change anything much; for
| fast-moving subs, it's okay-ish if you care about posts more
| than comments, but you still lack curation (however
| imperfect).
| rconti wrote:
| I liked Facebook much more when I could scroll back far enough
| and my perfectionist mind would see where I previously left off
| and I'd feel "caught up". You can still do it, but the content
| changes a bit every time. Twitter seems a lot worse; you'll
| never be able to "go back" and find that thing you just saw a
| minute ago before you closed the app, and it's just infinite.
| luplex wrote:
| I think this is how AI takes over humanity.
|
| Humans are so short-sighted, we don't even need a
| superintelligence to outsmart us. We happily stand by and
| collect profits while letting the AI do whatever it wants.
| Really, we need regulation that makes companies care about
| side-effects of their AI technology.
| mym1990 wrote:
| It reminds me of Spirited Away and how everyone fed No Face
| for a little gold in return, but in the end they all got
| eaten.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Wait until people figure out how much power the AIs already
| have over election outcomes.
| minikites wrote:
| What?
| cannabis_sam wrote:
| Most people in democracies are entrenched into two blocks
| (even in European multiparty systems), and
| AI/ML/statistical methods/mathematical optimization
| allows interested groups to target the people inbetween
| the blocks. And based on their personality profile you
| can goad them to one side or the other with targeted
| advertising.
|
| (I'm not making any claims about where or how or how much
| these things are happening.)
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| The AI determines which political articles and posts you
| see. The AI determines if you get reminded to
| register/vote. At the extremes the AI has a very strong
| impact on whether you believe Obama is a secret Muslim or
| Trump is a Russian asset.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Which means people best able to play people to increase
| the "this post is good" score of the AI will sway the
| election results. It's not enough to _control_ them, but
| I 'd imagine you can tip a close election by 10% or so.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Dr. Robert Epstein has done some research on this and has
| testified before Congress about it. Here's one article.
| https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-google-search-
| bia...
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Reality has a left-wing bias. It's not surprising that
| people who research things drift away from right-wing
| rhetoric.
| bordercases wrote:
| "Objective absolute indifferent thing, has _bias_ towards
| patchy intersubjective historically situated thing"
| sounds a lot less catchy when you unpack it.
| [deleted]
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| It's a joke. Mainstream right-wing socioeconomic theories
| are falsified by reality more often than mainstream left-
| wing socioeconomic theories. (Of course, left-wing v.s.
| right-wing is a bad way to judge a socioeconomic theory;
| better to check whether it's right.)
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| Not reality, but definitely the media we consume. It's no
| wonder those Search results skew left when most news
| articles do too.
| skohan wrote:
| I have sometimes mused about how we have worried about "sky
| net" since the 90's, but we've already let AI have power to
| control our lives to some extent.
|
| For instance, there are cases you can point to where some
| normal person on Twitter with a couple dozen followers posted
| the wrong thing, it blew up into an international story, and
| they eventually got fired from their real-world job for it.
| Who made the decision that this person's views should be
| widely scrutinized? In a lot of cases it was the algorithm:
| for whatever reason that tweet drew engagement, so a massive
| spotlight was put on this mostly-private individual.
|
| In a real way that's an example of an AI system deciding to
| take away someone's livelihood.
| ramphastidae wrote:
| > Who made the decision that this person's views should be
| widely scrutinized?
|
| This is a serious stretch. The algo didn't force that
| person to sign up and post their every ignorant thought on
| a public forum. People can just put down their phones but
| they love the attention. Individuals are just as guilty for
| giving power over themselves to social media.
| blub wrote:
| It's not the ignorant thoughts which are considered
| wrongthink nowadays, but reasonable opinions that don't
| toe the line on controversial topics.
| skohan wrote:
| I'm not "blaming the AI" for this person's behavior. My
| point is that there was a non-human component in this
| decision process which led to this person losing their
| livelihood.
|
| To make an old-world analogue, in 1980 for someone to be
| held to account for an objectionable view, it probably
| would have involved some journalist making the decision
| to write a story about the comments which someone made.
| That human component in deciding what is newsworthy has
| been replaced by a machine in some cases.
|
| Another example would be dating apps. Now we have
| algorithms which make decisions about which parts of the
| dating pool an individual will have access to. In a real
| sense, non-human intelligence is playing some role in who
| gets to pass on their genes to the next generation, and
| with whom.
|
| I'm not saying that our lives are ruled by machines, but
| they're not completely _not_ governed by machines either.
| mywittyname wrote:
| If anything, the next generation of people will learn to
| avoid online polarized engagement using their own
| identities. They will create these curated and sterile
| personas under their real name while using a _nom de
| plume_ for actual content.
|
| I'm kind of surprised that aliases have not widely taken
| off already. But I suppose the consequences are not very
| severe yet.
| iamatworknow wrote:
| >I'm kind of surprised that aliases have not widely taken
| off already.
|
| The funny thing is that these aliases already existed,
| but we've largely eschewed them for our "real"
| identities. Prior to probably Facebook I think every
| interaction I had with other people online was behind a
| screen name detached from my real world identity.
| [deleted]
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > even Facebook and Twitter curate your newsfeed "for you"
|
| At least for Twitter, it allows you to turn that algorithm crap
| off and it respects that choice - iirc even across devices.
|
| Facebook, meanwhile, has entirely turned off that ability.
| kjakm wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Twitter switches you back to the algo feed
| after a certain amount of time (or at least they used to).
| notacoward wrote:
| The _functionality_ is still there, but they 've made it
| harder and harder to access. It used to be an obvious choice.
| Then it was buried in options, then deeper in options, and
| now I can't even find it any more. However, if you add the
| magical "?sk=h_chr" to your Facebook bookmark you'll get a
| chronological feed (at least until you click on the icon to
| go back to the top so refresh instead).
|
| I'm sure they'll completely break it some day. They broke it
| briefly once already. Since I was working at Facebook at the
| time I filed a task on it. The response was the rudest I ever
| got in 3.5 years at the company. If it works, as long as it
| works, it's basically by accident (or because some front-end
| developer is resisting management's constant pressure to
| deprecate it).
| anticensor wrote:
| It is still working. But no, uncurated chronological feed
| is just too dense for me.
| joshspankit wrote:
| The other component is that algorithmic feeds _encourage_ echo
| chambers. People engage with outrage most when they are on the
| "same side" of it.
| xwolfi wrote:
| But what of trolling then, a sort of counter reaction to the
| echo chamber where large outliers enter the room and disturb
| the equilibrium?
|
| For my part I think it's asynchronous written debates that
| are the source of these problems, so even earlier than
| facebook.
|
| On a large massive forums, people write for themselves, not
| the others, and barely read the discussion. Oral debates or
| written rendering of them, had the advantage to be slow, less
| variate, and adaptative to a single argumentative line.
|
| Nowadays when you discuss an issue online, everyone starts
| new train of thought to escape adaptation, and care little
| about an audience they d need to seduce or convince.
|
| I suppose I just did the same anyway, you can reply but I
| wont read :)
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think this is partially correct. People write for
| themselves, but they also write for an audience. The latter
| is a problem because they can essentially ignore whatever
| they are responding to as long as triggers n upvote. This
| disincentivizes honest and productive dialog in favor of
| nitpicking, gotchas, or simple ridicule.
|
| The former is like a bunch of drunk grandpas mumbling to
| themselves in a room, the latter is like a self interested
| orator playing to a crowd. Asynchronous written debate can
| be the one of the best forms of communication. Think about
| Jefferson's letters or other famous correspondence. The
| incentives are just wrong on boards with ranking and voting
| wccrawford wrote:
| Trolling pushes people further into their echo chambers. It
| isn't intended to encourage a wider world view, it's
| intended to hurt. It just convinces people that they're
| already on the right side.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| Read 'The BITE Model Of Authoritarian Control: Undue Influence,
| Thought Reform, Brainwashing, Mind Control, Trafficking And The
| Law' by Steven Alan Hassan
|
| or
|
| 'Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of
| "Brainwashing" in China' by Robert Jay Lifton
|
| (both readily available as PDF online)
| jhunter1016 wrote:
| I agree with all of this. I also think Medium is a social media
| site (as is HN), guilty of the same things the author calls out.
| rapnie wrote:
| Well yes, there are addictive aspects to HN. But aren't they
| more like side-effects?
|
| The upvoting of submissions is needed to 'crowdsource' an
| interesting front page.
|
| You might do without the karma reputation system, but that
| _will_ have negative impact on the quality of discussion. After
| you passed the first treshold (downvote privilege at karma 500)
| there seems to be no value to the system (no further
| privileges). But (forgot the game theory name) the
| 'punishment' of a downvote + karma decrease is probably a great
| help against shitposting.
|
| Is there a _right_ way to set things up, and maintain high
| community standards and comment quality?
|
| Edit: Was it Loss aversion?
| Kaze404 wrote:
| I still haven't fully grasped that we reached this point of
| perversiveness online. We have brilliant minds and a ridiculous
| amount of money working on making Alabama's soccer moms click
| more ads, and we have reached the point of making people addicted
| to _websites_ to reach that goal.
|
| Obviously this is nothing new, and the cigarette industry has
| been profitting off addiction for decades, but I never expected
| the same thing (except the very immediate threat of lung cancer)
| to happen to tools that could have been optimized for so much
| good instead.
|
| And the worst part is that some of it is just _so incompetent_. I
| 've been trying to break away from Facebook for a while, and
| recently (the past year or so) I started realizing that my
| Facebook feed always shows me the exact same posts in the exact
| same order for _days_ , to the point where I know exactly what
| post will be first when I open the website. Where is all the
| Facebook money going? What are these people working on? What are
| they _doing_?
| thecupisblue wrote:
| Fixing bullshit left by others, refactoring parts of the
| machine, copying other apps, working on pointless panels and
| ideas that will be killed in a hot minute or forgotten about,
| working on internal tools or mostly - fighting internal
| political battles to get a promotion/more
| money/authority/status. Most of the people are not there to
| innovate but to earn money and status for themselves by working
| at the big F***K
| ketzo wrote:
| You sound like you're speaking from experience, so I wanna
| ask: How genuinely true do you think this is? I'm always
| curious, about the FAANGs in general but Facebook in
| particular.
|
| Divorced from as much cynicism as possible, what % of level
| I-III software employees are _just_ there for their resumes?
| reducesuffering wrote:
| From Amazon, and according to my extensive experience with
| the other FANG in Blind, I would very seriously say 90% are
| there simply for resume and money.
| QuixoticQuibit wrote:
| I don't feel like Blind is a good source. Selection bias
| at play. Especially with disgruntled employees or the
| ones who only care about optimizing earnings.
| rhizome wrote:
| Every idea is vulnerable to the monster understatedly known
| as "business rules." If you want to change how these
| companies operate, how they treat users, or, really, how the
| company makes money in a user-driven economy, you have to be
| able to affect "business rules."
| api wrote:
| There are two kinds of capitalism: value creation capitalism
| (also known as industrial capitalism) and value _extraction_
| capitalism. The latter includes quite a lot of financial
| capitalism, profit-driven warfare, and casinos and other
| addiction-driven products.
|
| The former creates value while the latter extracts and
| concentrates it while overall creating net negative value.
| Addicting people to Skinner boxes is destroying hours of what
| otherwise might be productive, rejuvenating, or enriching time.
| It's macroeconomically indistinguishable from killing people.
|
| One of the central problems of modern Western capitalism is that
| we fail to distinguish between the two. A businessperson is
| successful an a genius if they make money; nobody bothers to
| distinguish between those that make money by creating value and
| those that make money by merely extracting it and leaving a path
| of destruction in their wake.
|
| Maybe we can figure out a way to re-channel the impulses of
| "cancel culture" in this direction, cancelling those that promote
| addictive net value destroying products and services. Since the
| algorithmic timeline and other personalized recommendation
| engines are by far the largest pushers of fascist and neo-racist
| ideology, the original goals of "cancel culture" might still be
| indirectly achieved.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Cancel culture is not something that is very effective against
| rich people, because you can't fire somebody who don't have a
| job.
| MayeulC wrote:
| Well, I think capitalism can be summed up as "optimize for one
| metric: capital".
|
| In a capitalist world, if you want to change what companies are
| doing, make it more expensive to do so (alternatively, less
| lucrative). So I guess tax and fine companies, like GDPR does.
|
| I wish there was a simple way to add more metrics like
| pollution, social impact, health impact, etc. But those are
| rather hard to measure, usually not immediately available, and
| can be hidden in some way or another. It might be doable,
| though, as we were more or less able to do so with capital
| (track monetary exchanges, etc); which is a completely
| artificial metric.
|
| Disclaimer: I know nothing about actual economy theories.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| Can't remember who this quote came from but it went something
| like this: "The only two things that call their clients 'users'
| is drugs and software."
| salawat wrote:
| It actually depends a lot on circumstance and half the work of
| software engineering is figuring out your different use cases.
| Every aspect of a system can have a different beneficiary.
|
| Data analysts are interested in different things than end
| consumers, who are interested in different things than admins
| or sponsors...
|
| If you can't split a generic abstraction of 'users' down
| further, you're either umplementing a very generic tool, or
| you're simply not standing up a system where the idea of access
| control is important.
|
| The rub is how nefariously sneaky that access control
| abstraction can be employed as a fundamental tool.
| rapnie wrote:
| I try to avoid the term in docs and discussion, but find that -
| where I can't refer to stakeholder names directly - I fall back
| to "the people that use the software", which.. might be more
| efficiently named 'users'.
| byecomputer wrote:
| I mean, the play on words in the gp is cute, and gives one
| the big Hmmm, but the accepted term is 'user' and some hills
| aren't worth dying on
| [deleted]
| mromanuk wrote:
| > It might be, for all we know, that the primary reason someone
| posts on social media is anger. If a proper study was done, I bet
| it would show exactly that.
|
| This is a low quality assertion.
|
| > "How could they have just scrolled and scrolled all day? Didn't
| they know what it was doing to them?" Social media is the new
| cigarettes. Everyone does it, it's addictive, it's harmful, and
| you should quit.
|
| Scrolling is not different that sitting in front of your TV or
| consuming other types of information. I think social media is
| bad, but that's just my opinion, this article sounds like an
| unsubstantiated opinion, too.
| xpe wrote:
| There are weaknesses in the article, but the central claims
| ring true.
|
| It is good, in moderation, to be detail-oriented and skeptical.
| But don't let these qualities run amok and prevent you from
| considering the overall claims.
| is_true wrote:
| I work in a small company that helps news sites with engagement.
| Our aim is for our clients to be a place where the community can
| find as much info as possible for their daily life. Trying to
| offer readers all the info in the most easily digestible way.
|
| Everytime we get a new customer we have to discuss to explain to
| them that the real value is in providing the info people need as
| fast and simple as possible. Unfortunately we have to fight
| against some major forces, such as google ranking sites with
| longer content just because of that and not metrics related to
| value.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| Really some of these techniques are just scaling what is standard
| at arcades and bringing it online. Anyone who has ever been to an
| arcade knows how many tokens/quarters you can go through to keep
| playing and playing.
|
| The danger with mobile gaming is that you never really get to
| leave the arcade and you don't have to intrinsically budget the
| way you used to at arcades. At the arcade you usually have a
| fixed number of tokens to spend and you always have the allure of
| other games pulling you away.
| piyh wrote:
| This guy is a consultant giving a talk to a mobile game company
| and has slides titled "Use of Coercive Monetization". It's pretty
| much an evil TED talk on dark patterns.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zex3b2mDnUw&t=17m16s
| [deleted]
| minikites wrote:
| Unfortunately, our economic system guarantees outcomes like this
| in pursuit of perpetual and ever increasing growth and profit. We
| either need to add regulations (short term fixes) or change our
| economic system (long term fixes). We can't continue to do
| nothing if we want to maintain a civil democratic society.
| Misinformation and propaganda are too powerful to leave
| unchecked.
| notacoward wrote:
| Lots of good points here. I particularly like the "dark triad"
| bit, though I think a lot of nuance around different types of
| likes/upvotes/whatever is missing. It _makes a difference_
| whether those are shown to others and /or used to sort others'
| feeds. That last point is very close to montenegrohugo's about
| algorithmic feeds, with which I completely agree. _Algorithmic
| feeds_ , especially those which show content from people/groups I
| don't even follow, definitely deserve a place in the Dark Tetrad.
|
| To illustrate these points, consider HN itself. Yes, HN uses an
| algorithm to determine story prominence. Yes, it has upvotes.
| Yes, it uses relative timestamps. OTOH, the upvotes are not shown
| to others and it doesn't have infinite scroll. I also wouldn't
| consider it a "feed" like Twitter or Facebook. On the third hand,
| even the features HN does have arguably contribute to echo
| chambers and audience pandering. I think this well illustrates
| that it's not easy to determine good vs. bad social media, and it
| would be hard to argue here that all social media are bad. ;)
| djoldman wrote:
| Discussion of the addictive qualities of social media often
| strikes me as bizarre.
|
| Where is examination of the person doing the scrolling? Isn't the
| flaw there?
|
| (The following applies to adults):
|
| Ostensibly, the person should be allowed to spend their time as
| they like if they're engaging in legal activity. If people
| thought that engaging in social media was bad for them, they
| would stop. Are we really saying that people cannot stop using
| social media? Are we saying that people don't think it's bad for
| them?
|
| If people can't stop doing an activity that is definitely hurting
| them, don't they need professional help? Do all these social
| media users need professional help?
|
| What amount of time on social media is sufficient for it to have
| a negative effect? Is it anything besides zero?
|
| To be meta: if hackernews is social media and social media is
| bad, are we all hurting ourselves?
| FFRefresh wrote:
| I do think this is a worthy callout, that is often missing in
| discussions about social media and/or any sort of complex
| system.
|
| The general narrative implies (but would never say) that humans
| lack agency and the ability to act in their own self-interest.
| And if only we could remove the social media site/system, would
| we see an enlightened, more perfect human.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm strongly in favor of designing systems
| to bring out the best in humanity. But I think a lot of what we
| see on social media is a reflection of who we are as humans,
| and what we desire and want to see. And I don't see enough
| discussion at the individual level, and why we act the way we
| do.
|
| If the discussion was at the individual level, we'd start to
| see our common humanity, and the conversation about social
| media would be less about moderating out the 'bad content'
| (which always just so happens to be the content that our
| outgroup likes), and more about the philosophical
| considerations with designing complex systems that help
| humanity thrive (and what it means to thrive).
| djoldman wrote:
| >I think a lot of what we see on social media is a reflection
| of who we are as humans, and what we desire and want to see.
|
| Agreed.
|
| I'm curious why there aren't deep discussions about WHY
| people want to __insert convenient social media action__.
| Isn't the flaw that we have a fear of missing out, want to
| appear to have high status, want to belong to a group whose
| identity is tied into being _against_ another group, etc.?
|
| I just see most of these discussions giving the above a pass
| as if that's just who we are and we bear no responsibility in
| engaging in such activity.
| soledades wrote:
| Telling people to be different is simply not a viable
| mechanism for making the world a better place.
|
| You can inquire after however many chickens and eggs you
| like about why the world is the way it is, but I think most
| people are more interested in what can be done to improve
| things.
| djoldman wrote:
| >Telling people to be different is simply not a viable
| mechanism for making the world a better place.
|
| Perhaps. However this reminds me of the credit cards that
| are offered on college campuses. They're signed up for
| like hotcakes sometimes. Later in life people learn that
| perhaps it isn't such a good idea. Can't people be given
| information showing the potential effects of decisions
| that then helps them better make choices?
|
| >You can inquire after however many chickens and eggs you
| like about why the world is the way it is, but I think
| most people are more interested in what can be done to
| improve things.
|
| My point exactly. Let's stop talking about social media,
| which takes advantage of a root flaw. Let's talk about
| the root flaw.
| soledades wrote:
| What you call a root flaw (in your previous comment) I
| see as being neither root nor a flaw, but that is not
| interesting to me.
|
| If you take a plant out of the ground, and toss it into
| the sea, the plant dies. The 'root flaw' is that the
| plant is a vulnerable living being. The more relevant
| fact is that the plant is better off in the ground.
| ketzo wrote:
| > If people thought that engaging in social media was bad for
| them, they would stop.
|
| This is the absolute cornerstone of your argument, and I gotta
| say, I think it is 100% incorrect.
|
| This is, in fact, how we often define addiction: A behavior
| that a person repeatedly and compulsively engages in _despite
| zero or negative side effects_.
|
| People will _absolutely_ do things, and continue to do things,
| that they know for certain are bad for them.
|
| I mean, seriously -- ask _anyone_ in your life whether they
| think social media is actually good for them. I genuinely think
| _every single person I know_ would respond to the effect of "I
| wish I used it less, but it's tough to quit."
| djoldman wrote:
| I should have made "If people thought that engaging in social
| media was bad for them, they would stop" into question rather
| than a statement.
|
| That said, my follow up questions stand: If people can't stop
| doing an activity that is definitely hurting them, don't they
| need professional help? Do all these social media users need
| professional help?
| ketzo wrote:
| Interesting, I got too focused on that point. I think
| you're absolutely right, or at least have the potential to
| be; I have certainly known people in my life who have had
| _deeply_ problematic relationships with social media, to
| the point where professional help was either used or (IMO)
| would have been a good idea. I mean, I 've personally had
| days where I wished that someone would just yell "get off
| fucking reddit!" at me.
|
| I don't think it's "all users," and even for lots of users
| who are harmed, it's not necessarily "all the time." But
| it's definitely something that could be helped by a
| professional.
|
| I guess the alternative is regulation of some kind: we
| recognize that these sites have the potential for
| meaningful harm to a large number of people, and someone
| (the government?) steps in to do something about it.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I predict Social Media Rehab is going to be a huge and
| lucrative business in about 5-10 years. Invest now.
|
| ...
|
| I initially wrote that as a joke and intended to just hit
| Reply and move on with my life, but reflecting for more
| than a minute, there may be something to this. We have
| drug rehab programs which work to varying degrees. I
| wonder what research is being done on how to rehabilitate
| victims of social media, and if any specific techniques
| are known yet. Social Media has been known as a societal
| ill for some time, so surely someone is investigating
| this!
| logshipper wrote:
| In a world where every party was rational, your points would
| make total and complete sense.
|
| The reality, however is that social media companies with their
| curated feeds, dopamine buttons, echo chambers, and sheer size
| can push products to the market that cause detriment to the
| overall cultural environment. The average Joe does not
| understand that his Twitter feed is _designed_ to keep him
| hooked. I bet you, if he knew, he'd have quit long ago.
|
| Your argument essentially posits that opioid addicts be held
| responsible for their addictions rather than our legal system
| clamping down on big pharma.
| djoldman wrote:
| >The reality, however is that social media companies with
| their curated feeds, dopamine buttons, echo chambers, and
| sheer size can push products to the market that cause
| detriment to the overall cultural environment.
|
| Given the nature of the internet, any entity can bring a
| product to the market that could be negative for users.
| What's the solution beyond the current legal framework?
|
| >Your argument essentially posits that opioid addicts be held
| responsible for their addictions rather than our legal system
| clamping down on big pharma.
|
| There's a wide gulf between consuming and engaging with
| intangible media content and abusing biologically powerful
| physical substances. Someone becoming addicted to a
| controlled substance like opioids is different from social
| media in a profound way. I think society recognizes this
| given that opioids are largely controlled substances.
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| I always thought it was pretty obvious when YouTube rolled out
| screen time reminders.
|
| It had nothing to do with anything but minimizing liability in
| case the general public ever catches on to what they are doing to
| kids mental health.
|
| What's hilarious is they probably have some "data retention
| policy" and will get away with it.
|
| I guess it's why SV engineers want to care about social issues so
| much. When you're up in your $300k+ a year ivory tower built on
| something you know is dirty, you are exactly the type of person
| to be angry and project frustration.
|
| I saw on Reddit a screenshot of AOC dogging on old people in
| Congress for not understanding digital. She listed a bunch of
| modern day issues and this wasn't one of them. If even she
| doesn't know, we really are screwed.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| How is this that much different to similar "concerns" about
| kids watching to much tv back in the 60's 70's etc.
| slothtrop wrote:
| With youtube you're one "recommended" video away from both
| morally dubious content targeting kids, and qanon conspiracy
| content.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| I think that's more a problem for the grandparents and
| parents
| delecti wrote:
| It's definitely a problem for both. Lots of kids are
| getting radicalized too, along with the Fox News
| generation.
| SethMurphy wrote:
| While not related to TV (but possibly radio), My
| political radicalism probably peaked in 4th grade due to
| my surroundings. Young minds can be very easily
| influenced before they fully develop critical thinking.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Sure, but you still can't police the content your kids
| watch there passively, while conversely with Netflix or
| cable you can set it and forget it.
| Minor49er wrote:
| If parents are relying on "setting it and forgetting it",
| that's not policing at all. Youtube Kids was supposed to
| be a solution like this where the site would offer
| filtered videos for children, but it quickly resulted in
| the so-called Elsagate scandal where children were
| targeted with videos depicting things like violence, drug
| use, and sexual activity
| ohdannyboy wrote:
| Is that actually your experience on YouTube or is this just
| something people say to encourage deplatforming? I don't
| think I've seen anything at the level of flat earth or Q on
| my related videos since like 2017... I've even attempted to
| seek out some of these videos just to see the claims and it
| was difficult to maneuver past Youtubes search
| redirections.
|
| Want a non-conspiracy example? Search "obama is gone" on
| youtube then on DuckDuckGo. Even a stupid crab rave meme is
| buried, presumably for the purposes of preventing Obama
| related conspiracy theories from emerging.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=obama+is+gone
| https://duckduckgo.com/?q=obama+is+gone+site%3Ayoutube.com
|
| I'd still never park my kid on Youtube but things aren't
| like they were pre-adpocalypse.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Just yesterday I got recommendations for Sky News, some
| preacher, and conspiracy clips. All it took was to watch
| a couple of music videos with several million views. This
| is what the algorithm is shoveling to people.
|
| One evening of video surfing and you'll practically trip
| over them. I have no idea how it is one could never
| notice this stuff. I clear cookies and have no account.
| ohdannyboy wrote:
| Interesting. I do look at related videos so it's not
| about noticing anything... We clearly have different
| experiences.
|
| The difference I see is that I have an account with
| subscriptions and years of activity data. I guess the
| algorithm knows I don't click on that stuff so they
| stopped trying to show it to me. I'm very surprised to
| learn they are giving users these recommendations by
| default.
| macNchz wrote:
| The type of content is certainly different, since anyone can
| upload videos to YouTube. The TV that kids were watching "too
| much" of was super bland, mainstream stuff, for better or
| worse. There certainly weren't organizations bulk generating
| thousands of hours worth of creepy and bizarre videos
| featuring kids' favorite characters, for example:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsagate
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Have you seen the content that inevitably ends up in kids
| autoplay video feeds? Weird doesn't even begin to describe
| it. Some of it would give HBO pause.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Almost every Disney movie have the childrens parents being
| killed, the Swedish childrens author Astrid Lindgren (very
| popular in Europe, I don't know about the US) wrote a story
| called The Brothers Lionheart where the young brother is
| dying from an incurable respiratory disease and (spoilers)
| his brother dies saving him from a house fire. The he dies
| from the respiratory disease.
|
| My point is that children are being told stories that we
| wouldn't consider for children all the time. And that isn't
| even considering fairytales.
| anticristi wrote:
| I recently got a book with the full collection of the
| Grimm brothers' fairytales. I don't get how those authors
| got marketed as kids story writers. Some of the stories
| make it feel like reading Terminator for bedtime is
| harmless.
| WORMS_EAT_WORMS wrote:
| You make a great and difficult point. I'll try to answer as
| best I can at least how I see it.
|
| Big TV's goal is to broadcast as engaging as possible
| material to a general audience. This is broad and therefore
| not very addictive / effective.
|
| Big Tech's goal is to broadcast as engaging as possible
| material to an individual. This is specific and therefore
| very addictive / effective.
|
| Regardless that the goal is the same, one is a heavier
| hitter, and we should have regulations to protect people
| against the bigger punches.
| zests wrote:
| Here is a rough ranking of information sources by amount of
| "user engagement".
|
| Books < TV < Video Games <= Social Media
|
| The rankings are potentially different per individual and
| each information source effects people in different ways.
| This is my mental model of different user engagement
| sources. The hard part is where to draw the line and the
| inevitable fact that pandora is already out of the box.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _Big TV's goal is to broadcast as engaging as possible
| material to a general audience. This is broad and therefore
| not very addictive._
|
| That may have been true once, but since then TV distilled
| down the patterns for maximizing addiction across the
| biggest segment of the population - that's why most TV is
| so mind-dumbing that you can almost feel your brain being
| sucked out of your skull when watching.
|
| But I agree that Internet media are much more focused and
| much heavier hitters.
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| Well, what happened to those kids? The kids grew up and now
| spend the majority of their time working in advertising,
| supplying games, creating endless streams of new media, etc.
|
| how has it NOT been harmful?
|
| I'm more inclined to believe my parents did the right thing
| by limiting TV time and commenting that most of it was
| rubbish. And I presume like many parents in Silicon Valley,
| I'm going to fight tooth and nail to keep advertising and
| most of this stuff from my kids.
|
| The funny thing is, if you're not brought up around it, if
| you learn some math and statistics, and then you suddenly go
| somewhere exposure is considered normal, you almost have a
| physical or psychological revulsion to it.
|
| Ads become frustrating and unacceptable intrusions. casino
| floors are sad, boring, pathetic and dystopian. mobile games
| look like drugs foistered upon an underclass, etc.
|
| At least with big TV at the time, programming was so limited
| (at least in my country), you had maybe 2 to 3 hours per week
| of anything that would fit a genre worth watching. But even
| with that restriction, I know a large number of people who
| deem that the TV should be on even if there's "nothing to
| watch". I just can't write that sort of behaviour off as not
| being dysfunctional, it's just that we've culturally got a
| general acceptance of very specific types of dysfunction...
|
| And what about rates of obesity? I'm not saying TV is solely
| to blame, but are we going to pretend that screen time and
| such programming (on demand or otherwise) is a blameless part
| of our culture?
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| You scoff, but would you honestly say those concerns were
| entirely unfounded?
|
| Habits we develop as children tend to persist through our
| lives. People who grew up very active tend to stay at least a
| little active, people who grew up eating healthy diets will
| tend to continue to eat well. The opposite also tends to be
| true.
|
| We have record levels of obesity in many developed nations
| now. There's a lot to blame for that, but surely our
| sedentary lifestyles is a factor. That includes watching too
| much TV.
| loveistheanswer wrote:
| We know that both of those things can have negative effects
| when taken to the extreme. Anything people find addicting can
| be harmful.
|
| For instance, television screen time is correlated with
| increased obesity.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4555288/
| flavius29663 wrote:
| to be honest, AOC doesn't seem very knowledgeable in general,
| IMO she's just a trump (a less successful one), but on the
| left.
| luplex wrote:
| I did an internship with a very profitable Swedish mobile game
| before the pandemic, and it was really interesting to see the
| doublethink: everyone knew we were making a drug, but people
| avoided speaking of it in that way. It was always "our most
| engaged players readily spend on in-game items", and never "the
| most addicted users spend money so they can continue playing"
|
| It was a great workplace, but I don't think it was adding much
| value to the world.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Yesterday I saw on Cardi B's stories she did a paid post
| promotion for a game that is literally a slot machine..
|
| It's designed with childlike graphics and her followers are
| very young. It's marked as teen in google store.
|
| God even the first review shows how blatant this is:
|
| "I'm really not big on games but this game is the truth. I cant
| stop playing it. I go to sleep to it. Wake to it. My day is
| filled with ways of finding new ways to get coins and spins
| (mainly spins, lol)"
|
| I'm all for legal, regulated online gambling. This not even
| disguised style of game should be called what it is. Some type
| of Pachinko in that you don't get money back but some other
| token. But even worse since you probably can't walk around the
| corner to exchange easily for real world value.
|
| Call it gambling, verified 18+, and regulate it.
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.moonactive...
| akhosravian wrote:
| I worked for a VP in mobile games who described the central
| loop as "giving the players a job and having them pay us [the
| makers of the game] for it". I respected his candor on what we
| are doing, but this was past the point when I had realized it
| wasn't something I was proud to have spent time on.
| piva00 wrote:
| From my experience, knowing people who works at King this is
| definitely a thing. The doublethink due to having a pretty
| great workplace is stark.
| [deleted]
| bostik wrote:
| This has been going on for more than a decade. I recommend to
| read at least the opening chapter:
| https://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-...
|
| Yep, I've pasted that link in the past. It's now a proper
| classic.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| I once read "The best game developers are like weed dealers:
| they sell you something they love. The worst game developers
| are like heroin dealers: they would never, ever touch the
| stuff, or let their own children get within a mile of it."
| bromuro wrote:
| Gaming today is not that different than gambling. I started
| playing some games on iOS recently, I got addicted too and
| spent way too much money I should have.
|
| Meanwhile ads displayed in the app offer me "real money" and
| "millions each month" playing cards or by "putting my finance
| at risk" or playing similar addictive games.
|
| (Yes, I paid for the game but there are ads for extra scores)
| Funes- wrote:
| >I don't think it was adding much value to the world
|
| I believe this statement can be applied to the vast majority of
| jobs, or capitalistic endeavors in general. Not to defend them
| in any sort of way, as I abhor these practices, but I think we
| should acknowledge that reality (and perhaps work our way out
| of it, somehow)
| lordnacho wrote:
| Plausible deniability is such a wonderful idea.
|
| There's a lot of things that fall on a spectrum, and this fact
| can be used to pretend that motivations are different to what
| they really are.
|
| For instance, where is the line between investing and gambling?
| A friend of mine was looking into setting up a spreadbetting
| firm once, so he went talking to insiders. It turns out 90% of
| people lose 90% of their money in 90 days, and that's what
| several firms told him. But of course they don't lead with this
| fact, they say they're offering training videos the teach you
| how to invest in the market, just like proper investors. And
| it's not even a lie, a lot of the content makes perfect sense
| and would be found in any "proper" investment house. The real
| deal is of course that they offer a buzz from massive leverage,
| and everything about the UI is to make you blow yourself up.
|
| The same story applies for social media. A place to keep in
| touch with your old friends is a great thing, but
| realistically, how often are you going to write to your
| classmates on a classmates-only forum? And how is
| classmatesforum going to make any money doing that? So we get
| the ML-powered feed of news/funnies/cutesies reactions that
| seems to be the modern social web.
| [deleted]
| drchopchop wrote:
| Yep, I spent many years at a large, public US mobile game
| company and it was the same. We had a considerable number of
| players who had total spend in the 5-figure range, and a few
| into the 6's. And that's on one single game.
|
| The constant rationalization around the office was basically
| something like: "They're paying for fun, it would otherwise be
| drinks/movies/real gambling/etc, we're just a different
| medium". This, of course, completely ignored the boatload of
| psychological exploitation tricks that we used to keep people
| playing (and paying). The game mechanics were literally a
| rigged slot machine. The meta-game was designed to constantly
| tantalize you with something just out of reach. The
| monetization was high-pressure, time-sensitive, and used false
| discounts to increase value ("Get this $20.00 pack for $1.99!
| Only for the next 60 minutes!")
|
| It got very draining after a while, and I'm much happier now
| that I've left the industry.
| dleslie wrote:
| I left casual games because of this; every partner and
| publisher we worked with was heavily pressuring us to
| optimize for whales. They wanted the long tale for marketing,
| and the whales for revenue; and once hooked, the core
| interaction loop was to be as addictive as possible.
|
| When I left it was Candy Crush that was the top of the field;
| and we were in awe. They were _always_ rewarding players, and
| were pushing microtransactions everywhere. It was flashy like
| a slot machine, and provided a constant stream of "rewards"
| for continued engagement.
|
| It was a disgusting industry then; it probably still is now.
| I went into game dev to tell stories and explore worlds, not
| to sell dope.
| mysterydip wrote:
| The frustrating part is there are lots of people making
| games to tell stories and explore worlds, but they fall
| into the void almost inmediately after launch due to the
| slot machine games taking the lion's share of the attention
| and money.
| dleslie wrote:
| Thankfully, PC Gaming strangely hasn't been dominated by
| this phenomenon, despite EA's, Activision's, and Epic's
| best efforts. Fortnite is addiction-tuned F2P casinowear,
| and it's done gangbusters, but the industry hasn't
| managed to copy that formula with great success.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| At least fornite cosmetics have limited gameplay impact
| (although not zero impact).
|
| It is quite possible to be a relatively competitive
| player without spending a single cent (and without
| needing excessive grinding to do so, or at least, no more
| grinding than a paying player).
|
| This is a lot better than most mobile games (pay more or
| wait # hours to continue), or games with lootboxes whose
| results give serious competitive advantage. (There are
| far too many of the latter to even list.)
|
| But I do dislike any game that depends on any form of
| microtransaction model. I've no real issue with
| meaningful DLC for single player games (i.e. the
| equivlent of the old expansion packs), but otherwise a
| game should either be a one time cost, or a simple
| subscription. Not some unholy hybrid of the two as has
| become all too common.
| dleslie wrote:
| Ah, but it's a social experience. The primary capital
| isn't one's competitive standing, it's the uniqueness of
| your gear.
|
| Fortnite's store UI is designed around limited time
| access panic sales.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > although not zero impact
|
| For reference https://twitter.com/jmantheguy/status/97049
| 7516566347776?s=2...
| naravara wrote:
| The reward loop works much better when it can be in your
| pocket and be accessed during moments of
| boredom/idleness. The lack of friction before getting
| pulled in is at least as much of a causative factor as
| the three issues the article highlights. Every little bit
| of friction diminishes its effectiveness.
|
| One thing that's ironic with a lot of mainstream AAA
| gaming though, is that even though they aren't copying
| the revenue model the game design conventions still tend
| to focus on length of engagement and playtime. I'm sure
| there's a reason compelling it but I'm not sure what.
| Vektorweg wrote:
| Epic picked literally the most vulnerable target
| audience. That's what made Fortnite a hit.
| watwut wrote:
| Pretty much all people I ever heard about or new who has
| issue with gaming were addicted to something like lol,
| wow or pubg.
|
| The people who play whole night and that are irritable
| and underperforming during day, who made gaming their
| whole life, are not playing causual games. They are
| playing console and pc games.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| > not to sell dope.
|
| Is there no Breaking Bad effect because it's all legal?
| nonbirithm wrote:
| I was watching a livestreamer that currently organizes their
| schedule almost entirely around F2P mobile games. I find it
| hard to tell such a person on an individual level that they
| are being exploited, because that sounds like moral posturing
| to me. But from the perspective of the company I could
| imagine how the effects of time limited sales and events
| could drive their KPIs on a macro level. How many of those
| people contributing to the 5 and 10 percent upticks were
| "exploited" in the truest sense of the word, as in they could
| not help themselves even if they wanted to? I have to wonder
| how many of these people would rather stop but are addicted
| or otherwise not conscious, versus those on the spectrum that
| see the games as a legitimate outlet for entertainment (and
| can stop themselves from spending too much).
|
| I don't play them though, since I know I'd spend too much
| money and time on objects intangible.
|
| The thing that strikes me the most about F2P is how
| societally acceptible it is. The people for whom the notion
| of "casinos" doesn't fit their interests can now have their
| own preferentially targeted equivalent of a casino in their
| pockets at all times, branded with things like television
| show franchises that ground them in a sense of familiarity.
| brnt wrote:
| It may be an artifact of the division between body and mind,
| common in Western cultures. Any problem related to the psyche
| is treated differently (ie taken less seriously) from
| problems related to the body. I wonder how many millenia this
| ostensibly subtle difference in conception will keep on
| giving us pain and mental anguish. Its so deeprooted, I
| wonder what it will take to pull it out.
| kingkawn wrote:
| This division is on the verge of self destruction under the
| own weight of its inconsistencies.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| There are plenty of people hooked on this stuff in the
| east. Addiction doesn't care about your philosophy. Some
| people are just more mentally available to addiction in all
| it's myriad forms.
| brnt wrote:
| I was refering to the tendency to not treat psychological
| issues as serious as physical ones. Obviously addiction
| knows no boundaries.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| F2P-with-purchases games should (a) require disclaimers, (b) be
| illegal and stiffly penalized for allowing minors to play, &
| (c) have their algorithms open to a gaming regulator (in the
| same way Las Vegas does).
| Spivak wrote:
| Eh I don't really think "think of the children" is the right
| narrative here. These games, while especially bad for
| children, aren't much better for adults. Absolutely require
| 18+ to play and require them be labeled as gambling but I
| don't think that's enough.
|
| If we're counting on adults "knowing better" which makes it
| okay to play these games while the industry profits on
| precisely those adults that don't then there's a problem.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| I play a lot of Apex Legends and recently I found out that
| when you go purchase a loot box it explicitly tells you the
| chance of each item's rarity. My initial thought was that
| it's a step in the right direction (of banning loot boxes
| entirely), but it also made me wonder how anyone can be sure
| those numbers are actually true in their backend.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It is also pretty useless. Normal people can't parse
| probabilities - otherwise nobody would play in the lottery.
| If you have a list of 20 items with non-uniform chances,
| can you tell how long you need to play before it's likely
| you'll get an item you want? You and me can, by doing
| little math in head; most people can't (and it's another
| question whether one has the willpower to do such math and
| follow it through while tired, unwindng in front of a
| casual game).
|
| What would be more useful if they listed the expected
| number of loot boxes you need to buy to get an item. "2%
| chance" reads differently than "you'll need to buy about 50
| loot boxes, on average, to get that item".
| mod wrote:
| > Normal people can't parse probabilities - otherwise
| nobody would play in the lottery.
|
| Yes, they would. The lottery is about giving up something
| of little value ($1 or $2) for some entertainment and the
| chance at a truly life-changing situation. I doubt anyone
| is unaware there's almost no chance they win, and that
| they're losing on every dollar they spend. Interestingly,
| the lottery is occasionally +EV to play.
|
| I otherwise agree, people are bad at gambling,
| probabilities, and understanding the long term. I play
| poker, and poker players are constantly furious that
| their 80% favorite hand doesn't win 100% of the time. 80%
| feels like a lock.
|
| Some people don't care. They want to gamble, and they
| have no regard for what they lose in the process. I think
| many humans are just wired this way, or perhaps it's
| cultural.
| mym1990 wrote:
| I agree, playing the lottery is a little like buying
| insurance for something. Everyone knows that insurance is
| a losing proposition, but no one buys it to save 500$ on
| that fender bender, people buy it so that they can get
| through a catastrophic event like 500,000$ in medical
| bills.
| telchar wrote:
| I would hazard a guess that people who buy lottery
| tickets are much less likely to buy insurance than those
| who don't. I think some similar psychological mechanisms
| may be at play, but not in the way you are suggesting
| where they overestimate small probabilities across the
| board. I suspect it has more to do with discounting odds
| that are against them.
|
| But I wouldn't bet on it.
| mminer237 wrote:
| A bit part of the lottery is that everyone knows that
| it's unlikely, but most people are capable of
| comprehending just how unlikely it is. Most people would
| probably say it's like "one-in-a-million", when it's
| really hundreds of times worse than that. People are just
| bad at understanding really big numbers. Everyone still
| feels like, "I know it won't, but it could happen to me,"
| when even if you bought a lottery ticket every single
| week for your entire adult life, it would take you over a
| thousand lifetimes for you to finally have a 1% chance to
| win the lottery.
|
| I think people at least initially have better grasps on
| things like 50-50 chances or 10% chances, even if other
| gambling fallacies kick in the more you play them.
| wincy wrote:
| Well because evolutionarily, gambling must pay off
| sometimes, and the people who are averse to gambling
| might become rarer if it pays off in a big way.
|
| Ten thousand years ago doing something risky might result
| in you going from being a male with no prospects to
| having a harem with 50 wives. It makes sense that when
| your ancestors could have made a risky gambled (say
| raiding the village next door), they'd go for it, much
| like someone will put everything on 21 Black because the
| payoff could be so big.
| watwut wrote:
| That is not how evolution works. It can just be that the
| trait was not much in a way. Our that trait is
| innefective maladaption.
|
| Evolution is not a god. And it does not build perfect
| organisms.
| bordercases wrote:
| But who gives a damn about the EEA?
| Dudeman112 wrote:
| Or maybe it's just a trait that ended up there, like
| countless others.
|
| A RNG machine that's slightly directed towards optimal
| variation still spews out a bunch of rubbish
| bmhin wrote:
| > I play poker, and poker players are constantly furious
| that their 80% favorite hand doesn't win 100% of the
| time. 80% feels like a lock.
|
| I always liked an interview by one of the designers of
| the game XCOM which relies heavily on showing players
| probabilities. Apparently behind the scenes on lower
| difficulties, even though they might show you 85% chance
| of success, they tweak it under the hood to be closer to
| 95% because that is where the player's emotional
| weighting is. They want the players to have fun and that
| is certainly one way to go about it.
|
| https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/266891/Jake_Solomon_e
| xpl...
| andomar wrote:
| > The lottery is about giving up something of little
| value ($1 or $2) for some entertainment and the chance at
| a truly life-changing situation
|
| Wish that were true. Organizers usually take 90% of the
| money. Just a tiny percentage is paid out.
|
| Like Voltaire said: "Lotteries are a tax on stupidity"
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| I'd prefer "you'll need to buy about 50 _more_ loot
| boxes, on average, to get that item" as wording. Bonus if
| there 's a question mark next to it that explains
| probability (specifically, why the gambler's fallacy is
| wrong - though not necessarily mentioning the fallacy).
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Wouldn't it be easier to just ban gambling apps including
| ones disguised as games from app stores?
|
| You could probably get virtually everyone by simply
| defining it as a game with in app purchases that provide
| probabilistic or in game performance improvements.
|
| If they can sell levels but not swords nothing of value
| will be lost.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Good catch, I agree yours is better.
| tesseract wrote:
| "Most <evil grin> players will get the item after buying
| 26 more boxes"
| pixelbro wrote:
| While we're all patting ourselves on the back for
| understanding probability, the correct calculation is
| actually log.98(.5) = 34.3 = number of attempts required
| for a 50% chance of getting a 2% item.
| PoignardAzur wrote:
| I don't have any more information than you do, but my gut
| feeling is "80% of companies won't bother to lie on the
| numbers, 20% will lie, and will occasionally provoke a
| scandal when they get caught in the rare audit or get the
| whistle blown on them by a spiteful employee".
| PhillyG wrote:
| In some countries, games are legally required to do state
| rarity of items in lootboxes, so it may just be so that
| they are compliant with all countries. I forget which
| countries, but I think they're in central europe
| svachalek wrote:
| I don't think you realistically can trust these as there
| will never be serious audits, and they exploit all kinds of
| psychological weaknesses. They really just need to be
| illegal. Sell content piecemeal, sure. But not loot boxes.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| I agree completely. I would've spent ridiculous amounts
| of money on that game at this point if it weren't for
| loot boxes, but alas it wasn't meant to be.
| zigzag312 wrote:
| They should also disclose a spending ceiling. How much do you
| need to / can you spend to gain access to all the content. Do
| I need to spend $60, $600, $6000, $60,000 or is there no
| limit?
| Tyr42 wrote:
| Interestingly enough, the Pokemon Picross game on the 3DS
| had a fixed spend limit of $50, after which you could just
| top up your in game currency for free.
|
| So either you did f2p, or you paid $50 and got a full game,
| or some linear combination of both.
|
| I liked that game and paid $50 for it.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Hello fellow person who liked that game! I didn't know
| there were more of us.
|
| I never did spend any money on it though.
| Darmody wrote:
| Most of them don't have limits as you don't buy a DLC to
| unlock content. Games are almost infinite and money helps
| you advance.
|
| Mobile gaming is disgusting. And the few good developers
| that make good "traditional" games don't make enough money
| to keep developing.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| > F2P-with-purchases
|
| this misses the core issue. a game like path of exile is
| completely playable for free - and they release new content
| quarterly and yearly (again, for free). a game like Raid
| Shadow Legends is not - you very rapidly hit a paywall and it
| would take years of free play to acquire power equivalent to
| spending $100.
|
| the exploitative nature is pay to win, where youre simply
| playing a different game unless you spend money.
| red-montaigne wrote:
| Great example of how language is a tool for thinking, but it's
| also a tool for not thinking. If you want to ignore or
| obfuscate something, you can seal it off with euphemisms and
| misrepresentations, kind of like putting an interface in front
| of an implementation. And as you pointed out, you can use this
| tactic to deceive not only others but also yourself.
| dleslie wrote:
| Casual game design uses many of the same nouns as casino
| operators.
| techer wrote:
| "Compelling"
| xwolfi wrote:
| Let's say language is a tool to convey information regardless
| of truth or precision.
|
| You can disguise negative information giving it the
| appearance of a usual positive one (the fake discount).
|
| It's more a property of information than of language, or
| rather a property of our information processor, so lazy it
| doesn't check every single piece 3 times but instead rely on
| habit and context
| red-montaigne wrote:
| I'm thinking more of a writer sitting down and struggling
| to choose the correct word to identify a thought. I
| wouldn't say they're "conveying information." At that point
| they don't _have_ information. I would say rather that they
| 're attempting to refine the raw material of the flow of
| their thought-consciousness by using language. You can use
| words to assist that refinement. (I'm doing it now, for
| example.) But you can also use words to divert your thought
| stream away from potentially uncomfortable ideas, or
| someone else can do that to you.
| hakeberio wrote:
| Definitely. It reminds me of Orwell's Newspeak in 1984-
| although the novel itself shows that having a "clean"
| vocabulary doesn't completely prevent "unclean" thought
| deemed by the authorities, having a censored set of language
| can "nudge" people to certain propaganda.
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| It can be even seen in design of offices. I once joined a
| meetup at what turned out to be a sports gambling software
| company (William Hill I think), and there was no mention or
| suggestion of gambling at any place in their offices - it was
| about "celebration of sports" and other bullshit.
| huijzer wrote:
| It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his
| salary depends on his not understanding it.
|
| - Upton Sinclair
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Not really applicable. In this case, everyone understands it
| but they don't talk about it due to legal reasons
| andrewla wrote:
| This all seems a bit silly. Go work for an *unprofitable*
| mobile game company (or start your own!) to see how quickly
| your model breaks down.
|
| The idea that you can engineer yourself an addictive game is a
| silly concept.
|
| That games _en masse_ are evolving for maximal "addictiveness"
| is unquestionable, but has entirely different implications.
| csallen wrote:
| The fact that some people fail to accomplish a thing doesn't
| mean others can't. Of course you can engineer addictive
| games. We know quite a lot about addiction. What do you think
| casinos are, exactly?
| andrewla wrote:
| Tell me this -- do casinos fail?
|
| If you look only at examples of successful things and say
| "it is addictive" but don't look at the same principles as
| applied to failed examples of the same thing, then you're
| being intellectually lazy.
|
| In order to establish some facet as "addictive" it needs to
| work both ways, otherwise you're just using "addictive" as
| a synonym for "successful" -- Edison's light bulb was
| "addictive" and people were "addicted" to Pullman cars. But
| you get to carry all the negative connotations of
| "addictive"; you're trying to let the informal do all the
| work while positing nonsensical equivalences.
| karpierz wrote:
| Do bars fail?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Yes, and so do casinos. That is the point
| karpierz wrote:
| The original point was: "The idea that you can engineer
| yourself an addictive game is a silly concept."
|
| The rebuttal was: "this is literally what casinos do"
|
| The rebuttal to that was: "well, some casinos fail"
|
| Which isn't really a point. Some casinos fail, that
| doesn't show that they don't optimize for addiction. It
| just indicates that optimizing for addiction is necessary
| but not sufficient for a casino to maintain solvency.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think we have fundamentally different of andrewla's
| original point, and that is OK.
|
| I read it as pointing out that success isn't guaranteed
| with an addictive game model.
|
| I did not read it as saying that some games don't or cant
| optimize for addictiveness.
| KillahBhyte wrote:
| So you call someone intellectually lazy... and
| immediately turn around and make an implication that if
| casinos have failed to be successful then that somehow
| speaks to the addition qualities of gambling? Something
| something nonsensical equivalences.
| [deleted]
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| This is what I think The Social Dilemma missed. I worked at one
| of these companies and did not see anybody evil looking to
| enslave users in front of their screen. Instead we built new
| features and celebrated when time spent in our app went up or a
| new feature was used because we assumed the user must be getting
| value. After some time we switched metrics from time spent in app
| or daily active users to Net Promoter Score but at the end of the
| day if analytics didn't show that a feature was used it was
| dropped and if it was being used we'd double down on making it
| "better" (used even more).
|
| I did not see any evidence of malicious intent towards our users
| but a genuine belief we were enabling them to be more productive.
| scoutt wrote:
| They don't necessarily need to look evil. "Evil" doesn't sell
| and probably won't make you work for them. They have to look
| like a sane environment in which you can't pinpoint anything
| (philosophically, morally or ethically) wrong.
|
| It's just a matter of language (how they communicate what the
| company is trying to do), with slogans like "making the world a
| better place by doing X". But if you think that at the end of
| the day, all they care about and all the trouble is just for
| the mighty Dollar, with a little change in perspective you can
| elucidate:
|
| "time spent in our app": time _lost_ in our app.
|
| "user must be getting value": while getting even more value out
| of an unaware user.
|
| "feature ... making it "better" (used even more)": more
| addictive? costing less for the company? costing more for the
| user?
|
| "to be more productive": productive as in "making money
| _faster_ but for someone else, while being paid the same ".
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| >I did not see any evidence of malicious intent towards our
| users but a genuine belief we were enabling them to be more
| productive.
|
| The Banality of Evil, this is just a version of "We were just
| following orders"
| ketzo wrote:
| I think that's kind of an overagressive interpretation. It's
| not ignorance of evil; there's a genuine feeling that good is
| being done, even if the parent commenter seems to acknowledge
| that good might not have, in fact, been done.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| No it isn't...
|
| I don't think any of the ideas in this article have any evil
| intent, even if they have evil results.
|
| 1. Relative timestamps are just a more useful way of telling
| people when something happened. It's how most humans
| communicate time to each other.
|
| 2. Infinite scrolling is just what happens when you're not
| constrained by physical pages. The only reason we used to see
| paged content was because it was technically easier. Facebook
| and Instagram even put up a big "You're all caught up" sign
| when you hit the end of where you were last.
|
| 3. Before Facebook had likes people would just add a comment
| like "+1" or "This." It didn't add anything to the
| conversation and just made things worse. Internet points are
| useful for filtering content and showing people more useful
| information.
|
| Yes, all of these things have negative consequences but that
| doesn't mean they're inherently bad.
| aspaceman wrote:
| > I don't think any of the ideas in this article have any
| evil intent, even if they have evil results.
|
| Evil is committed in actions - not intent. That's part of
| the whole banality of evil.
| AngrySkillzz wrote:
| The medium is the message. We've been talking about this
| for decades - the structure of the thing you are
| interacting with determines how you interact with it.
| Substantive debate is difficult in 140 characters, so
| substantive debate does not often happen on Twitter.
| Infinite scroll and auto-play video eliminates the
| "decision points" where people would otherwise reconsider
| if they want to continue, so people spend more time on
| those sites than they would otherwise. Maybe the attributes
| of these mediums aren't "inherently bad," but they
| absolutely do influence the way that they are used and it
| is up to us to make the judgement of whether that has good
| or bad outcomes. And a lot of us think the results of
| infinite scroll is a bad outcome.
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| My understanding is that Hacker News currently paginates
| comments but they're working hard to put them all on one
| page.
|
| Maybe the intent is so you can use find in page to search
| all the comments at once or maybe something else but they
| will also inevitably lead you to read more comments and
| spend even more time on here.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Also, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. You
| judge a system by its outcome, not by the intentions of
| the people who built it.
| deeeeplearning wrote:
| >I don't think any of the ideas in this article have any
| evil intent, even if they have evil results.
|
| The Nazis made essentially this same argument at Nuremberg.
| Didn't work out too well for them.
| mminer237 wrote:
| In so far as ice cream makers are all evil for trying to make
| their ice cream taste better when they know deep down it's
| not good for people's health.
| rhizome wrote:
| Rivalrous goods are an inapt analogy.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This really puzzles me. Productivity can roughly be defined as
| (output / time). How can increasing "time" possibly increase
| productivity? Of course the catch with advertising-funded
| products and services is that "time" is what gets you paid.
| [deleted]
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| Good point. We built paid products. Advertising was not a
| major driver of revenue. People wanting to buy/renew the
| product was.
|
| Maybe a good analogy here is building a calculator. People
| buy your calculator and use it (the assumption is because it
| saves them time). Initially your calculator only does basic
| arithmetic and you add square root, exponential function,
| etc. Now people buy and use your calculator for even more.
| They spend more "time" with the calculator but still save
| even more "time" not having to use pen and paper, so it's a
| productivity gain. Soon a movie on Netflix comes out called
| "The Calculators" which blames the fact that people are no
| longer able to do basic arithmetic in their head on a
| calculated decision by your company to profit from people
| while making them dumber. It paints your company as making
| people dependent on your calculators and robbing them of
| their cognitive abilities.
|
| This was never your intent when creating the calculator. Now
| it's something you will have to address, but the narrative
| here is one of unintended consequences not a deliberate plan.
| lordlimecat wrote:
| >"How could they have just scrolled and scrolled all day?"
|
| It would help if your article used more than just the middle 25%
| of my screen, thus requiring scrolling to read.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Yes all the social medias are addiction merchants. The people
| know full well that they sacrifice their data, but they do not
| care about that or ads. The people use them for gratification
| about likes and as a platform to be "heard" or voice their
| opinions.
|
| Society is punishing drug users and vendors, which might be the
| right thing to do or not, I am not a decision maker. But the
| addiction should be measured in dopamine emissions and withdrawal
| symptoms. Does not matter if the product is a recreational drug
| or a virtual saas. Do not let the addiction merchant hide behind
| marketing terms like social media. The corporations use social to
| tick a compliance box and mislead the customers. To make it sound
| harmless or less dangerous. Similar to vegan, bio labeled food.
| Social media is targeting the most vulnerable and young. Sounds
| drastic? I do not think so
| taylodl wrote:
| I'm blessed to be an older programmer who started my career back
| when we were selling products to people who had to make a
| business case for the purchase of our software systems. We were
| helping businesses achieve more. Most of the businesses my
| previous employers were helping were public utilities,
| communication companies, and manufacturers. You could feel good
| about your work and that you were contributing to a better world.
|
| Today I'm blessed to work for an electric utility. Whenever I'm
| having a bad day I remind myself that I'm helping to provide the
| foundation of modern civilization. It's much better for your soul
| than knowing that in the end you're just working for a drug
| dealer and contributing to the destruction of people's lives. I'm
| glad I'm close to retirement and don't have to do that kind of
| work just so I can put food on the table.
| spodek wrote:
| The opening sentence:
|
| > _There is something about social media that human beings are
| not psychologically prepared for._
|
| I would state it: Engineers and business people have distilled
| what creates craving and then satisfies it by creating more
| craving.
|
| No different than distilling the sugar, heroin, or cocaine from
| otherwise healthy, innocuous plants. We regulate some of that
| distillation. Even what we don't regulate, as a society, we
| generally look down on people that addict others. Why we reward
| programmers as we did the Sacklers doesn't make sense to me. I
| would think we would consider employees and investors of
| antisocial media companies villainous pariahs.
| koonsolo wrote:
| Could we introduce this kind of addiction in healthy things, like
| excising or healthy diet or anything like that?
|
| I've never seen it work in practice, so why are we not able to do
| that?
| xpe wrote:
| A good habit of exercise and diet is self-reinforcing.
|
| What is the difference between self-reinforcing and habit-
| forming? I see three differences.
|
| 1. Who is in control? A runner is in relatively more control,
| because the act of running does not require a gamified online
| experience.
|
| 2. What are the ethical ramifications? These are subjective. To
| be clear, subjective certainly does not mean _unimportant_. It
| means people may disagree. In my view, people largely disagree
| on the "margins" of ethics -- meaning there is a wide swath of
| common ground.
|
| 3. There are some physiological differences; I'm not an expert.
| It seems that both the runner's high [1] and social media
| involve dopamine, but they appear to use different mechanisms.
| ("Runner's high" seems to involve endorphins as a precursor.)
|
| [1] https://archives.drugabuse.gov/blog/post/chasing-runners-
| hig...
| theNJR wrote:
| It's very easy to get the dopamine loop going with sugar,
| nicotine, memes, rage-bait, and bikini photos. The brain loves
| it.
|
| Chicken breast, deadlifts and philosophy takes a lot of effort
| and the positive effects are delayed. The brain has to be
| trained to tolerate it. It will always prefer the latter.
| frompdx wrote:
| Absolutely. For the last year I have been weightlifting
| regularly. This isn't my first foray into being serious about
| lifting either. Every day I lift I have to "make" myself do
| it. I can't really imagine something that would make it more
| reinforcing. It's hard every time even if I like the results.
| iamatworknow wrote:
| Anecdotal but the gamification of exercise with respect to some
| of the newer products out there (Peloton, Zwift, Apple
| Fitness+) seems to be a step in this direction. I've been using
| Zwift for the past couple of months and have ridden my bike
| more than I have probably in the previous year combined. Most
| of it I don't really care/bother with, but when it keeps track
| of your records and you beat one during an exercise, it does
| give you a little of that dopamine rush.
| bdefore wrote:
| I'm not an expert in cognitive behavioral therapy, but I
| believe much of what it advocates is along what you're
| describing. Reframing behavior you would otherwise avoid or be
| anxious about as something enjoyable, you might even say
| addictive. Developing habits that you derive more
| holistic/health pleasure from.
| scoutt wrote:
| All addictions are kind of a bad thing... A moderate use of
| social media is fine. The problem comes with the abuse (product
| of the addiction). The same abuse can come from "healthy"
| things which might derive in other problems like image,
| behavioral and diet disorders.
|
| Exercise addiction:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_addiction
| xyst wrote:
| this shit makes me angry af
|
| it's no wonder we have seen a decline in cognitive ability, as
| seen by various world events (election of the 45th president of
| the USA, "Brexit", climate denial, rise of neo-nazis, vaccination
| denial, Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, ...). we are just endlessly
| scrolling and spamming each other with our running commentary
| bullshit that masquerades as a modicum of insight.
|
| what happened to making the world a better place? the tech
| industry is no better than the tobacco or fast food industry.
| nathias wrote:
| This type of ad hoc pathologization of behaviour is itself very
| suspect, and isn't helping anyone. Not everything that's bad is
| violence or an addiction, there are plenty of different types and
| nouances of evil in the world.
| znpy wrote:
| Social media is one of those games where the only way not to lose
| is not to play at all.
| DevX101 wrote:
| I'm increasingly finding that I have to actively struggle to take
| ownership of my time and attention. Without an active, conscious,
| effort to reclaim your mental resources you WILL be caught up in
| the never-ending cycle of dopamine-dependency to novel
| information or visual stimulation. Your attention is a valuable
| resource and many companies have spent billions on figuring out
| how to farm it.
|
| Some of my more effective methods have included: strict site-
| blocking via OpenDNS, apps to implement time based blocking of
| information-novelty sites (Twitter, HN, reddit, instagram, CNN),
| almost complete disabling of notifications, with the exception of
| text messages and async work chat during business hours.
|
| All of these methods, I can undo, but it prevents or at least
| slows down the automatic, reflexive app/site opening when my
| reptile brain craves a dopamine hit.
| Winterflow3r wrote:
| I experience the same. I've noticed that if I start my day with
| a dose of Twitter, I tend to be much more absentminded and less
| focused on tasks that need to get done.
| nipponese wrote:
| Future of humanity stuff aside, isn't the doublespeak for
| addition actually "retention"? "Engagement" is a classification
| for a set of actions that drives addition, not measures it.
| PhillyG wrote:
| Retention can be that users/players actually like it and want
| to come back without the need for tricks
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Often something made in the name of user engagement makes me less
| addicted instead
|
| Say we have something that shows all expanded comments
| immediately: keeps me on that site
|
| Then they do an "engaging" redesign where only 10% of the
| comments actually show and requires lots of clicking to expand
| them, and lots of unrelated animated images show below: makes me
| want to close that tab and do something else
| user-the-name wrote:
| What you seem to be saying here is, "Imagine a thing that
| doesn't work. It doesn't work."
|
| That's... not an argument?
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Do you have an actual example website/app that does this "less
| addictive" thing?
| Aardwolf wrote:
| Reddit's redesign. 'Less addictive' for me. I'm sure there
| must be some target audience for whom this is more addictive,
| but I'm not the one, I just want to read the comments of the
| thread I choose myself in peace.
| 2pEXgD0fZ5cF wrote:
| Same here, also with Reddit refusing to show posts to me
| and trying to force me to install its App instead when
| browsing on mobile. I simply don't use it on mobile
| anymore.
| dspillett wrote:
| As well as not going there on mobile any more (or hitting
| back PDQ if I do end up following a link that goes
| there), I use it a lot less on desktop. If you are not
| logged in some things (just browsing comments) become a
| lot less convenient, for instance. So unless there is a
| link that sounds really compelling (I sometimes get sent
| links by friends - though usually I just bounce through
| reddit and on to the actual information which is probably
| one link away) I simply don't go. I certainly don't go to
| subreddits unprompted to look for content any more (which
| I used to).
|
| Yeah, old reddit still exists as some are fond of saying
| in these discussions. But other perfectly good
| information sources exist for what I want too (often
| better than reddit ever was - HN for instance).
|
| Youtube is heading the same way: I'm visiting it less and
| less. The more adverts they pile in, the less of their
| adverts I actually witness because I'm not there to see
| them at all.
|
| I should thank reddit, youtube, and their ilk, really,
| for saving me the time that I used to waste on their
| sites and can now enjoy wasting on other things instead!
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| The page is so heavy now it makes it a chore to browse.
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, and "influencer" is code for psychological manipulator.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| It's not much of a code though is it? I mean, it's as subtle as
| "executioner".
| amelius wrote:
| I don't know, people, especially kids on YouTube, seem to be
| proud of the label these days.
| PhillyG wrote:
| They might just be proud to be earning from something they
| don't find to be too much like work
| luplex wrote:
| Influencing people has always been a goal of many (see Dale
| Carnegie). It means being powerful. Influencing people to
| do a good thing is amazing. Being paid for any influence
| presumably feels also pretty good.
| croes wrote:
| It is no coincidence that PR is a continuation of propaganda
| for another field.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| I personally call it "selling yourself out on the Internet".
|
| The rise of small-time influencers, the "nanoinfluencers", is
| particularly worrying trend. There are degrees to how
| antisocial advertising is, but nanoinfluencing is near the top,
| along with MLMs - people literally get paid to cheat their
| family and friends out of their hard-earned cash. It does
| damage to the fundamental relationships in the society, and to
| the minds of everyone involved.
|
| If you think I'm overdramatizing, consider if it's a healthy
| state of things, when asking a family member for advice or
| having a casual conversation, when you have to wonder whether
| they're being honest, or just shilling you some crap. That's a
| fundamental assault on basic interpersonal trust.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| It's always meant, "I'm paid to post ads". Whether that's
| psychological manipulation is up to you.
|
| (Yes, ads are designed to get you to interact with them, but on
| their own, I wouldn't go as far as saying, "psychological
| manipulation". I'll admit the industry has tended in that
| direction, however. Your view may differ)
| amelius wrote:
| It's not just showing ads. It's endorsement, and in many ways
| similar to fake reviews. And often the fact that ads are
| shown is concealed in semi-clever ways.
| Person5478 wrote:
| I don't disagree with your point, but influencer nowadays is
| active whereas a simple ad is passive. Due to this, the
| modern day influencer (aka person) is absolutely a
| psychological manipulator.
| throwaway556179 wrote:
| I recently saw an FB "data engineer" talking about "experiment
| review sessions", where the - presumably engagement related -
| results of interface changes are discussed (he also expressed
| hope that all companies work that way).
|
| It's very rational. The user needs a good user interface, the
| best that can be built. What is the best? The one the user likes
| to use, day in day out. Is that a problem? Obviously not for the
| platform.
|
| When FB CEO announced that he want's to make users happy, he
| acknowledged his real intents: mass, aggregate control of
| behavior. I cannot deny that it carries a purely instrumental
| view of humans - but that's again only rational in the context of
| business.
| tpxl wrote:
| > What is the best? The one the user likes to use, day in day
| out.
|
| No.
|
| The road is most used when there's a traffic jam.
| hawktheslayer wrote:
| For me the pandemic has actually allowed me to spend more time
| outdoors and with my children and as a result less time online.
| We have been taking walks daily and started gardening. I've cut
| down social media time to almost nothing on all major platforms
| (HN is my last "addiction"). The author claims the pandemic
| forced us inside and on social media--do people find this true
| for them?
| raihansaputra wrote:
| Really depends on where do people live. For example my
| surroundings are not the best to walk around in (very close to
| busy main roads), and the city as a whole have shopping malls
| as the main point of interests before the pandemic. Parks are
| closed, and walking infrastructure are available but not what
| I'd call enjoyable (the risk crossing a main road without stop
| lights just for a morning walk doesn't sit well with me). I'm
| definitely more locked into my devices compared to before the
| pandemic.
| luplex wrote:
| I go on more walks. But I also meet way fewer people and spend
| more days and evenings alone at home. Social media fills some
| of that time if you don't actively avoid it.
| souprock wrote:
| It's been horrible for me.
|
| The pandemic means classes are virtual/online. That means kids
| need computers with internet connections and modern web
| browsers. That means games, stupid videos, games, chat, games,
| and more games.
|
| I'm really at a loss here.
|
| I've gone to demanding a cold-turkey moratorium on the junk,
| with computer use only when supervised. This solution sucks up
| too much parental time and doesn't allow enough computer time
| for the homework.
|
| If the classes didn't require web video, I could get an old
| VT510 terminal (no graphics) or an e-ink display, and then the
| gaming would be limited to a few things like online chess. The
| addiction problem wouldn't be so severe.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Owing to the HN audience there might be a bias against this
| being true, but I expect there was a boost in general
| population. I don't think I spend more time on social media
| than I did before, and not by conscious choice.
|
| What's interesting to me is, earlier in the pandemic I would
| hear more lofty plans for organizing online games and having
| more video calls between friends and family. It's amazing how
| quickly the motivation for this dissipated. Maybe because it's
| plainly cumbersome and awkward and just doesn't feel the same,
| and everyone I know still works.
|
| For my part I think I've retreated from video/audio
| correspondence considerably. I still write to strangers online,
| which is social media, but feel like this experience has made
| me retreat into my shell. No substitution for seeing people in
| person.
| kingaillas wrote:
| >The author claims the pandemic forced us inside and on social
| media--do people find this true for them?
|
| I used to play in a few city-wide social sports leagues, before
| covid, which were all canceled most of last year and aren't
| back yet due to the winter weather. I filled my time by hiking
| and trying out some new hobbies.
|
| So while not quite the same as being force inside and/or forced
| on social media, I can see where the pandemic upended various
| gatherings/hobbies and social media is an easy alternative for
| many people. Social media is free, easy to access, convenient,
| can be a giant time-sink, etc. along with all sorts of negative
| consequences.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| It definitely is true for me. I haven't left my house for
| anything but doctor's appointments in 11 months. The most
| exercise I get is when I walk to my condominium's garbage
| disposal room.
| worker767424 wrote:
| Apps aren't drugs. I used to suck dick for coke. Now that's an
| addiction. You ever suck some dick for an in-game item?
| reducesuffering wrote:
| This is a modified quote from the movie Half Baked. Not
| literal.
| retrac wrote:
| Heh, I chuckled. I've got a dark sense of humour though.
| Because it's not really a joke.
|
| A man was recently arrested in my city for a scheme where he
| was trading sexual images from underage boys for gift cards for
| popular video games.
| xxs wrote:
| dunno, about that. But I have heard hot chat and sending pics
| are both common tools.
| abbadadda wrote:
| HOLY COW BATMAN! It is almost like these social media companies
| don't have the bests interests of their users at the core of
| their mission!
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