[HN Gopher] iOS 15 Humane
___________________________________________________________________
iOS 15 Humane
Author : uffo
Score : 1112 points
Date : 2021-06-10 03:56 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (potential.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (potential.app)
| EGreg wrote:
| We have been working to make this happen. Read the items under
| "Our Philosophy" and "Our Mission" here: https://qbix.com/people
|
| But there has to be a completely different kind of company and
| ethos behind this technology, if we are going to have an impact
| on the world. We need open source, we need massive network
| effects. And we need a new economic model for the web, that will
| be ENFORCED. Would love some feedback from anyone who reads it:
| https://qbix.com/QBUX/whitepaper.html#Decentralizing-the-Mar...
|
| PS: I am just going to copypaste our philosophy and mission below
|
| _Our Philosophy
|
| The internet has given us opportunities to connect with one
| another like never before. Yet, most sites we use today have
| barely tapped that potential. We believe in the power of well-
| designed tools to improve people's lives and bring about positive
| social change. They are characterized by five main aspects:
|
| Time: Instead of priding ourselves on how much time people spend
| in our apps, we want people to get in, get out, and get results.
|
| Utility: Help people get things done in the real world, rather
| than building an online persona.
|
| Notifications: Let people control which updates they receive
| about things happening in their life, instead of getting them
| addicted to notifications like a slot machine.
|
| Organic: In every context, pre-compute useful information and
| present it to the user, enabling them to do more in less steps.
|
| Business Model: Make money by helping people accomplish useful
| things as a group, not just by selling advertising.
|
| Our Mission
|
| Why do we all have to rely on giant corporations mediate our
| interactions, and trust them with our data, identity and brand?
| Qbix works to put power back in the hands of the people. And we
| don't just talk about it , we are building it! In order for
| people to switch, the alternative must be as good as what they're
| using now.
|
| Qbix Platform: We've developed a social operating system for the
| Web, that puts power back in the hands of people, communities and
| social app developers. It is part of a movement to decentralize
| the Web, moving it from Feudalism to a Free Market of reusable
| components that anyone can use.
|
| Qbix Browser: We've working on releasing social web browser where
| you can share and discuss all kinds of web pages with friends,
| from events to restaurants to news. You'll be able to search all
| your browsing history and chats quickly, manage your contacts,
| and be more productive. And you can do it all privately, using
| your personal address book and encrypted communication.
|
| QBUX Token: Monetizing open source software and digital content
| on the web is a challenging problem. We are working to solve it
| by leveraging the network effects we are building up with our
| growing user base. Qbix can help usher in a new era of
| collaboration and micropayments on the Web._
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Excellent ideas. I use Freedom to limit my use of social media to
| specific times of day, which is a good start. I especially liked
| the idea of promoting people if they seem to be browsing
| aimlessly.
| Crazyontap wrote:
| Even though this article is sarcastic(?) I can't help but get
| genuinely angry at these trillion dollar companies thinking they
| know what is better for us and trying to control and police
| everything. This is even worse than govt censoring porn and cuss-
| words back in the day thinking they know what is moral for the
| society.
|
| I was just talking to a friend the other day on how badly Apple
| and Google are trying their best to kill curiosity and
| creativity. I mean when I first got my 286 the machine was just
| full of possibilities. I think learning the ins and outs of it
| was more fun than doing anything productive.
|
| I used to hack away at it all day and night. Learning about
| interrupts, tinkering with the BIOS settings, hacking the serial
| port, irq, etc. Now everything is just locked down. In my latest
| phone I can't even run `fastboot` as that too has been locked
| down permanently because "security".
|
| Thank god we have Linux created before all this Bullshit started
| happening. If Apple, Google and Microsoft was in charge of things
| as they are now, we wouldn't even have any hardware to run
| anything else than Windows and iOS.
| vasishath wrote:
| The lovely old 286 did not have a human's bank/card details and
| neither did it had any "sensitive" photographs. Devices
| nowadays have a lot of private information about their user and
| most of the people do not know how it keep it safe and secure..
| to top it all, several bad actors are consistently after this
| private information.. hence the lockdown.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Exactly, I don't want to be at the mercy of a tech corporation
| to decide what's "healthy" for me or what exact degree of
| privacy I deserve.
|
| Allow real browser extensions, I just want to be able to use
| uBlock origin. Not some overengineered "system extension" that
| can only check the network.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| What a weird take. It completely ignores the massive impact
| that addictive apps have on people, how incapable governments
| are at regulating malicious/predatory behavior by companies
| like Facebook and others, and those tradeoffs.
|
| This article is actually genius, and I truly believe they're
| good recommendations. Apple in these mockups wouldn't be
| _forcing_ you to turn off addictive behaviors - it 's just
| letting you know they exist, and giving YOU the power to help
| control it.
|
| The jist of your post is that you want the freedom to smoke
| cigarettes without the oppressive government health warnings on
| the packages.
| tarsinge wrote:
| Both can coexist, they are not for the same usage. When I want
| to do something creative (i.e. create music), I don't want to
| tinker with a computer, I just want an appliance that works. I
| spent decades toying with computers, but there are others
| creative endeavors in life for me now. Apple (at least Jobs)
| was always about the idea that the general purpose computer was
| a mean not an end. An iPhone is not locked down if you see it
| for the appliance that it is. I'm glad that Linux exists and
| use it everyday at work though, it's just not the same thing.
| dwighttk wrote:
| > Even though this article is sarcastic(?)
|
| I don't think it is
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >I mean when I first got my 286 the machine was just full of
| possibilities.
|
| When I got my first 286 very little was available to me because
| it all had a cost. Want to learn C then get your wallet out to
| buy a C compiler. Want to learn Pascal then get your wallet out
| for Turbo Pascal . Want to learn UNIX, well hard lines, that
| stuff is only available in ivory towers.
| NeoVeles wrote:
| The 286 was a little before my time, although I did spend a
| lot of time in the early 90's hacking on a 8086. It is always
| amazing to me that even in the 80's, Unix used to be
| considered an astoundingly heavy handed OS. Now with it
| legacy mostly living on via Linux, it is considered the light
| weight alternative. Funny the path these things take.
| trustfundbaby wrote:
| Sounds like a business opportunity ...
| fsflover wrote:
| https://puri.sm/products/librem-5
| slver wrote:
| Yes, just imagine the billions of people eagerly awaiting a
| blank smartphone that they can tinker the BIOS settings of.
| prawn wrote:
| Reminds me of the "women want pockets in all their clothes"
| angle. If it were vital, someone would be making buckets of
| money from that exact solution. That you don't hear about
| it suggests that fashion-first is king in the sort of
| clothing you wear out.
|
| Every year there's a new pitch from a modular laptop or a
| hackable smartphone. Never met anyone who uses one though.
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| Your comment entirely misses the point of the article, and your
| frustration is completely backwards.
|
| The current situation is that Facebook is not limited in their
| use of patterns that increase your engagement. The author of
| the comment is proposing some extensions to iOS that mean that
| Facebook is able to use patterns that increase your engagement,
| but you're also able to turn it off.
|
| From your perspective of wanting more control over your
| devices, isn't this a win? It isn't injecting javascript into a
| running webapp with an extension that monkeypatches it. But you
| gave that up by using a native app on iOS. It gets you back a
| huge amount of control. If you want more, there's LineageOS
| (self compile it with patched source code by using robotnix)
| and PinePhone. The jump from trusted to trustless is a big one
| now but it's not insurmountable.
| robinjfisher wrote:
| I don't think the article is sarcastic given the nature of
| their app.
|
| Where does one draw the line though? ESG[1] is becoming
| increasingly important to investors and I already see financial
| institutions instituting controls in their apps around gambling
| [2].
|
| When should large companies with sufficient reach implement
| opportunities to address social harms?
|
| [1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/environmental-social-
| an... [2] https://monzo.com/blog/2018/06/19/gambling-block-
| self-exclus...
| camillomiller wrote:
| It is not and it is worrying. I think Apple is doing a great
| job about privacy, but it's a fine line the one between user
| advocacy and the ethical state model...
| [deleted]
| zuppy wrote:
| i started programming in 94, i've passed through all the
| phases. honestly, what i want now is a phone that just works,
| without needing to hack anything. i presume i'm not
| representing the miniroty of ios users here. i don't think it's
| possible to do both of those things (stability vs hacking) in
| the same time, without a compromise and i voted with my wallet
| for what apple did.
|
| there are options for everyone, if you want to hack it, good,
| there's android for that. there are even phones that you can
| customize. if you want a stable black box, there's ios, this is
| well known before you buy it. there are options for every one
| of us...
|
| i think you guys forget that this is an echo chamber and the
| real users out there are not tech savy. i
| int_19h wrote:
| > I don't think it's possible to do both of those things
| (stability vs hacking) in the same time
|
| Why is it not possible, exactly?
| zuppy wrote:
| let me come back to you with a question: do you have an
| example where this works?
|
| being hackable means exactly the opposite of stability: you
| can change low level features and break things. if there is
| a chance to do it, people can be tricked to do it. of
| course, i'm excluding here people who have knowledge, as i
| continue to belive that they are a minority.
| fouric wrote:
| > do you have an example where this works?
|
| Yes. On my laptop, Linux is extremely stable, and yet
| extremely hackable. What, Linux doesn't work for you
| flawlessly? 99% chance it's drivers, which has nothing to
| do with stability and everything to do with the limited
| amount of effort that people have poured into drivers on
| that particular platform.
|
| > being hackable means exactly the opposite of stability
|
| False. "Stability" implicitly means "without
| modifications". There's _no_ product or (human-made)
| system in existence that remains stable once you start
| making arbitrary modifications to it.
|
| > if there is a chance to do it, people can be tricked to
| do it
|
| Yes, and "freedom" (which is a core tenet of the United
| States Constitution, where most HN commenters are based)
| _includes the ability to do things that will hurt
| yourself_. "We know what's better for you than you do"
| leads to tyranny the majority of the time (as it does
| here, where Apple has full control of their devices and
| regularly makes decisions that hurt their users).
|
| Moreover, it's relatively easy to design a system that
| prevents the vast majority of users from shooting
| themselves in the foot (by making root(-adjacent) access
| difficult to acquire by accident and fairly difficult to
| be tricked into doing), and coupled with actual
| _education_ would keep the levels of this particular kind
| of computer fraud (where someone convinces you to bypass
| your computer 's security features) well below the rates
| of other computer fraud (such as falling prey to scam
| emails).
| fsflover wrote:
| > being hackable means exactly the opposite of stability
|
| Any computer with preinstalled Linux will "just work".
| Typical users will only install apps from the
| repositories, and those are _more_ secure and private
| than App Store.
| camillomiller wrote:
| Another peak self-absorbed Hacker News comment, in which we
| learn that curiosity only means tinkering with devices,
| learning how they work to the bits, plus some random Linux
| thrown in. This comment is ignoring that a device that does all
| that without you having to worry about how it works is a tool
| way more powerful than one in which you need to at least know
| how to build everything from scratch with an enormous learning
| curve. Curiosity can be about design, the arts, literature,
| drawing, composing music, making and editing videos. All of
| which you can do so much better and so much more democratically
| on these "opinionated" devices. So please, enough with this
| narrative, it's really outdated and based on such a limited
| world view.
| collectiveness wrote:
| I think you are mixing up "not having to worry about how it
| works" with "having the freedom to tinker". We should demand
| both. One reason is for our curiosity. The other is to have
| checks and balances on the big companies.
| Applejinx wrote:
| The big companies have all the technical resources, and
| profoundly strong motivation, to apply their own malware
| and harm the user.
|
| You do NOT check and/or balance big companies by allowing
| them the freedom to tinker alongside the little guy. They
| will wrest the machines to their purposes every time, and
| they are Not Happy about obstacles in their path.
|
| Having checks and balances on big companies is a very good
| argument but it points the opposite direction from how
| you're seeing it...
| camillomiller wrote:
| We should. What I'm saying is that we still have that, and
| more. The suggestion is mostly the opposite, from comments
| like yours. That we should have less things like the Apple
| ecosystem, which has been fundamental in creating an entire
| generation of creative tinkerers, exactly because of its
| opinionated and broadly simplified nature.
| int_19h wrote:
| We have an either-or choice, and there's no reason for it
| to be like that.
| creata wrote:
| This has to be the least charitable reading of Crazyontap's
| comment. Couldn't you have just inserted the implied:
|
| > I was just talking to a friend the other day on how badly
| Apple and Google are trying their best to kill curiosity and
| creativity [with regard to the computer they're using].
|
| Also:
|
| > So please, enough with this narrative, it's really outdated
| and based on such a limited world view.
|
| You'll have to explain how it's a "limited world view" to
| suggest that we can have our cake and eat it too: that we can
| have open, hackable platforms that are _also_ popular and
| easy to use.
| fartcannon wrote:
| From the tone, I believe they are intentionally trolling
| for reactions. It is probably best not to feed them.
| camillomiller wrote:
| It's called democratic discussion, but sure, go ahead,
| call me a troll. If that's your only argument, I think
| you've effectively helped in explaining what a limited
| world view is with a very practical example.
| [deleted]
| camillomiller wrote:
| Creative professionals gained immensely through Apple's
| approach. If I'm a music producer, a film maker, a writer,
| a graphic designer, and so on, I gain immensely from a
| computer that just works 99% of the time. I don't need or
| want to spend time on thinking what's the best set of
| drivers I should install, or worrying about all the
| dependencies of this new open source program with no hint
| of UX-design I've just installed. And yet, anything that
| isn't exactly that is often dismissed as lower class by
| people who have learned that over years and years, and
| don't seem to understand that there's an entire world of
| good people who just want to apply their curiosity at a
| different level. That is, in my opinion, a limited world
| view. In my experience, it also does not happen both ways.
| People that can't do that (but maybe can master film
| coloring post-processing -- I invite you to give a stab at
| that, if you dare) have enormous respect of the low level
| tinkerers. The opposite is very often not through.
| StavrosK wrote:
| How does being able to get root access to an iPhone (the
| way you can on a Mac) limit creativity?
| Ensorceled wrote:
| They are claiming the exact opposite of that: not having
| root access isn't a limit on creativity.
| StavrosK wrote:
| They're replying to a comment arguing _for_ open devices.
| Saying "I'm fine with a closed device" is at best
| irrelevant. "I'm fine with a locked-down computer" is no
| argument against "I want my computer to be more open",
| as, in the end, if you're fine with your locked-down
| computer, just keep it locked down.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > it also does not happen both ways. People that can't do
| that (but maybe can master film coloring post-processing
| -- I invite you to give a stab at that, if you dare) have
| enormous respect of the low level tinkerers. The opposite
| is very often not through.
|
| This feels related to the saying that it's easier to
| innovate down the stack than it is to innovate up the
| stack. It's far easier for Apple to design and fabricate
| its own chips than it would be for Intel to make its own
| consumer OS.
| Applejinx wrote:
| I program DSP software, but I find DaVinci Resolve SUPER
| daunting. I completely agree (and am also a Mac user, for
| what that's worth)
|
| There are so many domains where you can dive incredibly
| deeply into 'em. Some of them are computer augmented, and
| benefit from a stable, predictable computer host. There's
| been a lot of instances over the years where Macs served
| that role of 'creativity toaster' and did it well... now
| we've got the same thing, except for phones.
|
| Anybody who's used to that situation doesn't find the
| status of iPhone ecology shocking. A bargain is being
| made. Or a service is being hired, from effectively a
| computer administrator.
| fsflover wrote:
| > I gain immensely from a computer that just works 99% of
| the time
|
| Are you implying that Linux doesn't work 99% of the time?
| If so, you are mistaken. I'm running Linux for me and my
| relatives without issues for years. I'm not a
| programmer/hacker.
|
| Just choose the hardware designed for it (exactly like in
| the case of Apple).
| odshoifsdhfs wrote:
| Ohh come on. I am not against linux but to say it works
| flawlessly is ridiculous. My last try with it a few years
| was the most ridiculous. If i plugged my bamboo stylus,
| the screen would just go all crazy, as soon as i
| unplugged it, back to normal. Stylus worked on windows
| and mac, but on linux (ubuntu lts) i couldn't even plug
| it in (and took me a while to find out that was the
| problem as it installed everything fine, then after the
| reboot this happened, only when i decided to disconnect
| everything but the monitor and try plugging one by one
| did i find this out
|
| And lets not even go over the ux disaster that is the mix
| and match of uis from various apps.
| fsflover wrote:
| > Stylus worked on windows and mac, but on linux
|
| Here comes your problem (which I actually mentioned in my
| above post). Choose hardware _designed_ for Linux if you
| want it to really work. Why don 't you complain that your
| Windows installation does not work well on a Macbook?
| odshoifsdhfs wrote:
| If I plug a non supported device on my macbook, the
| screen doesn't go all scrambly.
|
| And even so, how can you say it works 99% of the time if
| you have to go and research each piece of peripheral that
| you want to use? Normal users go to bestbuy or amazon or
| whatnot and buy a microphone, they don't want to go and
| see if it works on ubuntu or whatnot or have weird
| behaviours at home. you can blame manufacturs for not
| supporting linux while they support win/mac, but again,
| normal users experience just isn't that great.
|
| You said you are running linux for you and your
| relatives. Who installed it on your relatives machines?
| Who checked the compatibility of each hardware and maybe
| even bought some replacement things to work on linux? I
| know most users/relative I know wouldn't go to websites
| to try to find out if this or that works well with this
| and that. They just want to go to a shop, buy a
| laptop+accessories and plug them in when they get home
| fsflover wrote:
| Yes, the actual problem is the lack of preinstalled Linux
| on retail products. You can find that in online shops
| though. My laptop came with Linux preinstalled and I
| can't recommend it enough.
| simonh wrote:
| Because we also need sophisticated, powerful internet
| communications devices that contain our personal data,
| private photos and video, social media information, etc,
| etc and that we also rely on for a huge range of creative
| tasks.
|
| These are not the right tools to also have completely
| exposed with no security or guard rails, where we can
| easily open up or broadcast everything to the world.
|
| You can have your cake and eat it too, there are devices
| available that work just how you want, but that doesn't
| mean every device has to work that way. It certainly
| doesn't mean that my device has to work that way, just
| because you want it to.
| boudin wrote:
| Why do you make the assumption that a device with freedom
| would be a device to worry about? This is exactlty what the
| op is saying. The Apple narrative of "we have full control
| over your device and your software for your own good" is
| horrible and worrying. I'm not gonna make a parallel about
| Apple source of inspiration but it doesn't scream creativity,
| freedom and certainly not democracy.
| simonh wrote:
| Democracy is about choice, including the right to make
| choices you disagree with. You can choose to use an iOS
| device, or you can chose not to. I choose to use one, and I
| like the way it works. You or others like you want to take
| that choice away from me.
| StavrosK wrote:
| This is such a tired argument. Nobody is arguing that
| iPhones should be rooted by default, only that they
| should be _rootable_.
| simonh wrote:
| I don't want my kids rooting their phones. Also I use
| facebook, but I dislike it and don't trust them, but I
| use it and Messenger occasionally to keep in touch with
| some friends. I also use WhatsApp fair bit.
|
| I like the fact that Facebook can't pull their apps from
| the store, put them on a rival store with lax standards,
| or otherwise circumvent the app store controls. These
| controls clear benefits for me, but side loading and
| alternate stores would cripple their effectiveness. In
| fact crippling the effectiveness of these controls is the
| purpose of side loading and alternate stores.
|
| If you want a phone you can root, buy one. There are
| options out there. Why do you want to take my choice away
| from me?
| StavrosK wrote:
| > Why do you want to take my choice away from me?
|
| You keep repeating this disingenuous argument. If you
| don't want to root your phone, don't root it. If you
| don't want your kids to be able to root their phones,
| don't pretend like you aren't taking away their choice.
|
| If you don't want rival stores with lax standards, don't
| install them. Just don't keep telling people who want to
| be given a choice that they're somehow "taking your
| choice away from you".
|
| If you want to be in prison, go ahead, but don't pretend
| that having the option to leave is somehow "taking your
| choice away".
| p49k wrote:
| This is unrealistic. If it were easy to root an iPhone,
| then we would reach a situation where app developers
| would stop releasing necessary apps in the App Store
| because they want to bypass all the ethical behavior it
| requires. It would effectively force everyone to the
| lowest common denominator.
|
| If it were possible to root an iPhone, Facebook would
| have never agreed to give users the option to stop
| tracking them across apps; they would have instead said
| "please watch this video and do what it says to continue
| using Facebook/Instagram!" and guide naive users into
| rooting their phones.
|
| Closed ecosystems have many advantages (and
| disadvantages) over open ones. However, a closed
| ecosystem with a gaping hole in the wall is no longer a
| closed ecosystem; you can't have it both ways.
| StavrosK wrote:
| I don't know what to tell you if you believe that, while
| conversions drop off a cliff if the "signup" button isn't
| prominent, asking users to unlock their bootloader and
| install a third party app store just to get Facebook
| working on their phone is a thing that would get a
| nonzero amount of users.
| p49k wrote:
| Epic literally did this with Fortnite on Android, one of
| the largest mobile games in existence - they taught users
| how to download the APK and sideload the app to avoid the
| Google Play store.
| StavrosK wrote:
| This isn't very relevant to the current discussion,
| though, as you don't need root or an unlocked bootloader
| on Android to do that.
| p49k wrote:
| It's directly relevant. It's an example of a large
| company forcing its users to learn how to implement a
| somewhat complicated bypass to an app store to avoid
| having to follow its rules, something that no one tries
| on Apple because of how tightly Apple controls its
| ecosystem.
| simonh wrote:
| It wouldn't just be facebook though, it would be all
| facebook's apps (Messenger, WhatsApp, etc), plus all
| Google's apps, Amazon, Fortnite, Spotify, etc, etc. A
| single 'Freedom' store with all that on it would have
| huge pull and would completely undermine the
| effectiveness of the App Store's privacy policies. No
| thanks.
|
| This doesn't happen on Android because Google has no
| interest in enforcing strict privacy policies on the Play
| Store.
| boudin wrote:
| It's not about you. It's about the direction that
| technology has been taking where a big chunk is
| controlled by very few companies that are more powerful
| than a lot of countries.
|
| I want to be able to chose a device I control, with
| software I control because I have strong concerns on
| privacy, freedom to create and waste management. My
| choices are quite limited and things are hardly moving in
| the right direction.
|
| Do your concept of democracy being all about your own
| choices and seeing anybody with different point of view
| as your enemy kinda reinforce my point. This is not about
| your specific choices and personal freedom. This is about
| everybody choices and freedom.
|
| Yes, authoritarianism as a business freaks me out, seeing
| people embracing it and embracing the fake sentiment of
| safety it provides is freaking me out. And yes, I do
| think it's time the Apple and Google duopoly is broken
| down and people are actually given choice.
| Kbelicius wrote:
| So you agree that iPhones should be used in whatever way
| the user wants, including using a different app store? I
| mean, it is a choice that you disagree with but for some
| reason it should be taken away. Why?
| p49k wrote:
| Apple's approach is pragmatic. If they offered anyone the
| ability to jailbreak, you would see major app makers
| manipulating naive users into jailbreaking in order to
| bypass security, payment restrictions or similar. Even the
| limited options Apple provides are already abused, such as
| Facebook convincing users to install VPN profiles with
| their Ovano product and abusing it to spy on users.
|
| Having the option defeats the fundamental advantages their
| approach offers.
|
| There are a lot of problems with Apple's approach from an
| antitrust perspective and fair competition should be
| regulated through legislation, but there are good reasons
| for closed ecosystems to exist and plenty of great
| alternatives for people who want something more open.
| collectiveness wrote:
| At what point do we need to start worrying about Apple
| holding too much power over their closed ecosystem and
| can potentially abuse it?
| camillomiller wrote:
| Until we leave in a capitalistic system? Apple should be
| scrutinized, but I prefer a world in which a company with
| strong values polices the ethical limits of technology,
| to one where companies like Facebook (and Google, to a
| lesser extent) hypocritically push an open agenda just to
| exploit such technologies to milk our data.
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| > Apple's approach is pragmatic. If they offered anyone
| the ability to jailbreak, you would see major app makers
| manipulating naive users into jailbreaking in order to
| bypass security, payment restrictions or similar.
|
| The problem is a social one and hasn't been properly
| solved by technical measures as you note. Instead of
| acting like the digital world is somehow separate from
| the rest of the world, we should have enough strong and
| effective laws and regulations that if a person steals
| from me, they can reasonably expect to spend a few years
| in prison.
|
| The result of discovering a person has released a
| fraudulent product to the Google Play Store is currently
| that they get get their Google account shut down, maybe.
| The actual result should be that they find out what the
| inside of a prison cell is.
|
| The result of discovering that a company tracks a user
| without effective permission through the use of dark
| patterns that meant a user pressed "I agree" under the
| misapprehension that this was the only way of using the
| app should have their shares acquired by the justice
| system at a penalty rate - or some other effective
| penalty so that companies don't balance the cost of
| obeying the law with the cost of the fine.
|
| If Apple believes that their users want protection from
| digital thieves, Apple has a responsibility to lobby for
| better laws and regulations. They can't use halfmeasures
| as a pretense in the hope that some amorphous other will
| get laws that protect their users passed.
| fsflover wrote:
| > If they offered anyone the ability to jailbreak, you
| would see major app makers manipulating naive users into
| jailbreaking in order to bypass security
|
| This is FUD. Linux works flawlessly despite giving all
| the freedoms. Typical users don't install anything
| outside the repositories. Apple has countless problems
| with security and privacy in their App Store.
| handrous wrote:
| > This is FUD. Linux works flawlessly despite giving all
| the freedoms.
|
| _eyebrows raise to the ceiling_
|
| > Typical users don't install anything outside the
| repositories.
|
| _head tilts nearly horizontal with the floor_
|
| "Flawlessly" is here being stretched beyond the breaking
| point, and anyone who is OK with only installing software
| from the official repos for any major Linux distro is
| _not_ a "typical user", very obviously.
| igetspam wrote:
| I've been using Linux exclusively since the mid 90s. I've
| run so many different variants. I was a attended the
| church of Slackware for a long time. There has never been
| a time in my many years of using Linux that anything has
| been "flawless" and I _definitely_ have to install things
| "outside the repositories" pretty regularly. Even if
| that's a broad statement meaning "any type of repository
| anywhere, including but not limited to git."
| handrous wrote:
| Right, I'm struggling to think of a user profile that
| would be OK with just software from major distro repos.
|
| "Normal" users? They're going to want several proprietary
| programs, some of which will surely not be in even the
| non-free repos, unless they're an only-uses-the-browser
| type who'd be fine with a Chromebook (or, more
| realistically for that user profile, just their phone).
|
| Power users? I have to assume my experience of _often_
| wanting or needing something outside official repos, or a
| newer version of something in official repos, is far from
| unusual. I 'm not even _that_ demanding a power user, and
| that 's still a very common situation for me. What's
| worse is the more one chases system stability, the worse
| this problem becomes, since Linux distros mix the base
| system and user-facing applications all together (and the
| structure of x-window-system/wayland/drivers/GTK/QT makes
| it hard _not_ to do this)
| aks_tldr wrote:
| That is because Linux is not used by general public.
| fsflover wrote:
| Unfortunately you can't even find a Linux computer in
| shops anywhere, which could be the reason few people use
| it. It's actually harder to find malware there.
|
| See also: Android is Linux used by the general public.
| ntauthority wrote:
| Funnily, you can find various somewhat-Linux devices in
| stores mostly, except they're called 'Chromebooks'. This
| is the same device series that uses Coreboot as a boot
| loader and usually had an internal screw to remove to
| disable firmware write protections and fully unlock the
| device, as well as other visually and auditory (they make
| a large beep on boot) tamper-evident 'developer unlock'
| modes. Nowadays instead of the 'unlock screw', there's a
| mandatory security chip that can be unlocked into a less
| visibly tamper-evident mode in which it is disabled via a
| special USB-C cable for sale on the open market with a
| reference schematic available as well, which is a much
| more fun solution to assert physical access. [1]
|
| Many older models also would run mainline Linux fine, and
| the default Chrome OS install usually has a container and
| a Wayland to Chrome adapter behind a toggle.
|
| [1]: https://unrelenting.technology/articles/FreeBSD-and-
| custom-f...
| fsflover wrote:
| I don't think it's relevant for the general public.
| [deleted]
| eptcyka wrote:
| You can learn about design, arts, literature, drawing et al
| without having to sacrifice the freedom to own your device.
| Apple devices deliver great UX despite their walled garden.
| They can have their ecosystem without locking people out of
| running their own software or making it difficult to repair
| it. Don't create a false dichotomy.
| shaan7 wrote:
| Ah well, you are basically replying to a limited world view
| by another limited one.
|
| Notice how you say "Curiosity *can be* about design, ..." but
| then the tone of your comment reads like you mean "Curiosity
| *should only be* about design, ...". Please don't do that.
|
| Curiosity can be about anything, lets just leave it at that.
| fimbulvetr wrote:
| These are sad times when someone who wants to "hack" and
| learn and disassemble and reassemble and just "understand"
| gets shit on "hacker news". "Limited world view"? Really?
| They are the one with the "Limited world view"?
| handrous wrote:
| The notion that computing devices that aren't wide-open are
| "kill[ing] curiosity and creativity" in anything other than
| a very restricted sense is a limited world view, yes. That
| such devices being available as an option _at all_ rankles
| people so and drives them to insult anyone who likes them
| as mindless consumers (very common in discussions like
| this, on this site) is downright parochial.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| You missed his point. BigTech is trying to make open computer
| hardware and software illegal, because "security".
|
| That is a loss for everyone, even if tinkering with computers
| is not your hobby.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > BigTech is trying to make open computer hardware and
| software illegal, because "security".
|
| I wonder what they stand to gain from this, since they
| wouldn't bother if there wasn't a benefit.
|
| Android I can possibly understand, what with Google being
| an ad-company and expecting to track users. But Apple
| doesn't seem to be doing that all that much anymore.
|
| For the tractor situation, John Deere & friends expect to
| capture the business of independent repair shops, so
| there's a gain in their locking down the devices.
|
| If I buy an iPhone to run myOS on it, how's this a loss to
| Apple? Especially since they don't charge for IOS updates,
| and they also support their phones for a long time, so if I
| don't buy a new iPhone every year it's not because I'm
| running some custom OS. My iPhone 7 still has all the
| latest updates and I haven't paid Apple one cent ever since
| I bought it used more than four years ago.
| blackoil wrote:
| Apple is not in biz of selling phone or laptop. They sell
| complete ecosystem. If you own an iPhone, airpod are
| magical, AirTag/iCloud makes sense. Why not also buy
| Macbook to tinker with own apps and an iPad when you need
| pencil/touch. And not just current, you also capture all
| future innovation, so you can charge for digital
| downloads. You can make new rules to charge for all
| digital transactions across all apps.
|
| What you are suggesting is to allow 3rd party to join in
| the ecosystem.
|
| If IBM had been smarter and launched PC as a closed
| platform it would have been a 10/100 trillion dollar
| enterprise.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > What you are suggesting is to allow 3rd party to join
| in the ecosystem.
|
| Not necessarily. They could still continue to charge for
| every download, just as I can, and already do, listen to
| music on my iPhone without an Apple Music subscription
| and without purchasing from the iTunes store.
|
| If I want the whole Apple experience, I will continue
| using macOS / IOS. Hell, that's the reason why I started
| buying MacBooks when I could afford them: the "apple
| experience".
|
| But I also run Linux on my work PC, because for that I
| don't care about the Apple experience. But I hate my HP
| laptop, for comfort reasons. If I could buy a MacBook and
| have Linux run on it as well as it does on the hp, I
| would (because I love the hardware) and that would be a
| net gain for Apple, wouldn't it?
|
| I get the whole point of the "experience" and
| "ecosystem", etc. Up until a few years ago I absolutely
| loved it. Still love my iphone and wouldn't switch to
| android.
|
| But now I can't stand macOS anymore for my work needs.
| I'm looking to buy a new laptop to use Linux on it. The
| offers from Lenovo / HP / Dell don't look all that great
| to me. I would absolutely buy an MBP if I knew Linux
| worked perfectly on it, but I know it doesn't, so Apple
| doesn't get to make a sale.
|
| The point is: If I want to tinker with an iPhone and
| would not buy one if I couldn't, why is it a loss for
| Apple to sell an extra phone, even if the buyer won't
| consume their other digital products? The seller wouldn't
| have consumed them anyway, especially without buying the
| iPhone.
|
| Yes, there's the support side of things, but again, they
| could have some sort of warranty voiding system in place.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Simple - close the door to any possible competition or
| disruption in the future.
|
| A future with only one or two computing monopolies is a
| desired end state for history to BigTech.
| tommit wrote:
| I mean, that point was in there, sure. But I get the
| comment you replied to regarding how the OP comment reads.
| icelancer wrote:
| There is no reason the machine can't do everything you said
| and everything the parent said.
| BluSyn wrote:
| There are fundamental engineering trade-offs here. The
| amount of effort required to secure a device AND make it
| accessible to "tinkerers" would be an effort worthy of an
| MIT research lab. It's not trivial, and a huge security
| risk to satisfy 0.01% of the user base. Especially when
| such users will likely just buy an open source device
| anyways. Seems like a huge waste of effort to me.
| fartcannon wrote:
| Do you think Apple engineers don't have access under the
| hood? Simply provide that access to those who request it,
| everyone else can keep it locked. Problem solved.
| om2 wrote:
| This program exists to get that level of access:
| https://developer.apple.com/programs/security-research-
| devic...
| fartcannon wrote:
| "The initial application period ended August 24.
| Applicants will receive an update this fall."
|
| This is not at all what we are looking for.
| camillomiller wrote:
| In which reality where Facebook doesn't exist do you
| write from? :D
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I'm not overly familiar with the low-level details of
| iPhones and Android phones, but it's not clear to me why
| it would be such a big effort to allow one to install
| whatever OS they like on an iPhone.
|
| Maybe display a big, scary "unofficial OS, you're on your
| own, don't bother us if your iPhone becomes unusable".
| Maybe have one jump through some hoops, like getting an
| "approval" code by signing some mile-long EULA on the
| iCloud account stating you forego any software-related
| warranty / support.
|
| This should be enough to deter "regular users" from
| messing with their phones, and Apple wouldn't have to go
| to any length to guarantee that a "restored" device isn't
| compromised. Kind of like the KNOX thing on Samsung
| phones used to work.
|
| And this actually seems to be possible, since people are
| having success with running Linux, a non-apple sanctioned
| OS, on the M1 Macs, which have the secure enclave, etc.
| My understanding is that whatever issues they are
| experiencing are related to hardware support.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I think the point there isn't a technical challenge, but
| rather a business challenge. Namely, Apple probably
| actually cares about how satisfied their customers are.
| They probably could easily make their iPhones support
| following instructions from some forum about how to
| install Fortnite hacks, but some of those hacks are going
| to cause problems for their customers, either
| accidentally (bugs) or maliciously (spyware, random ware,
| etc.). The typical response from a HN thread might be
| "well if the user installs something that's their
| problem," but Apple probably actually cares about their
| customers' satisfaction more than they care about
| assigning moral culpability.
| chongli wrote:
| _Apple probably actually cares about their customers'
| satisfaction more than they care about assigning moral
| culpability._
|
| This is it right here. Power-users will blame the user
| for having their device compromised. Users, on the other
| hand, will blame Apple. Apple will do anything they can
| to avoid negative PR like that.
| camillomiller wrote:
| And the media will amplify that into oblivion.
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| > They probably could easily make their iPhones support
| following instructions from some forum about how to
| install Fortnite hacks, but some of those hacks are going
| to cause problems for their customers, either
| accidentally (bugs) or maliciously (spyware, random ware,
| etc.).
|
| I don't know what the state of the world is today, but
| I've installed custom OSes (mostly Linux) on every Mac
| I've owned (my most recent was a 2012 Retina which I
| really liked).
|
| Installing a custom OS isn't easy and it's pretty obvious
| to everyone it means thinking "Yes, it's a good idea to
| lose support for almost every program I run". By
| "everyone", I really do mean that: I've never heard of an
| anecdote of someone who's mother wiped MacOS and threw
| Ubuntu on their box and encountered some bugs. Technical
| knowledge about security isn't out there, but we do get
| "Apple makes the system that is an iPhone, going away
| from Apple's product means abandoning my iPhone" seems to
| be there, even if they don't understand what it means for
| something to be an operating system.
| csande17 wrote:
| The engineering effort is entirely surmountable; we
| already have a pretty decent solution in Chrome OS's
| Developer Mode.
|
| "Security" has become the excuse big companies use for
| everything they foist on users. Better update to that new
| OS version that ruins the user interface -- it comes with
| security patches! Better make sure you can't play any
| games that aren't approved by Apple -- it's the only way
| to make iPhones secure! Better centralize the entire
| Internet so it all depends on four or five giant
| corporations to run -- they're the only ones who can be
| trusted to implement security!
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| I don't know. Why can't we have both? Why can't we have
| devices that permit "mucking about" but also when configured
| appropriately allow us to ignore the low level details and
| muck about with higher level stuff? They don't have to be
| mutually exclusive despite "bt whole home wifi app has
| detected this is a jailbroken device and for your safety will
| not run". It's my wifi, it's my phone!
| khazhoux wrote:
| You literally have both, and more.
|
| Right now, I have a nearly uncrackable walled-garden iphone
| on my desk. And a mac laptop running XCode (learning about
| Metal programming), and at the same time running an Amiga
| emulator (tinkering with 68k assembly), and a windows
| gaming laptop next to it, and a breadboard on the floor
| with a pile of resistors and capacitors and transistors.
|
| So what's the problem again?
| tpm wrote:
| The problem is the kid will be given the iPhone and not
| the breadboard.
| simonh wrote:
| For a communications device they will take into school,
| that they rely on for school work, communicating with
| parents and teachers, and with each other on social media
| and contains a lot of private information, that is
| probably the right choice. An open system with zero
| security and no guard rails is simply not appropriate for
| that use.
| mft_ wrote:
| And most kids given an Amiga or a 286 wouldn't hack or
| code it - they'd just load up games.
| tpm wrote:
| Sure, but the possibility was there. I was given a ZX
| Spectrum clone and started coding, my brother only played
| games. I am not sure I would work in IT if that didn't
| happen. We were pretty much poor by today's standards and
| probably could not afford another such device, never mind
| that we would not know what to buy (as nobody in my
| family had any IT experience and there was no IT shop in
| our small town).
| khazhoux wrote:
| Exactly this. My brother only played games on our C64 and
| Amiga, while I did nothing but program on it.
| phillc73 wrote:
| Games were in some way 99% of my use of the Apple IIc we
| had, which was my first computer. Original Bard's Tale in
| glorious green screen. Good times.
|
| However, I also spent a lot of time painstakingly copying
| BASIC games, line by line from magazines, then figuring
| out how to expand upon them for additional features.
| Gaming was just the gateway drug.
| mosselman wrote:
| Where are the parents? Who is giving kids phone instead
| of something else? Also, why should kids tinker with
| computers if they can explore art by painting or music by
| learning an instrument or literature by reading?
|
| What makes it important for them to use Unix rather than
| something that works fine the way it is while maintaining
| some standard of UX?
|
| If kids show an interest in computers, they can just
| install unix on some computer like a raspberry pi and
| tinker on that.
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| > What makes it important for them to use Unix rather
| than something that works fine the way it is while
| maintaining some standard of UX?
|
| The concern is whether the device is a piece of paper or
| a television. A television can show much more complex
| images under the control of the average child, but it is
| purely for consumption. A piece of paper lets you display
| anything you can draw or you can turn it into a paper
| plane or do origami, but the realism of the resulting
| products is going to be much less, and they will be
| relatively static.
|
| An iPhone is, by design, a television. Unix systems are
| pieces of paper.
|
| Last time I used MacOS, it was a functional piece of
| paper and it worked as a television too, so there isn't
| really any dichotomy here. Any television could be built
| on top of a piece of paper and give you access to the
| base level too.
|
| The concern is that the television is winning out: even
| though Android and iOS are built from pieces of paper,
| their maintainers only bless television-like interfaces.
| Frankly, I believe a major part of this is because
| they're built on top of Unix like interfaces, which is
| based certain assumptions that they don't want to
| maintain. So I certainly wouldn't say Unix-like is the
| solution.
| int_19h wrote:
| Kids might not even _know_ they have an interest in
| engineering (which is not the same as "interest in
| computers"). Back in 90s, a lot of kids, myself included,
| found out that we like that stuff because we were
| inadvertently exposed to it while playing our video
| games, and, later on, surfing the early Web. My first
| programming language was MS-DOS batch files, simply
| because it was readily available.
| tpm wrote:
| > Where are the parents? Who is giving kids phone instead
| of something else?
|
| The parents might not know better.
|
| > Also, why should kids tinker with computers if they can
| explore art by painting or music by learning an
| instrument or literature by reading?
|
| They should be given the chance to do so, as they should
| be given the chance to explore art or craft or a lot of
| other things.
|
| > What makes it important for them to use Unix
|
| I don't see how mentioning Unix is relevant here. They
| should be given the opportunity to play and tinker with
| the devices, not only the preplanned path with games on
| the devices, that is all.
| eptcyka wrote:
| It's not untrackable unless you opt out of "FindMy"
| services and disable bluetooth (disable, rather than
| disconnect).
|
| Why can't I run Xcode on iOS or iPadOS devices? What's
| the technical limitation? These devices have the
| capability to render stuff on larger screens wirelessly,
| and one can connect keyboards to them. The limitation is
| purely artificial.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| > You literally have both, and more.
|
| Seriously.
|
| When I was a kid I would have killed to have had easy
| access to things like Raspberry Pi's, microcontrollers,
| SGI workstations (which is what the Mac is these days),
| and a zillion free programming languages.
|
| Instead, while I had full access to the family's PC and
| could learn C and assembly language programming on it
| (btw I had to pay for those compilers), and learned all
| about interrupts and writing to VGA registers, I still
| couldn't do anything super low-level like muck around
| with the boot sector because my dad needed it for work,
| the phone system was so locked down that you'd go to jail
| for "exploring" it, and I had barely any idea how to get
| started playing around with logic chips because there was
| nothing like Sparkfun, Adafruit, Hackaday, etc, and Radio
| Shack in the mid-90s really wasn't much help.
|
| There is still room for improvement - yes it would be
| nice if _all_ the tech we used was both hackable and
| secure - but geeks who want to tinker are living in a
| land of plenty right now.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| _> You literally have both, and more_
|
| I guess it depends on who "you" are. A lot of kids get
| exactly one device. Some have to share it with their
| siblings as well. So I do think it matters whether our
| most widely used devices are completely locked down or
| not.
|
| It doesn't just matter for kids either. It also matters
| for democracy how many people only own devices that
| governments have complete control over.
|
| That said, I do think the problem can be exaggerated.
| People tend to find ways around restrictions. It can even
| be a motivation for looking more deeply into how things
| work.
|
| And not all of those workarounds are terribly expensive.
| Ironically, the most expensive devices are also the most
| locked down.
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| > I guess it depends on who "you" are. A lot of kids get
| exactly one device. Some have to share it with their
| siblings as well. So I do think it matters whether our
| most widely used devices are completely locked down or
| not.
|
| This is true, but RPi Zeros are so cheap and powerful
| that I think it's much easier for community organisations
| (schools, scouts, dedicated groups) to start hacking
| events. The kid who can't get a 10 USD computer and a
| phone and access to a shared laptop is the kid who
| couldn't access to shared desktop in the olden days. In
| those days entry level could be a month's salary for a
| professional.
|
| For the households where every kid has their own laptop,
| a Pi is accessible.
|
| And for those who only have access to single shared
| machine, the kid today has access to a VM. That means
| they have options the rest of us didn't have - I couldn't
| run Linux until I had a paper round, because installing
| Linux on the family computer was not going to happen.
|
| Perhaps one clear advantage to the old world is that in
| the 1980s and early 1990s, anyone could write an
| operating system and eventually get something that could
| do everything their old computer could do. I mean the
| idea was tractable. It's not like today where even
| thinking about creating a web browser filled Microsoft
| and Opera with such dread they gave up.
|
| To be clear: I don't think it's all rosy today. But I
| don't think it's all bleak either.
|
| > It also matters for democracy how many people only own
| devices that governments have complete control over.
|
| You are right that there's social implications here, but
| I think the social concerns are primary and not a
| consequence of the technical situation. We arrived at
| this situation because companies decided they own their
| customers when we have massive social problems mistrust
| and distrust. This has come on the back of a generation
| that learnt abominations like a company's only obligation
| is to its shareholders. If you want to build trustworthy
| business, you need to maintain the right culture.
| fauigerzigerk wrote:
| I don't disagree, but I think we're talking about a
| couple different issues here.
|
| One question is whether a low income but educated and
| dedicated parent can find a way to acquire some hackable
| device for a highly motivated kid. I think the answer is
| probably yes, with some exceptions in extremely poor
| countries.
|
| But that's not the most likely scenario. A far more
| likely scenario is a kid that wants to modify the device
| they're _actually using_ on a daily basis to make it do
| something slightly different. There are no parents
| involved, and it would be utterly pointless to hack some
| completely different device like a Raspberry Pi just
| because it 's more hackable.
|
| So I worry that widespread use of locked down devices and
| locked down distribution channels makes the path from
| consumer to power user to hacker to software engineer to
| entrepreneur far less smooth. Some people who could have
| been interested in being more than mere consumers are
| going to be left behind.
|
| You are absolutely right that access to all sorts of
| devices is hugely easier and cheaper than back in the
| 70s, 80s and 90s. It's definitely not all bleak. It was a
| decidedly rich country upper/middle class affair at the
| time. But we're also having to live with restrictions
| that would've been unimaginable back then.
|
| Just imagine Microsoft in 1995 attempting to restrict
| what software people were allowed to install on their
| PCs. Imagine what regulators would have said if Microsoft
| had tried to charge 30% on all software and content
| loaded onto PCs. Or what if Microsoft had been able to
| issue no-recourse lifetime bans on using any of their
| software and platforms?
|
| The objection that Microsoft was a monopolist isn't
| really convicing given that they were replaced by a
| hugely more powerful and ubiquitous oligopoly that now
| runs the actual economy, not some tiny niche called "The
| New Economy".
| StavrosK wrote:
| The problem is that there's absolutely no reason why you
| shouldn't be able to disable your iPhone's security and
| mess around with it if that's what you want. Apple owns
| the device, not you.
| vosper wrote:
| If you open Chrome devtools on Facebook there's a huge
| red warning saying "if someone told you to do this they
| are trying to scam you and steal your account!"
|
| So there may be a good reason why Apple don't want this
| to happen, given that essentially everything is on your
| phone these days.
|
| There's still Android
| StavrosK wrote:
| > So there may be a good reason why Apple don't want this
| to happen
|
| Yes, this is why the phones are locked by default. This
| is not at all why the phones aren't unlockable, though.
| They can be unlockable and still be secure. Apple just
| doesn't want to give you the choice.
| simonh wrote:
| Yes there is. I don't want Facebook or Google to move all
| their apps to side loading or an alternate store with lax
| controls and opaque privacy disclosure. I need to use
| their apps, but I want them to have to satisfy Apple's
| app store policies. Side landing and alternate stores
| would cripple the effectiveness of those policies.
| StavrosK wrote:
| So the reasoning is "if you allow my phone to be
| unlocked, so many people will want alternate stores that
| Facebook and Google will unlist their apps from the App
| Store and use the alternative stores only, and then they
| won't be as rigorously reviewed"?
|
| Like how you can't get Facebook on the Play Store because
| it's only available on F-droid on Android, for example?
|
| That's certainly... interesting.
| eecc wrote:
| Nope, you're surreptitiously adding a righteous "the
| people will freely choose what suits them best" twist to
| the parent's post. That's a rich assumption, history
| proves that "the people" just want their shiny toy and
| will sheepishly accept whatever condition imposed by the
| manufacturer. Remember IE6?
| StavrosK wrote:
| Then people arguing this should stop being disingenuous
| that this is somehow about enabling user freedoms, and
| outright say "your phone should take away your choice
| because you can't be trusted with it" .
| [deleted]
| simonh wrote:
| Epic, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Spotify and a host of
| other companies are itching to get on to a rival
| 'Freedom' app store on iOS, with lax controls and weak
| privacy disclosure. Where they go, users would have to
| follow. It's not as though users are crying out for
| weaker privacy disclosure, but they'd go anyway.
|
| Facebook is quite happy on the Play Store because it has
| weak privacy and disclosure policies, because Google has
| no interest in enforcing such things.
| grrowl wrote:
| Yes, I can't pwn this device which makes it incredibly
| hard for anyone else to pwn this device. Very convenient
| actually, in that my most critical and private
| communications flow through it and it goes everywhere I
| do.
|
| Really secure data goes through a seperate device of
| which I have total control, but which I treat carefully
| (and less conveniently). It's a very comfortable trade-
| off.
| irrational wrote:
| You can? There are tons of kits and circuit boards and
| parts and everything electronic imaginable available for
| quick delivery right now. Back in the day we had Radio
| Shack, but it couldn't hold a candle to all the circuit
| boards and electronic components available today. It's an
| embarrassment of riches.
| fouric wrote:
| I count five logical fallacies here:
|
| > Another peak self-absorbed Hacker News comment
|
| Unnecessarily inflamatory - perhaps an ad-hominem attack, or
| appeal to emotion.
|
| > in which we learn that curiosity only means tinkering with
| devices
|
| Strawman argument - this is a blatant misrepresentation of
| GP's point.
|
| > This comment is ignoring that a device that does all that
| without you having to worry about how it works is a tool way
| more powerful than one in which you need to at least know how
| to build everything from scratch with an enormous learning
| curve
|
| False dichotomy (there's no reason you can't have an
| opinionated device that works flawlessly OOTB while also
| being extremely hackable) _and_ another strawman (OP never
| advocated for you having to do everything yourself, only have
| the ability to tinker).
|
| > So please, enough with this narrative, it's really outdated
| and based on such a limited world view.
|
| Another appeal to emotion.
|
| I encourage you to take a class on logical argument, because
| this ain't it.
| witherk wrote:
| Someone got a lot out of their high school debate club
| amelius wrote:
| No. It's not just that individuals can't tinker with
| hardware. It's also startups having this problem. Apple is
| integrating the entire supply chain. What we need is better
| "modularization" of the market where everybody has access to
| important components.
|
| > Another peak self-absorbed Hacker News comment, in which we
| learn that curiosity only means tinkering with devices,
| learning how they work to the bits, plus some random Linux
| thrown in.
|
| Totally unnecessary generalization.
| _Understated_ wrote:
| It's about having choice: Microsoft used to be quite good at
| making stuff usable but the underlying geekery was still
| there and could allow control to the max if you wanted it.
|
| It worked for mom & pops and techs alike but corporations new
| attitude of "We'll decide what's best and remove other
| options" is a bloody pain in the arse now.
|
| A particularly bad one is this insistence on not allowing me
| to permanently say "no" to something. It's always "maybe
| later" or "remind me in 24 hrs" or similar... even Firefox
| does it now when you set it up - I think it was to do with
| sending FF to my mobile or something - but the message was
| "do it now" or "do it later"... I don't want it EVER!
|
| So, no! I don't want anyone else's opinion for stuff like
| this - let me decide what's best for me and allow me to
| tinker if I want!
| cromulent wrote:
| If anyone knows where the "I'm happy to control things
| myself" setting is in Teams, please share.
|
| I'm really tired of it deciding when I should be on mute,
| or when it should warn me that I am muted. Just let me do
| it.
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| > If anyone knows where the "I'm happy to control things
| myself" setting is in Teams, please share.
|
| It's the X button in the top right corner.
|
| In the olden days we had individual developers who would
| work out the internal API these applications used to
| work. I wonder if that's still theoretically possible.
| Surely it must be? Even if the client app needs a signed
| certificate, since it runs in an unsigned environment
| (i.e. Linux) it should be possible to grab the
| certificate and present that when you need it.
| vosper wrote:
| > Microsoft used to be quite good at making stuff usable
| but the underlying geekery was still there and could allow
| control to the max if you wanted it.
|
| Windows 10 is the best Windows ever for the vast majority
| of people who use Windows. Same with Office. But you can
| still install whatever software you want on your Windows
| machine. Explain to me again how this is worse than what we
| used to have; where Microsoft have gone wrong in how they
| build software? Is it perfect? Of course not - no-one could
| even agree on what that means. But let's be realistic about
| how much progress has actually happened: it's a lot.
| _Understated_ wrote:
| Try disabling Windows update...
|
| Also, almost every patch has issues these days: that
| hardly ever used to happen. Their quality has taken a
| dive.
|
| I am not saying that is isn't the perfect tool for many
| people: it has been for many years. The issue is that
| when I wanted to change things and leave them changed, I
| used to be able to do that. Now, they are doing their
| best to remove that ability! That makes no sense! Let me
| break it if I want! I have no warranty anyway!
|
| Disable Windows update and it comes back on due to the
| Windows Update Medic Service. Ok, disable that then!
| Oops, you're not allowed. Ok, I can circumvent this by
| changing permissions on the dll and then deleting it.
| I'll then run updates later at a time of my choosing. Now
| I run updates. Oops, it's back again! Microsoft knows
| best.
|
| By all means make it easy for the "typical" user. But I
| wish they'd stop taking away the underlying power-user
| stuff because they think they know best!
| ntauthority wrote:
| Update disabling is still there - gated behind more
| expensive editions and enterprise policy settings,
| because Microsoft likely had gotten a bad reputation in
| the past for systems with updates disabled becoming
| botnet nodes due to vulnerabilities.
|
| In a way, the restrictions which used to be exclusive to
| Home are now part of Pro, the more expensive Pro for
| Workstations is what Pro used to be and Enterprise (also
| available through a per-user subscription model instead
| of a per-machine model, cheaper in a way for individuals
| with 5 PCs nobody else uses) also has some extra toggles
| _not_ removed.
|
| I think the subscription versions also include an Intune
| license which is the only supported way (other than
| installing third-party AV) to disable Windows Defender
| permanently, as well.
|
| Now, MDM-managed Apple phones still come with a number of
| core restrictions, though I believe there's more loose
| side loading on there - however you have to register
| Apple hardware into MDM at purchase time as only
| authorized resellers can grant this access to a serial
| number.
| riversflow wrote:
| Question, how does an individual go about acquiring an
| Enterprise license? For the exact reasons you mentioned
| (features, per-user licensing) I've tried in the past to
| get setup with a license and not had any luck.
| ntauthority wrote:
| These days there's a self-service panel on the Microsoft
| 365 sign-up/admin page once you've set up a tenant. I've
| not been asked for any formal business registration
| numbers via that process, but the old days of needing to
| acquire these licenses via a partner seem to be somewhat
| gone.
| plater wrote:
| Yes, because it's based on a PC. A quite standard and
| open specification where you can buy motherboards, CPU,
| RAM, disk, IO peripherals etc from many different
| manufacturers and build and install what software you
| want. However, on a Mac, you cannot install or change the
| hardware as you like, you cannot install what software
| you want.
|
| If Linus Torvalds was a teen today and there was no open
| PC standard, only a Mac, then it would not have been
| possible to create Linux the way it is today.
|
| Imagine if also Microsoft starts to make their own
| processors and then sell their own computers with Windows
| and all locked down, and don't allow anyone else to make
| computers with Windows or their processors.
|
| Sure Dell, HP and others could still make PC's, based on
| Intel or AMD CPU's or some ARM processor and then run
| Linux (or develop their own OS), but it's a hard sell.
|
| The PC's sold to the mainstream thanks to
| Windows/Word/Excel maybe, but then people who wanted
| could tinker as much as they wanted and where free so
| make and sell their software (windows based or whatever)
| or their HW peripherals.
|
| Now you are at best stuck within an app store if you
| create something.
| hutattedonmyarm wrote:
| > you cannot install what software you want
|
| What? Of course I can. Gatekeeper exists but can be
| disabled
| squiggleblaz wrote:
| > If Linus Torvalds was a teen today and there was no
| open PC standard, only a Mac, then it would not have been
| possible to create Linux the way it is today.
|
| Torvalds didn't create Linux as a teen in his bedroom
| hacking on what he had. He created it at university
| studying operating systems. He would have created it on
| Raspberry Pi or some other platform.
|
| Linux is widely deployed on x86 because x86 is available
| and open enough. It replaced Unix operating systems on
| dedicated architectures, like Solaris on SPARC.
|
| > Sure Dell, HP and others could still make PC's, based
| on Intel or AMD CPU's or some ARM processor and then run
| Linux (or develop their own OS), but it's a hard sell
|
| GNU/Linux was a hard sell in the beginning too. In the
| olden days, if you put Linux on a laptop you lost special
| features and you had very limited software support. Web
| pages were designed to work with IE only and you could
| only run Mozilla. Your major option for producing
| printable documents was special purpose programming
| languages like TeX or using Mozilla Composer. And good
| luck getting your winmodem/winprinter to do anything!
|
| Today enough exists that you can buy hardware from
| companies that expect you to put Linux on them and then
| run them with full features and great intercompatibility.
| Your phone will be crap but it'll be good enough, and in
| ten years time it'll have a lot better features. Till
| then, if you want a great lowlight camera, buy a great
| lowlight camera.
|
| The inversion of trust is a frustrating aspect of modern
| business, and it creates many social problems. But it
| isn't a technical barrier to oldschool hacking about.
| SergeAx wrote:
| > He would have created it on Raspberry Pi
|
| Raspberry Pi would be unable without Linux.
| samstave wrote:
| Linux War Story:
|
| Back in ~1997/8 I was working at a software manufacturing
| company - we burned and printed and shipped all the
| Solaris Software for SUN....
|
| We would receive EDI data from sun to burn to CDs then do
| the fullfillment shipping - so If you went to SUN.com and
| ordered Solaris, it was made and shipped by us...
|
| We needed a better way to receive the files from SUN, and
| so we had a few FTP servers... We hired a group of dudes
| who knew linux and had them setup our FTP machines,
| chrooting users and various security measures...
|
| So I, the IT manager, sat down with one of the
| consultants that we had hired and I told him "You know,
| If I were you - I would setup a Linux Support company and
| offer Linux support as a service"
|
| A few weeks later Dave Sifry came back to me and said
| "Guess what we started, LinuxCare... to offer Linux
| support as a service"
|
| He was later valued at ~$100 million and LinuxCare was a
| ~$1 Billion company...
|
| Chris DiBona of google fame was on the team, and I can't
| recall the two other guys' names...
|
| But yeah - that was when support for Linux was basically
| non-existent...
|
| Oh yeah - I forgot; SUN wanted us to learn this new thing
| that they were using to create the EDI files... XML. So
| we had to accomodate XML when the only people that knew
| XML at the time were SUN employees...
|
| And finally, I think that SUN had the best logo ever
| made. And the shittiest firewall, Checkpoint sucked.
| (sorry Checkpoint team - your lead developers on
| Checkpoint were friends of mine... but I hated that
| firewall)
| flohofwoe wrote:
| > Windows 10 is the best Windows ever for the vast
| majority of people who use Windows
|
| Meanwhile I'm setting here just now, wasting hours hand-
| holding Windows10 because it's unable to install one of
| its own big feature updates, without any idea what was
| going wrong or where to start fixing the problem (because
| everything is so "user friendly").
| slver wrote:
| How many smartphone users want to use interrupts, tinker with
| firmware settings, hack the port, and so on?
|
| Exactly.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| The two things are not mutually exclusive. We can have
| hardware and software that's open to tinker with but still
| come ready to use out of the box.
| slver wrote:
| Apple's job doesn't end when you open the box.
|
| Unless you want a rootkit installed when you charge your
| phone with a public charger, it needs to be locked down.
| These restrictions are made for security and stability. If
| the average user doesn't need them, then don't enable them.
| Simple logic.
| user-the-name wrote:
| iOS alone has far, far more tools for creativity than Linux has
| ever had.
|
| "Creativity" doesn't mean "tinkering with kernel settings".
| megous wrote:
| I doubt it. Every single time I have to do something more
| complicated on one of these GUI only devices, I get to
| appreciate how GNU/Linux ecosystem allows me to actually
| combine the power of multiple tools to achieve what I want
| quickly and my way.
|
| Combining simple apps together like lego building blocks to
| build something, is where it shines.
| user-the-name wrote:
| That is not creativity, that is just wanting to do things
| your specific way, which is a way most people do not really
| prefer.
| megous wrote:
| There's no "my specific way". And people prefer to defer
| some things to me, because I can usually find some way to
| do tings in batches, rather than them doing those same
| things individually using common tools.
| jb1991 wrote:
| Your case of curiosity is a very very specific one, and while
| most people are curious in different ways, for those who are
| curious in the same way as you, anyone with an Apple device and
| an Apple computer can sit down and start tinkering with code
| and running stuff on their own iOS devices, it's fun and pretty
| easy to get started. If I was just a child or a teenager today,
| I think I'd have just as much fun, probably a whole lot more,
| playing around with iOS and learning how it works and building
| really interesting applications using its extraordinary range
| of technologies, things that were never possible in the old
| days of tinkering.
| quink wrote:
| "Actually, I have never even checked 386BSD out; when I started
| on Linux it wast available (although Bill Jolitz series on it
| in Dr. Dobbs Journal had started and were interesting), and
| when 386BSD finally came out, Linux was already in a state
| where it was so usable that I never really thought about
| switching. If 386BSD had been available when I started on
| Linux, Linux would probably never had happened."
|
| Linus Torvalds, 1993
|
| https://gondwanaland.com/meta/history/interview.html
|
| If Linux hadn't been created, 386BSD and its derivatives would
| be correspondingly more popular. Or Hurd would have happened.
| Or both. Maybe BeOS would be a contender amongst commercial
| OSes.
|
| If Linux hadn't been created things wouldn't be that different
| in all likelihood.
| drikerf wrote:
| I understand your point and yes, low-level hacking has become
| increasingly difficult due to both locking down and increased
| complexity.
|
| There's still many ways to be creative though and I think
| there's also more potential than before due to increased
| resources for developing other kinds of applications.
|
| It's not all bad.
| BluSyn wrote:
| Using "security" in air quotes diminishes the significant
| effort Apple and others put into making devices secure, and
| this does have _fundamental trade-offs_ for the end-user. Some
| of us actually care a great deal about security, and appreciate
| the trade-offs and effort put in to making that happen.
|
| I sympathize with the tinkerer mindset, but this mindset
| exposes serious lack of empathy in exposing REAL risk to REAL
| people by allowing anybody to hack devices simply to satisfy
| 0.01% of users who want to run a custom bootloader. This is not
| a valid engineering trade-off for a "trillion dollar company".
| The world doesn't revolve around you. There are other products
| on the market for tinkerers that don't involve exposing
| everyone from your grandma to politicians to serious security
| and privacy breaches.
| superasn wrote:
| Sometimes one in that 0.01% end up creating a world changing
| operating system like Linux.
|
| I shudder to think what the world would have be if Andrew
| Tanenbaum/Linus/Wall/etc had to wait for a week long review
| after creating their software and got rejected every time
| because Apple support told them.. "Are you out of your
| freaking mind!? You possibly can't think we will let you do
| anything remotely like that on our hardware. P.S. Also your
| account is now permanently banned."
| a_t48 wrote:
| The great news is that we had options then and we still
| have options now.
| Dah00n wrote:
| I keep reading this. What alternative do we have today
| that is as open to tinker and invent on as x86 hardware
| that is also widespread enough that it actually makes any
| difference at all?
| handrous wrote:
| > What alternative do we have today that is as open to
| tinker and invent on as x86 hardware that is also
| widespread enough that it actually makes any difference
| at all?
|
| x86 hardware.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Is that 0.01% really deterred by one particular OS and
| hardware platform being restricted? There's alternatives.
| Dah00n wrote:
| What is the equivalent phone today to the X86 Linus did
| his work on? Neither iOS or Android is anywhere near
| this, so what are the alternatives?
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| There's plenty of hardware that runs Linux just fine, and
| allows deep tinkering.
|
| In the mobile world, Android allows tinkering, but also
| achieves much worse privacy and security guarantees
| int_19h wrote:
| Linux became as popular as it is because it could run on
| the most widespread desktop hardware: IBM PC compatibles.
| And that was possible because it was an open ecosystem.
| fsflover wrote:
| Librem 5 and Pinephone both allow deep tinkering without
| privacy problems.
| Dah00n wrote:
| That is a disingenuous comparison though. Compare X86
| market share when Linus started coding Linux and
| Librem/Pinephone market share today. The difference is
| that to have a snowball's chance in hell to grow and
| spread you need to be able to thinker and invent _on the
| hardware most people use_.
| fsflover wrote:
| I'm not suggesting that we don't need more freedom for
| hardware most people use. I just say that _if_ you want
| to support freedom, consider abandoning Apple and
| choosing other phones.
| _Understated_ wrote:
| This x 1000!
|
| I remember back in my DOS days as a kid tinkering with
| autoexec.bat, himem and all that just to get an addition 10Kb
| or memory to run a game.
|
| Now, with Windows in particular, they're slowly removing my
| ability to dick about and do what I want.
|
| The defaults are all pretty much set to "we know best" and you
| have to jump through more and more hoops to disable stuff
| (Windows update, I'm looking at you!).
|
| I'm moving to Linux (again) at the end of the month (got uni
| exams coming up... want to get them out the way). Had issues
| with it in the past but I will try and live with them this time
| as I want my freedom back.
| NeoVeles wrote:
| This is why I ended up moving over to Linux many years back.
| I had run it on an off since about 1998 but about 5 years
| back there, I had blown away my install of Windows and for
| reason in particular I simply never reinstalled it.
|
| It is just one of those things were very rarely I realize
| that I am running (by ratio) a fairly rare OS as just a daily
| desktop. To that, don't try and force your self onto Linux,
| eventually you may just sit with it and never go back to
| Windows. If you do, that's fine if that works for you. If you
| stay on Linux, cool power to you.
|
| Happy hacking!
| planb wrote:
| And yet you can get a raspberry pi (which is way faster than
| your 286) for less than the price of a mediocre restaurant meal
| and learn all this stuff. Or an Arduino microcontroller to go
| even deeper low level. There are so many ways to tinker with
| electronics right now - but my main computer and phone are not
| "games", they are tools that I expect to work in a secure way.
| asauce wrote:
| This comment fails to see the real reason that Apple, Google,
| and Microsoft lock down their hardware and software, ease of
| use.
|
| A vast, vast majority of the population could care less about
| learning about interrupts, tinkering with BIOS settings, etc.
| They want a device that is easy to use, and as simple as
| possible. So companies therefore abstract away 90% of the
| "creativity-inducing" components because a computer is a lot
| less intimidating when the user clearly knows what they can and
| can't do with it.
|
| Apple and Google are not sitting in a meeting room pitching the
| best ways to stifle creativity. They are selling a product to a
| population that wants their highly complex device to be as
| simple as possible.
| nucleardog wrote:
| > They want a device that is easy to use, and as simple as
| possible.
|
| I'd add "reliable" or maybe more accurately "repeatable".
|
| When my mother runs into technical problems, she will
| literally get frustrated to the point of tears. She doesn't
| give a single fuck whether she can change the OS or install
| unapproved software to tinker, she just wants the stuff that
| was working yesterday to still be working today.
|
| When she wakes up and an OS update has broken some app she
| uses, she's never gone "Let me dig into why this happened,
| maybe I can fix it." and she never will. That's simply just
| something that has gone wrong in her life and ruined her day
| and now she needs to find a new way to do the thing that she
| wants to do.
|
| But you're wasting your breath. A very vocal segment of HN
| are effectively fundamentalists about this. The fact that
| there exists a market segment best served by devices which do
| not conform to their fundamental ideals because they have
| different priorities is simply unacceptable regardless of any
| other consideration.
| colordrops wrote:
| How about just making network access for apps opt-in rather than
| opt-out, and further more also making background network access a
| permission request, and something that can be monitored.
| astrange wrote:
| You can get that by using a Chinese iPhone.
| colordrops wrote:
| Which phone?
| heroHACK17 wrote:
| I am really impressed by the ideas here. I read the whole thing
| from top to bottom (rare) and I was shaking my head yes the whole
| time. Bravo. I hope Apple implements all of this.
| colordrops wrote:
| The FDroid app store kind of does something similar to this.
| kajaktum wrote:
| That means we need to stop using ((((free))))) services and start
| paying for them. Unless its literal charity, I have no reason to
| believe that any of these free company isn't trying to
| manipulating me in some other ways.
|
| One of these is Youtube. Hosting petabytes of on-demand videos is
| an extremely daunting feat. Why are you surprised that you are
| hit with ads? What were they supposed to do? For whatever reason,
| no one wants to pay for premium to remove these ads. Instead, we
| just have this back and forth with people coming up with
| extensions and Google coming up with ways to circumvent these.
| Both sides are going to get crazier if this goes on.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| This is an aspect of a very important movement that started with
| Calm Technology. Think it will be the next step in gaining
| control of the genie from the bottle.
|
| [1] https://calmtech.com/
|
| [2] https://www.amazon.com/Calm-Technology-Principles-
| Patterns-N...
| ______- wrote:
| Phones for me were always for consuming content, and I rarely
| 'created' anything with them. For creation I would use a standard
| desktop PC with Ubuntu and code to my heart's content. If you
| want a 'bicycle for the mind' then you would not use a handheld
| device. You would use a desktop PC (either a laptop or tower PC,
| or whatever).
| paul7986 wrote:
| I wish like the flashlight i could toggle on and off "Silence All
| Unknown Callers," which for me I leave on always. There are times
| when I need to have a call come in and have to drill down into
| the settings to get to it.
|
| Also, I'd love to be able to wake up using the built in alarm to
| a Internet URL (radio station, podcast, whatever).
| drdd wrote:
| That time will come, where you will have a fully AI-integrated
| phone that can be your secondary optional brain for everything
| you want to do on your life, not limiting a person but expanding
| their horizon. After all its only natural to fill those emotions.
| malkosta wrote:
| Is it possible to send a file via Bluetooth yet?
| [deleted]
| andymatuschak wrote:
| These are very interesting ideas. But I'd like to see to see
| credit given where it's due. Many of the specific interface
| concepts here (retrospectively monitoring whether time was well
| spent, disabling infinite feeds, a regret tax, batching
| notification delivery, switching an infinite feed to a paged one
| which reflects activity) were presented several years ago by Joe
| Edelman and Tristan Harris. See eg https://medium.com/thrive-
| global/how-technology-hijacks-peop... and
| https://medium.com/what-to-build/is-anything-worth-maximizin...
|
| Ideas like these are public goods, so it's difficult to profit
| off inventing them. Given that, we should incentivize their
| creation with social rewards by crediting their authors.
| beermonster wrote:
| I think this is great. Hopefully someone at Apple is reading.
| bb101 wrote:
| Has anyone else tried the app "Friendly"? For a while I've wanted
| to stop using Facebook, but quite a few community groups I'm
| involved with use it as their only method of communication.
| Friendly is an augmented wrapper for the mobile web versions of
| Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and a few of the other
| time-sappers.
|
| I find it works really well. I still get to use an app to access
| the information in an convenient way, but without the bells and
| whistles that make hours pass like minutes, and without having to
| give the platforms access to my phone's metadata. Downside: it is
| clunkier than the respective apps, but then that's the point.
| occamschainsaw wrote:
| Thank you for the suggestion. I just set up Friendly+ for a
| couple of time sinks like Instagram (hide stories, go straight
| to chat page), Facebook (hide stories, disable suggstions),
| Youtube (go straight to Subscriptions page), Twitter (disable
| promoted tweets) and even HackerNews. I also like that you can
| save tweets and other media posts easily.
| ckolkey wrote:
| I absolutely love this idea. I find that nudges or 'speedbumps'
| offer just enough of a barrier to get me to reconsider my own
| actions, sort of snapping me out of a trance. I would welcome
| these kind of changes.
| jonathan_garner wrote:
| Developing tools and methods like this to be more intentional
| with our tech is so important, whether that's digital solutions
| like a humane iOS, or building our own set of intentional habits
| to put us in control. I found this great analogue toolkit to help
| start doing this right now, no tech required
| https://www.mindovertech.com/digital-habit-lab/
| busymom0 wrote:
| Almost all of this could be achieved via third party apps if the
| screen time data was available via an API and background app
| mode. I understand why it's not though as it's a lot of personal
| data. However Apple does provide access to health data via the
| HealthKit so maybe they can do something similar for Screen time?
|
| Did they make any API changes in iOS 15 announced yesterday?
| geoffpado wrote:
| Yes, there is now a Screen Time API:
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/DeviceActivity and it
| allows you to do things like block other apps:
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/ManagedSettings, but
| there's nothing like a background mode that will pop up outside
| of either your app or the app you're managing.
| subpixel wrote:
| I'd love a setting that would turn Instagrams search page into an
| input field - nothing else.
|
| Every time I search I have to actively fight the temptation of
| food photos, bra-less dance videos, New Orleans architecture
| shots and whatever else the algorithm has learned will derail me.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Doing any of this would set a precedent of Apple being able to
| change the functionality of an app and that is a precedent I
| don't want to see no matter how much I detest Facebook.
|
| Also this power would bring the anti-trust hammer down so hard.
| Apple doesn't want this. They're working on tools to help you use
| your phone and other hardware more fully but also giving you data
| on usage and such so people can make up their own minds.
| onurcel wrote:
| why stop there? why wouldn't you make an OS that would turn the
| phone off if you use it more than 1 minute? Boum, you solved
| everything.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| I really dig the "infinite scroll" part. I hate this "feature"
| from the bottom of my heart. I also like the "conditions"
| feature.
|
| However, I'm not a fan of my device analyzing my behavior and
| bombarding me with notifications and questions every 15 minutes.
| To me, that's distracting and way too much noise. I like the way
| Screen Time already works. Leave the consequences to me, but give
| me an opportunity to check them.
| timdaub wrote:
| What's even worse is when you start to compare your phone with
| the operating system of your laptop.
|
| Then you'll realize how much of our lifes are in the hands of a
| few designers from Silicon Valley. Sure, you can "disable
| notifications" for an app: But how about I can just "close" this
| app like I can on my computer?
| chadlavi wrote:
| This is a joke, right?
| antonyh wrote:
| Batched notifications: I'd love this. As it currently stands,
| most of my apps have lost permission to notify because they abuse
| it. I don't want to be constantly prodded and poked to interact,
| so there's very few that get it enabled now. That even includes
| email, and it's so much better. It's reduced screen time
| massively, and I mostly check email on desktop instead now with
| my phone as a secondary on-the-go way of communicating.
|
| Turning off autoplay, yes please. Greyscale, interesting idea.
| The rest of it, meh. I'm not so sure it would have any meaningful
| impact or that it wouldn't be replaced with other much darker
| patterns.
|
| Better user-centric control of notifications is what we really
| need to silence the cry for attention by the apps and would go a
| long way towards allieviating digital addiction in my opinion.
| bengale wrote:
| The majority of my apps are set to deliver quietly on iOS so
| they just go into my notification drawer without an alert.
| bhupy wrote:
| I like this idea a lot, but I'm no longer sure that the stated
| premise holds true:
|
| "Its business is not built around ads."
|
| https://twitter.com/modestproposal1/status/13851944692224081...
| punnerud wrote:
| This work for me on iOS: Keep all the blue apps (Twitter,
| Facebook, Kindle, LinkedIn..) in one folder. At least one time
| each week, switch the position between Kindle and Facebook. This
| way I will subconscious use Kindle a lot more.
| Ivoah wrote:
| _very_ relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/2183/
| nomoreplease wrote:
| The metrics of "How long did users spend on this app on average"
| and "Did they think this was time well spent?" is a brilliant
| idea
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| Apple really is in a unique position. However their are a few
| areas in which they drastically lack and TBH it is not App
| privacy disclosure - everyone knows Facebook is physically,
| mentally, and spiritually bad /s
|
| I was quite anti-Apple for a long time on the basis of it being a
| luxury brand that restricts the freedom of its users.
|
| But it recent years as phone performance has become less of an
| issue meaning Apple's older phone models are basically just as
| good as mid-tier current year Android, the luxury label is not as
| extreme.
|
| Additionally the M1 launch which basically transformed their
| 'real' computer laptop from being overpriced and literally hot
| garbage - to the best* dollar for dollar mobile machines.
|
| So basically Apple has the hardware and software polished and at
| a great value _but_ they have a very integrated ecosystem which
| means a single flaw breaks the whole cohesion.
|
| Primarily, E2E encryption is broken by design because iCloud
| backup are not E2E and you can't know if any message recipient
| has iCloud enabled. Sure you could just use Signal/Matrix/etc but
| it breaks the cohesion - does your Apple watch get Matrix
| notification with the same polish as iMessage?
|
| Also iMessage is also still iOS only right? Which is just insane.
| For a time Blackberry messenger was the best thing but it didn't
| last partly because it was vendor locked.
|
| Whild I can ignore limits of phone OS's for the sake of security;
| MacOS is sort of anti-user to the point that third party projects
| like Homebrew work day & night to fix the ecosystem. Luckily now
| Nix(OS) on Darwin is an option for a more complete ecosystem but
| it is still other people fixing Apple's mistakes for free which
| is just unbearable.
|
| Considering Microsoft runs Github which I believe Hombebrew and
| NisOS still both use extensively and I believe they do so for
| free or very cheaply(?) In any case, Apple seems like a poor
| steward of open source compared to other FAANGM(?) companies...
| maybe I am wrong but the G, M, & F seem more active than the
| Apple. Apple did just kill/abandon CUPs etc.
|
| Again, I would just like to be _wrong_. Maybe you can already use
| Linux with Apple devices very well and maybe turning off iMessage
| and iCloud solves the E2E problem. But it just seems like Apple
| is 90% of the way there but refuses to do the last 10%.
|
| I guess what I mean to say is Apple has some real problems to fix
| of its own before it should critize other apps even more. For
| instance, does iMessage come with a warning about broken/nerfed
| E2E? Or that mobile Safari has an anti-user and anti-standards
| implementation of PWAs (again last I check)?
| xmprt wrote:
| I really like the idea of having permissions for what kind of
| experience an app can show. For example, if Facebook had a way to
| disable infinite feeds and disable videos then I'd be more likely
| to use it on my phone (whereas right now, I never use it).
|
| We have permission settings for things like camera, microphone,
| and file system access. Why not go an extra step and add
| permissions on how apps take up our time.
| aembleton wrote:
| To disable auto playing videos
|
| In the Facebook app. Click the hamburger menu > Settings &
| Privacy > Mobile data usage > Tick 'Never Autoplay videos'
|
| Yes, that applies to wifi too.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Unless those lock outs are non-reversible lockouts, people will
| get around it. And if they find themselves doing that, they won't
| even bother to turn it on next time, just like Apples Screen
| time.
|
| The locks must be strict, but even that may drive people to get
| another phone, or just use their PC instead. People need to be
| taught the value of their time and realize those moments when
| they are actually viewing past a certain point.
|
| Teach a person to fish.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Some of these suggestions seem great, this "time well spent"
| popup would be infuriating in use. As is, I hate the way apps,
| websites and others bombard me with constant requests for
| reviews, feedback, ratings etc.
|
| When I use my coffee grinder it doesn't ask how I liked my grind
| (thumbs up/thumbs down/Marks out of 5/rating from "Absolutely
| satisfied" to "terminal ennui"). I press the button and it grings
| coffee exactly how I ask it to every time. I want other things to
| be the same. Just do the thing and stop wasting my time being so
| needy just because you want to feel good about your analytics.
| ljp_206 wrote:
| I like the idea behind a lot of these things, but it seems like a
| ton of overhead, both for software implementers and users. It
| seems kind of odd to claim these changes could be so profound
| when it seems like it's really only going to be useful for a
| superuser who's already aware of their screen time issues and
| would be excited to be able to choose from X toggle options.
| Additionally, "you are wasting time on your phone, do you want to
| lock your screen" seems like a feature that would fly with only a
| very limited set of users.
|
| Instead of hooking in to Facebook and adding content settings, to
| me it seems that in this case the "we should increase
| data/platform interop" line of thought offers a better solution
| than hoping the Apple ship can steer in this direction.
|
| For that matter, do we know how many people use screenttime
| tracking/mitigating features anyway?
| danappelxx wrote:
| This concept is really well put together, and I would love to see
| it come to life.
|
| That said, this quote made me laugh out loud
|
| > For example if you're struggling to use Tinder responsibly, you
| could create a condition that you can only use the app while
| FaceTiming with a friend.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Look it's a pandemic. I don't know if people are still having
| Tinder parties but they might be having Tinder Zooms?
| dlivingston wrote:
| It's not a pandemic in the US anymore with the vaccine
| surplus that we have. Many people still feel that we're in
| one, though.
|
| In the words of John Lennon: "war is over (if you want it)"
| mjhagen wrote:
| Send that surplus to countries that need it.
| ddoolin wrote:
| Pretty OT here but they're (the Biden WH) buying 500M
| doses to send elsewhere as of the headlines today (6/9).
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| It was a joke bud
| rho4 wrote:
| Meanwhile, today Microsoft gifted us a brand new "News &
| interests" area in the taskbar lobbying for our focus and
| attention. Successfully... I even had to google how to turn it
| off, and write this comment.
| LdSGSgvupDV wrote:
| Unexpected surprise is the reason I still stuck to Win10 1803
| lol.
| cpeterso wrote:
| "News & interests" is another avenue for Microsoft to promote
| Edge. If you click an article in the "News & interests", it
| opens in Edge, even if your default browser is set to something
| else.
| iansinnott wrote:
| Also had to do the same. The method of disabling it, while not
| immediately obvious, didn't seem intentionally user-hostile.
| However, the idea of modifying any part of a user's desktop
| without their explicit input is troubling to say the least.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Google started doing this on mobile with their chrome for
| android. Some time ago they introduced an alternative method
| of presenting open tabs in a grid instead of a list. They of
| course made the new setting the default and you have to do a
| Web search to find out how to revert it to the previous
| setting. They also disregard your choice upon every update
| and switch you back to grid view.
|
| Google has become the epitome of bad ux and user-hostile
| design.
| design-material wrote:
| Microsoft's recent history with 'forced UI additions' of this
| sort would imply it is indeed intentionally user-hostile.
| bogwog wrote:
| Exactly why more people should switch to Linux on their
| desktops/laptops.
|
| > _but Linux sucks, it 's ugly, it's broken, it doesn't
| work, blah blah blah!_
|
| The amount of time people spend complaining about the evil
| shit their monopolist is doing to them would be better
| spent learning how to use Linux. It's not that hard.
|
| A farmer isn't going to make changes to their business
| model because the cattle is complaining. Microsoft is going
| to keep doing what they're doing until the government steps
| in (which is unlikely to happen any time soon). Same goes
| for Apple, Amazon, Google, and all these companies that are
| immune to competitive forces.
| mackrevinack wrote:
| my dad was asking me how to get rid of that yesterday because
| it was annoying him. i noticed that he also had the cortana
| search box on the left of the taskbar and asked if he ever used
| it and he said no. all these years it's just been there taking
| up valuable space and then 'new & interests' appears out
| nowhere last week and starts talking up even more valuable
| space. my poor dad had about 8 programs open but there were all
| squashed into the middle of the taskbar. makes me wonder about
| how many other people are living in these awful conditions
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| When you have hundreds of teams of people whose promotions
| are driven by what gets deployed and seen by the user, it is
| almost inevitable that we reach this situation.
| cyberjunkie wrote:
| Yes, I like that I've paid for an operating system that tells
| me all the affairs someone is having right in my system tray.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| You paid once, yes, but what about recurring payments?
|
| Tongue-in-cheek LotR reference, but, it was pretty clear that
| Microsoft changed tactics after releasing Windows 10, turning
| it into an auto-updating evergreen OS without paid updates.
| They're earning money elsewhere now - Office365 and Azure are
| their big cash cows, I believe. But other departments are
| pressured to make money too.
| welfvh wrote:
| horrible. Same as the news infinite scroll in the Google iOS
| app
| Grustaf wrote:
| There are some nice ideas here, and perhaps some of them can even
| be realised by third party apps using the new Screen time
| developer APIs?
|
| I don't think the "Persuasive Design" ideas are realistic though,
| not in the AppStore listing.
| api wrote:
| Apple is the only company I can imagine doing this. They're
| really the only remaining PC company where a PC is defined as a
| computer designed to serve and assist its customer/user instead
| of treat the customer as the product.
| overgard wrote:
| I feel like the people that need these changes are the least
| likely to turn then on. In general addicts don't want to dilute
| their drug of choice.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| Great ideas but can you imagine the uproar if Apple actually
| tried this given what they get any time they limit what apps can
| do?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I think the largest effect would be a focus on what types of
| """"news"""" someone as being exposed to.
|
| For example, my experience with Facebook emotionally plummeted
| after they added the news tab on the right hand side. I don't
| know what the current status is, because I basically stopped
| using Facebook because I couldn't help getting pulled into the
| emotional nonsense of the conflicts that were being artificially
| portrayed.
|
| Replace news articles with interesting historical or natural
| wonders on Wikipedia, and I think that would slowly force media
| organizations to stop relying on conflict and anger to generate
| revenue.
|
| to;dr the internet should default towards eliciting senses of
| wonder for the user instead of senses of conflict.
| dionidium wrote:
| I went into this pretty skeptical, but by the end I was convinced
| that this is a good endeavor. For example, batching notifications
| for certain kinds of apps is a truly great idea. I don't agree
| with every suggestion here, but it's clear to me that thinking
| about these issues could lead to some more good ideas.
| munk-a wrote:
| Gosh I wish I had access to this exciting new update -
| unfortunately I own an offbrand iPad made by this knock-off
| company called Apple. As such it's locked to only be able to run
| iOS 10 and lower. I know I made a bad decision purchasing from a
| hardware company while wishing the software company would support
| me in perpetuity but I was hopeful the developers behind iOS
| would actually offer to roll out updates to we Apple customers in
| addition to their own large customer base.
|
| Next time I buy an iDevice I'll be sure to seek out an iOS
| approved vendor for my purchase instead of just grabbing one of
| these rando-Apple devices off the street.
|
| (/s if it's needed)
| alirsgp wrote:
| I love this. I hope it's pushed thru. I would send this to Tim
| Cook: tcook@apple.com or federighi@apple.com
| [deleted]
| fumblebee wrote:
| A lot of commenters are hating on the article -- I fail to see
| why. Whether all the ideas are good or not is up for debate, but
| putting control in the hands of users for combatting dark
| patterns and dampening addictive habits at source is only a good
| thing. During the pandemic I've seen my daily phone usage soar, I
| wish I had some form of _iOS 15 Humane_.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Why would Apple do any of this? Their ultimate goal is to drive
| user engagement and increase revenue, which is interrupted when
| they have to remind users to stop using their platform.
| th0rgall wrote:
| That sounds more like the ultimate goal of Facebook and
| Twitter.
|
| In contrast, Apple's ultimate goal is to sell more devices and
| get more people onto their subscription services.
|
| The ideas mentioned in the article don't collide with this
| goal. They are intended to provide more (not less) value to the
| lives of Apple's customers. To help you when you yourself
| recognize you're engaging too much, or in a bad way. They seem
| to be configurable to the customer's preferences too. If you
| wouldn't want these features, fine, but others might want them,
| and prefer Apple's products over e.g. Android phones because of
| having the option.
|
| The only party who could be displeased with these system
| interventions are the big ad-based app or platform developers
| that do rely on user engagement.
|
| Update: Apple has some shared incentives with engagement-based
| business models, like their revenue stream of App Store
| (in-)app purchase commissions, but it's still much less than
| Google/Facebook/Twitter's reliance on that stuff.
| Sudarshan1 wrote:
| <a href="https://sudarshan-dalavi.blogspot.com/">Sudarshan Dalavi
| Blog</a>
| [deleted]
| m3kw9 wrote:
| These methods remind me of cruel methods where you tie up a drug
| addict to stop them from taking drugs, it may work for a while
| but the underlying problems will likely reel them back in.
| nicbou wrote:
| I've been aggressively fighting these things for the last year. I
| tried to filter as much noise as possible, to make it easier to
| get away from the computer. No feeds, very few emails, very few
| notifications, and a lot less participation.
|
| Generally, it went well. However, I still wish I had a way to
| batch notifications. I don't need instant messages to be truly
| instant. I don't need emails to arrive more than once every hour.
| hughcrt wrote:
| One of the main new feature of iOS 15 is precisely what you're
| talking about: https://www.macrumors.com/2021/06/07/new-
| ios-15-notification...
| pdimitar wrote:
| The problem with several of these is that most humans are in
| denial.
|
| - They will absolutely yell at their phone "YES, THIS TIME WAS
| WELL-SPENT!" even after an absolutely soul-crushing political
| "discussion" session that can only be equated to a real-life
| screaming contest with a bunch of others. And even with them
| feeling emotionally drained, angry and tired, they'll still say
| the time was well-spent.
|
| You know, sunk cost fallacy and all. The "maximum engagement"
| industry knows all these phenomena very well and they have
| weaponized them at least a decade ago, if not more.
|
| - "Finite" feeds. They are still infinite but now have page
| numbers. Sure that might help a little but but I don't think it
| will make an impact. Plus "Page #7" means nothing; after 10-20
| posts from people in your feed it moves to "Page #8" so what's
| the point?
|
| - Disabling Autoplay is related to the first one -- people are in
| denial. They'll just nervously tap on the play button. Almost
| nothing at all will change.
|
| - Hiding certain sections like "Watch Now" is NEVER going to
| happen. Don't be delusional. That's the way the companies want to
| further engage you. They'll stop literally everything else before
| that.
|
| - Greyscale is a cool idea. Didn't know about the reduced
| engagement with it. I'll try it out!
|
| - Batched notifications are a good idea. Let's go even further: I
| want to fine-tune which notifications I can receive. I regularly
| need the notifications from my grocery app (when my wife makes
| changes to it) but I absolutely don't care about those "17
| fantastic paleo meals for you to try today!", thank you very
| much. This has to stop.
|
| - Showing time spent might increase accountability, or it might
| not. I know it could have helped me 5 years ago but I also know
| quite a lot of people who scream at their friends "dude, I've
| been 10 hours on Twitter today, how cool is that!" so that one is
| likely to be a hit or miss. I can see how it could help some.
|
| - If you tell somebody that they are "mindlessly browsing"
| they'll uninstall your software the same minute. Don't. There has
| to be other ways. Even corny stuff like "are you happy how you
| spent the last hour?" would work better.
|
| ---
|
| I applaud Apple's efforts but as usual, they are waaaaaaaaay too
| slow and too gradual. The axe has to fall harder and quicker.
|
| Just an example. Open App Store on your iPhone. Just two days ago
| I had the same dumb "Gaming Essentials" section there that seems
| to appear fairly regularly, containing big earners like Fortnite,
| CoD, Candy Crush and several others. Of course Apple wants people
| to pick up these on a regular basis -- microtransactions lead to
| income for them as well.
| Sudarshan1 wrote:
| https://sudarshan-dalavi.blogspot.com/ visit the url for marathi
| technology information.
| ishitatsuyuki wrote:
| Things like infinite scroll and autoplay should come with an
| option to turn them off and I think that's well presented. Those
| are kind of dark patterns after All. Though, Apple probably isn't
| in the position to enforce that; we unfortunately need to live
| with Jailbreak tweaks for them.
|
| But the rest of the post feels so off. Constantly nagging
| yourself to close social media? Reminding yourself that social
| media is a waste of time by asking whether the time is "well
| spent"? No thanks. These are just dark patterns but flipped to
| the other side. I want control over what I do, not a random
| program deciding what I should do.
|
| I also have never found Screen Time restrictions to be effective;
| either I unlock the restrictions by myself, or I just find other
| ways to waste the time. The reason people waste so much time with
| social media, I think, is because they simply don't have anything
| else to do, or they're not motivated enough to do what they
| should do.
| Dah00n wrote:
| >Constantly nagging yourself to close social media? Reminding
| yourself that social media is a waste of time by asking whether
| the time is "well spent"?
|
| It's a business opportunity for Apple to be able to judge what
| gets graded as good, bad or a waste of time. That's what this
| is about in my opinion.
| sneak wrote:
| Infinite scroll is not a dark pattern. Dark patterns are
| explicitly designed to conflate or deceive.
|
| Infinite scroll just gives people more of what they want. Turns
| out, most people, most of the time, want the gorbage.
| donkeyd wrote:
| Alcoholics want booze, but many of them wake up every day
| thinking today they won't drink anything, but they still do.
|
| Infinite scroll is a dark pattern in the way it gives you
| something your addicted brain wants, and therefore you think
| you might want, but it's actually just a way for them to get
| more money.
|
| Personal anecdote: I hardly read more than the front page on
| HN, even though I consider HN one of the least 'time wasted'
| sites I use, because I usually learn a lot because of it. On
| Reddit I just keep scrolling even though I often consider it
| wasted time in hindsight. I don't want HN to get infinite
| scroll and I deleted the Reddit app from my phone.
| blackoil wrote:
| HN shows 30 stories on front page. If they reduce it to 5
| your usage may decrease so are they following a dark
| pattern? or if they increase the no. to 50 will it become a
| dark pattern?
| donkeyd wrote:
| How about 5000? This then becomes a useless discussion of
| where, between 0 and infinity I will deem it a dark
| pattern or not. I don't know, but I do consider infinity
| with the purpose of keeping people engaged a 'dark
| pattern', as do others of you look at the article I
| shared. Maybe you don't and that's fine.
| [deleted]
| sneak wrote:
| > _Infinite scroll is a dark pattern in the way it gives
| you something your addicted brain wants, and therefore you
| think you might want, but it 's actually just a way for
| them to get more money._
|
| Dark patterns are particular UI patterns that are of a
| certain objective type regardless of whether or not the
| user is an addict.
|
| Infinite scroll is not in the list.
|
| Slot machines are addictive and are designed to get people
| to play as much and as long as possible, but they
| assiduously avoid dark patterns because people will avoid
| machines that pull that sort of bullshit and choose ones
| that don't.
| Nevermark wrote:
| I think dark patterns include patterns designed to create
| addiction. I imagine a tremendous amount of slot machine
| design is about creating addiction.
|
| The line between enjoyment and addiction is certainly not
| clear, or the same for everyone. But anything strongly
| designed to repeatedly pull you into repetitive behavior
| that you reliably find wasteful or harmful afterwards, is
| dark.
| donkeyd wrote:
| > Infinite scroll is not on the list.
|
| I you want a discussion of semantics then...
|
| Wikipedia defines dark patterns as: "A dark pattern is a
| user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick
| users into doing things". Infinite scroll in many cases
| obviously fits this category as it tricks people into
| spending more time in an app. Fast company actually calls
| it the most prevalent dark pattern in this article:
|
| https://www.fastcompany.com/90369183/deceptive-design-
| tricks...
|
| Also, implying that slot machines don't apply dark
| patterns is incredibly naive. I'm pretty sure they do
| everything to make it seem like they don't. But even
| using a plastic card in stead of cash can be considered a
| dark pattern, because it disconnects you from the
| intrinsic form and it just because a number on a screen,
| causing it to lose its value while playing.
| sneak wrote:
| Infinite scroll isn't a trick. It gives the user
| precisely what they indicated they want: more content.
|
| If it took them to a different view, or made a purchase,
| or caused some negative side effect that the user then
| has to engage with to cancel, then it would be
| subterfuge.
|
| Giving the user more of what they explicitly desired (and
| provided user input to request in the form of a swipe up)
| is the opposite of a dark pattern.
|
| A good example of a dark pattern is when cancel/confirm
| buttons swap places from their usual locations on the
| sale screen, to trick a user into clicking buy when they
| meant cancel. When a user gives the gesture for "more
| content" and they get more content, that's simply an app
| that works well.
|
| It's not the UI that makes social interaction addictive.
| Second landlines for teenagers "addicted" to social
| networking was a thing long before Instagram.
| donkeyd wrote:
| > Infinite scroll isn't a trick. It gives the user
| precisely what they indicated they want: more content.
|
| I actually added a source that says that infinite scroll
| can be considered a prevalent dark pattern. I think this
| will become a useless discussion because there's no
| clearly defined definition of what is and isn't a dark
| pattern and I think that in the end it's how the user
| experiences it. To me it's a dark pattern, because I
| don't want to scroll infinitely, but I do it anyway. To
| you it isn't because it gives you precisely what you
| want. The only solution seems to agree to disagree.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| > Dark patterns are explicitly designed to conflate or
| deceive.
|
| Well, yes - normally you are scrolling to the bottom of the
| page. And when you reach the bottom, you stop, or you need to
| explicitly click "Next". But with infinite scroll, there is
| no bottom. You never reach a final or semi-final point. It's
| designed to maximize your time spent on the website/app, not
| for your well-being or helping you achieve your original aim
| - which was to absorb a limited set of information, not
| scrolling mindlessly forever.
| welearnednothng wrote:
| But it's only a dark pattern in the right (wrong?) context,
| no? For instance, my webmail has infinite scroll and it's
| damn convenient. Yet, I never find myself mindlessly
| scrolling through my mail. It doesn't increase the time I
| spend on the site... quite the opposite.
|
| Likewise, I swear Google was playing with infinite scroll
| in their search results recently, where I didn't have to
| hit next to see the next page of results. Same result for
| me - it was convenient and I didn't find myself spending
| more time looking for/at search results.
|
| But when the context is addictive content, infinite scroll
| is always there to spoon feed you one more helping.
|
| More often than not, infinite scroll isn't actually the UX
| pattern you're looking for. But on occasion, it does make
| sense. However, when combined with insidious content, a
| dark pattern it does become.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Infinite scroll is not a dark pattern. Dark patterns are
| explicitly designed to conflate or deceive._
|
| This comment doesn't deserve to be downvoted. I came to this
| thread holding this exact view. The ensuing discussion
| changed my mind. It's honestly asked and respectfully
| answered, the stuff this community is made of.
| serf wrote:
| > Those are kind of dark patterns after Al
|
| I think the application should be judged, not the method
| necessarily.
|
| Example : I have added/used extensions built to allow certain
| websites (google search, for example) to use infinite
| scrolling.
|
| I never voluntarily added other 'dark patterns' to my
| interfaces, thus I think the way such a mechanism is applied is
| a major factor as to whether or not it's abusive.
| powerlogic31 wrote:
| Yeah this is cool as an option. but don't make it as a default.
| A lot of people actually love the automatic feed. Of course
| they're not here on HN reading stuffs. So you won't know what
| actual majority of user want.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| What if the user _chooses_ to turn on the time well spent
| feature? Then it would not be a dark pattern but just user
| choice.
| beagle3 wrote:
| ScreenTime is very useful when you have young kids, are working
| at home due to Corona, and want to give them a limited time of
| Among Us / TV.
|
| I had never even considered it as a self-care system - but now
| that I do think about it, I agree with you.
|
| I have my Mac announce the time every hour, which is very
| useful to make sure I don't lose track of time - no matter what
| it is I'm doing
| retreatguru wrote:
| What if the reminders could be more personalized or something
| that you write to your future self. For example: "Are you
| scrolling on the couch again amigo?, stop and hang out with
| your family!"
| warkdarrior wrote:
| Even better, Facebook could provide these reminders and
| prompts, based on the information they collected by tracking
| your location and web browsing.
| deanclatworthy wrote:
| > I want control over what I do, not a random program deciding
| what I should do.
|
| So ask the user once if they want to be reminded? You might not
| feel like social media is a toxic influence over your life but
| many people do.
| underwater wrote:
| Some people feel like television, and phones in general, are
| bad influences. Should Apple build in reminders for their
| first party products, too. A popup telling you that talking
| on the phone for three hours a day is bad for you, or that
| encourages you to not binge on that TV series?
| Ar-Curunir wrote:
| Those things all exist...
| martin-adams wrote:
| I think what they are saying is to remove the addiction, not
| ask if someone want to be reminded to wake up from the
| addiction.
|
| The question for me comes down to, is there such a thing as
| social media without the addiction, where the financial
| incentives to the company aren't tied to and engagement and
| behaviour. I'd like to think that's possible.
| srg0 wrote:
| It's a sad state of things when we on _hacker_ news discuss an
| open letter to a proprietary software vendor asking to implement
| pagination in what was supposed to be a web page.
|
| And Android is not much better in practice.
| chimen wrote:
| Next thing I'd want my router to shut down the internet due to
| mindless browsing. Also shut it down when it's too late...like
| 11pm sounds enough.
| Someone wrote:
| You can do that second part on iOS.
| https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208982:
|
| _"When you schedule downtime in Settings, only phone calls and
| apps that you choose to allow are available. Downtime applies
| to all of your Screen Time-enabled devices, and you get a
| reminder five minutes before it starts"_
| gnyman wrote:
| I'm not site how a router would identify "mindless browsing",
| but turning off Internet at certain times is a feature many
| routers have built in, usually under parental control. Worth a
| look if you haven't checked.
|
| Personally I ended up with a bit different solution, I wanted
| to do something similar, but needed it to work on my phone also
| so I ended up using nextdns to block part of the Internet
| (reddit and Facebook) after 10. Works reasonably well as
| trigger to stop my worst doomscrolling offenders.
|
| I wrote up a short post on how to do it
| https://blog.nyman.re/2021/01/10/reduce-doomscrolling-with.h...
| lanevorockz wrote:
| You are a fool if you don't think that all of Big Tech is not
| some form of cattle control. They control what you can see, what
| you can express and what do you do outside of the platform.
| xpe wrote:
| I'm on a mission here on HN to encourage people to write
| clearly, with specificity, and without exaggeration. In that
| spirit, let me show how I would edit the comment above. Here
| are the parts I would modify (i.e. change X -> Y)
|
| 1. "You are a fool" -> leave it out. Think about your audience;
| this phrase is unlikely to persuade.
|
| 2. "Big Tech" -> Social Media (e.g. not AWS or Fastly)
|
| 3. "They control" -> "They constrain/frame"
|
| 4. "what you can see" -> "what you see first / what is
| recommended"
|
| 5. "control" ... "what you can express" -> "your content on
| their platform"
|
| 6. "control" ... "what do you do outside of the platform" ->
| [delete]
|
| I would also contrast multinational information / social media
| technologies with the underlying tools that allow governments
| to monitor and shape people's activity; e.g. firewalls, packet
| inspection, etc.
| pedalpete wrote:
| I wonder if there is an opportunity for an open consortium of
| apps that could define guidelines and qualify apps that are built
| with positive impact on the user in mind.
|
| We've recently been discussing how we can be proactive with our
| user's data, and tell them why we want to use their data, what
| data, and for how long we'll use it, etc. Because we're likely
| using the data in health and wellness research, it's not just
| "hey we want to show you better ads", so we believe there is real
| benefit to the user here.
|
| Does such a consortium exist? Should one?
| cglong wrote:
| About 70% of this could probably be implemented on Android today.
| Might be worthwhile to provide concrete data on the value of
| these ideas :)
| Saint_Genet wrote:
| Yes, let a userbase that is dominated by american, white, middle-
| class people determine what is time well spent. I'm sure that's
| gonna be applicable to everyone in the world.
| yadaeno wrote:
| If apple actually implemented these changes, I would ditch my
| current phone for an IPhone and never look back. I would also
| help make the switch for family members and anyone else I cared
| about.
| eloisius wrote:
| If I could ask Apple for one thing it would be to require
| approval of every push notification that an app developer wants
| to deliver. That an app gets either cart blanche to send me
| notifications or nothing at all drives me crazy. I don't want to
| miss a notification that my delivery food arrived, but I don't
| want to be bombarded with daily advertising messages from
| foodpanda trying to get me to change my behavior. Require app
| developers to submit a template string (and not "\\(message)")
| for each notification the app can deliver for approval in the App
| Store and let me have an on/off switch for each one.
|
| "Notifications" across every platform drive me crazy, because
| they usually start out as useful, but because people tend to pay
| them more attention than all the other channels that have already
| been tuned out, companies start juicing them for engagement. I
| use twitter rarely, but every time I do I am perplexed why my
| "notifications" are full of crap about who recently tweeted.
| Shouldn't that just be in my timeline?
| SergeAx wrote:
| It is called FilterBox on Android. But Apple will never allow
| such an app on iOS, no way.
| EGreg wrote:
| How about just making notifications costly?
|
| Maybe even rev-share with users.
| jaywalk wrote:
| I really like this idea, but template strings won't work for
| things like news of any type.
| rpxio wrote:
| It looks like they're adding interruption levels with iOS 15:
| https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
|
| See "Helping People Manage Notifications" section.
| criddell wrote:
| That will be abused like crazy. Every marketing notification
| will be accompanied by an "order now to get 5% off your
| order" message so it can be classified as time sensitive.
| eloisius wrote:
| Looks like they address that:
|
| > Never designate a marketing notification as Time
| Sensitive. For guidance, see Helping People Manage
| Notifications.
|
| Although I'm not clear on whether this are just HIG
| guidelines for notifications or if they are enforceable App
| Store rules.
| iaml wrote:
| App store rules are a joke, a lot of apps should be
| banned for violating them, but apple just doesn't give a
| fuck - and there aren't even proper channels to complain
| about it.
| irae wrote:
| Potential abuse is not a reason for not doing this feature.
| Bad actors will be bad in the current system or the new
| one.
|
| A couple of years ago: Allow all or no notifications, hard
| to find settings to turn off
|
| Current: Allow all, but easy to manage from home screen,
| apps that want to offer a choice of types of notification
| must figure out how, create config UI, make sure system is
| stable. Users must find, and each app is different and
| often report options are not working
|
| iOS 15: A general framework that at the code level, each
| notification can declare. iOS unifies the UI for managing
| levels per app. Good actors will have lower costs, bad
| actors can be detected in device predictions.
|
| I only see benefits, and you can still block apps abusing
| it
| criddell wrote:
| It's not a reason for not adding the feature but I'm sure
| abuse is something they anticipate. Hopefully there's
| some way to click on a notification and submit it to
| Apple as a violation of their guidelines and the app gets
| pulled from the store once a pattern emerges.
| mustacheemperor wrote:
| I just want the ability to time-gate notifications. It's
| convenient that I can shut off notifications from Teams when
| I'm on vacation, but why isn't it possible to disable
| notifications from Teams between 6pm-6am and on the weekends?
| Why can't I disable push notifications from my work email on
| Saturday and Sunday? It's the one single quality of life
| feature I've most hoped to see in every iOS update since they
| introduced granular notification control.
| Bluecobra wrote:
| The Teams iOS app already has this. Go to Settings >
| Notifications > Block Notifications > During Quiet Time, then
| specify what hours you want the app to be quiet.
| alickz wrote:
| >I don't want to miss a notification that my delivery food
| arrived, but I don't want to be bombarded with daily
| advertising messages from foodpanda trying to get me to change
| my behavior.
|
| This is exactly what the Android notification channels allow
| you to do, and it actually works really well.
|
| For UberEats I have the Delivery notification channel enabled,
| but the Marketing channel disabled. It's really the best of
| both worlds. And even more surprisingly it seems most apps
| support this, instead of putting all notifications under one
| channel.
|
| I'm surprised Apple hasn't followed suit; NIH syndrome maybe?
| kamilner wrote:
| In UberEats (and many other apps) you can configure which
| push notifications you get. Is that functionally different
| than channels for the purposes of turning off marketing
| notifications? Both seem to rely on the App developer
| allowing you to turn off the notifications you don't want.
|
| The problem I have are the apps which don't allow that, which
| presumably also wouldn't allow to separate them into channels
| for the same reason they don't let you turn them off.
| anchpop wrote:
| A difference is that there's a unified UI for disabling
| channels, and app developers don't have to do anything
| except annotate each notification with the channel it
| belongs to and list the channels somewhere in their
| manifest (IIRC). If you get a notification you don't like,
| you long long-press it and a menu appears showing you the
| different notification channels and prompting you to enable
| or disable them.
| eropple wrote:
| I haven't used Android in a while. What stops a developer
| from not categorizing notifications and effectively
| saying "oh they're all General notifications, ha ha ha,
| you can't get the thing you want without all the slop"?
| derefr wrote:
| Nominally, the Play Store QA process. (As if there was
| such a thing.)
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Bad apps do this. Some even create a new channel for each
| individual notification so you can't possibly block it.
| Except for a blanket ban which you can always do. So it
| does depend on the developers goodwill.
| alickz wrote:
| >Is that functionally different than channels for the
| purposes of turning off marketing notifications?
|
| I don't think so, it's just built into the OS which I
| personally prefer.
|
| >The problem I have are the apps which don't allow that,
| which presumably also wouldn't allow to separate them into
| channels for the same reason they don't let you turn them
| off.
|
| I think Apple is in a good position to enforce this though,
| given how strict their review process can be. They could
| easily reject apps that didn't use notification channels
| properly. I'm sure some would find a way to abuse but I
| think that would be a minority.
|
| As I said I was surprised on Android by how many apps
| actually used them, despite not being enforced. I can only
| imagine they would be even better on iOS, which is why I'm
| so confused as to why Apple hasn't.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > Is that functionally different than channels for the
| purposes of turning off marketing notifications?
|
| The key feature for me is that, as soon as I get a
| notification that annoys me, I can long press on the
| notification and disable that channel or notifications from
| that app altogether. I don't have to go into the app and
| dig through a settings menu; it takes me all of 3 seconds
| to do what I want.
| kpozin wrote:
| And then there's the Audible app for Android, which puts both
| ad notifications and their playback control widget into a
| single "Member notifications" channel, so that you can't
| disable the ads without losing access to playback controls.
| complexworld wrote:
| Sounds like Audible believes the benefits outweigh the
| downsides of abusing their customers
| monkeynotes wrote:
| Wait, so iOS doesn't let you fine tune your notifications? I
| don't know how I could deal with my phone unless I could turn
| off, or turn down notifications.
| nanidin wrote:
| In iOS one can turn on/off notifications per app at the OS
| level. Some apps have fine grain control for types of
| notifications, but this type of fine grain control does not
| exist at the OS level.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Apple is adding a lot more fine grain control in iOS 15
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/09/how-to-use-iphone-focus-
| mode-...
| smoldesu wrote:
| Absolutely this. Android's notification channels are a
| lifesaver for apps like Snapchat, Instagram, or any of the
| other social media apps that only serve to suck you in. It
| makes it super easy to disable all notifications except for
| DM alerts (which is what I typically do for most apps). It's
| crazy how many apps actually support it, and it's even
| crazier that Apple hasn't followed suit yet. Even with iOS
| 15, Apple's notifications are still a last-gen mess.
| graeme wrote:
| Not a replacement, but for anyone who doesn't know about
| it: you can configure Instagram notification types even in
| the iOS app. Surprisingly good system.
|
| Would be great if iOS copied Android and had systemwide
| channels.
| cuddlybacon wrote:
| That sounds neat. Does the developer chose which message goes
| into which category?
|
| I don't recall getting marketing notifications from Uber
| Eats. What infuriates me are the follow up notifications
| (paraphrased):
|
| "How was $RESTAURANT_NAME? Please rate and tip!"
|
| "How was $PERSON_NAME's delivery? Please rate and tip!"
|
| "$PERSON_NAME says thanks for the tip!"
|
| I imagine Uber Eats would categorize them under Delivery so
| you can't opt out of these without opting out of the
| notifications that are actually useful.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Apple has made changes in the upcoming iOS 15 where apps have
| to categorize their notifications into categories like
| "marketing" and functional categories. Users can then use the
| more granular controls to block notification categories
| either for all apps or app by app. This can also be mapped
| into the new Focus modes where users can setup different
| modes such a "work", "sleep", "driving", etc. Different apps
| can be allowed or blocked in different focus modes.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/07/apple-refines-
| ios-15-notif...
|
| https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/09/how-to-use-iphone-focus-
| mode-...
|
| [added additional external reference]
| treszkai wrote:
| > And even more surprisingly it seems most apps support this,
| instead of putting all notifications under one channel.
|
| Maybe because developers want to do the Right Thing, and they
| can implement these notification groups with no effort and
| without the marketing department noticing it?
| villasv wrote:
| > I'm surprised Apple hasn't followed suit; NIH syndrome
| maybe?
|
| Because this is something apps should have been doing
| themselves. But I guess Android will prove (or has proven, at
| least to me) that it's necessary to enforce this.
|
| After all, nothing is stopping apps from providing a single
| channel, right? It all comes down to providing developers
| with a basic framework, making it easier to do the right
| thing.
| Abishek_Muthian wrote:
| Notification pollution is real and I'm glad Apple is taking
| real steps to address it in the form of the new focus feature
| which lets the message sender determine whether to alert the
| user.
|
| I've been asking for this for a long time[1], But it shouldn't
| be only for 'Do Not Disturb' but rather for every message.
|
| I don't want to be alerted for meme or forwarded messages,
| Letting the users determine the notification level - Delayed
| (to be notified when I check the phone) or Immediate can go a
| long way to habituate message etiquette.
|
| As for non messaging apps like you mentioned, They should be
| shamed in the 'Notification Pollution' panel.
|
| [1]https://needgap.com/problems/59-notification-pollution-
| mobil...
| 00deadbeef wrote:
| This kind of thing is already against the App Store Review
| Guidelines:
|
| > Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or
| direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly
| opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your
| app's UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to
| opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services
| may result in revocation of your privileges.
|
| Apple has now introduced a way for developers to report other
| apps that break the guideiness. Rest assured I will be making
| reports every time an app sends me advertisement notifications
| that I did not opt in to.
| tristor wrote:
| Agreed with this entirely. The worst offender to me is
| Booking.com which will pop notifications and badges (I'm a
| compulsive badge clearer) on my device for marketing stuff,
| when I really only want notifications for messages in app
| around reservations. It also has added insult to injury during
| this pandemic season as Booking has continued to run promos and
| pop them when there's no reasonable way I could travel.
| drewg123 wrote:
| The food apps are so bad that I typically uninstall them when
| they send me a spammy notification, and then re-install them
| when I need to use them again.
|
| The natural outcome of this is that the first app which does
| NOT send me spam will be the one on my phone when I want to
| order food, and will be the one I actually use.
| k3liutZu wrote:
| > I don't want to miss a notification that my delivery food
| arrived, but I don't want to be bombarded with daily
| advertising messages from foodpanda trying to get me to change
| my behavior.
|
| Yeah, this really drives me crazy.
| rattray wrote:
| I use Android, which lets you enable/disable particular
| notification categories.
|
| I've simply uninstalled all food delivery apps that send
| promotions using the "General" category (IIRC Grubhub was the
| work offender).
|
| Uber Eats and DoorDash categorize their promotional
| notifications appropriately, so I never see them (and do get
| notifs about my deliveries).
| asiachick wrote:
| agreed. my dating apps I obviously want to leave notifications
| on so I get notified of a new match but the company uses
| notification to try to get me to use the app more and I can't
| turn those off.
|
| Similarly the Meetup app has started spamming me with
| Meetup.com blog type info with no way to turn it off but I need
| the notifications on for meetups . this one in particular is
| odd given than the Meetup app has some of the most granular
| notification settings of any service out there.
|
| The Lyft app does this a few times a year as well.
| cheph wrote:
| > If I could ask Apple for one thing it would be to require
| approval of every push notification that an app developer wants
| to deliver.
|
| Personally I would ask them to stop glad-handing with china and
| using their slave labour. But that is just me.
| eloisius wrote:
| Okay, fair. I'd ask for an iPhone that was not dependent upon
| China's labor and supply chains first, then to give me
| granular control of notifications.
| wilde wrote:
| Apple also abuses push notifications to sell their services so
| I don't see this ending any time soon :(
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| When does Apple ever send push notifications other than
| software updates?
| manmal wrote:
| For Apple Music:
| https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/18/18229492/apple-music-
| push...
| JrProgrammer wrote:
| I recently switched from Android to iOS and it irritates me
| that Apple push their own product multiple times a week. It
| might be because my account is new but at least once a week
| I get notifications of the free year of apple tv and apple
| arcade without any way to disable this (if you guys know of
| one please respond)
|
| Besides the notifications I think it's a dark pattern from
| Apple to actually show a red number badge above the
| settings app when there is no actionable item except the
| two things mentioned above.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| I can't remember an Apple push notification that wasn't
| transactional or an update notification (which is also
| transcational I guess).
|
| Do you have an example?
| eloisius wrote:
| "Helpful" tips when you get a new iPhone for one example. I
| also think I vaguely remember being very surprised that
| Photos advertised to me about being able to buy printed
| photo albums or something like that once? But I may be mis-
| remembering it with Google Photos.
| jacurtis wrote:
| They push Apple Music promos from time to time. They also
| send notifications via the Apple Store app about new
| product releases.
|
| To be fair, they don't ABUSE it to the extent that it
| happens frequently. But they are still promotional messages
| I didn't want. I'd say they send 6-8 per year.
|
| The Apple "Tips" app sends TONS of messages too. Granted
| that can be fixed by deleting the app. But people like my
| Mom still gets those messages to this day because she
| doesn't realize they are tied to that app and I don't
| believe they are opt-in, I think they are opt-out, meaning
| they are enabled on new phones by default (like Messages
| app and your Phone app). I know everyone here has deleted
| that app, but I bet most of our parents or children still
| have it installed and still get those messages.
|
| The funny thing about this comment in general is that many
| people probably don't realize they get notifications from
| Apple either. But as I mention examples they probably
| think, "Oh yeah, I've gotten those too". That is the
| biggest problem. We get so many notifications that many of
| us simply forget them. You get a notification that the new
| Macbook Pro is released and you simply read it on the
| backthread of your brain and dismiss it without much
| intentional thought. That is how Notifications have become
| for people. I tried to get my mom to clear up her
| notifications recently and she simply doesn't think about
| it anymore. It is just something you deal with if you own a
| modern phone. It isn't something you control. Like how you
| don't really control the billboards that you see while
| commuting to work. You can't disable billboards (other than
| actively driving to avoid them). But you brain doesn't
| dwell on them either. You are aware of their presence, but
| don't expel energy to digest every one. Notifications have
| become the same way. But they shouldn't be that way. We can
| (technologically speaking) disable them and the tools to
| disable them or control them should be granted to
| smartphone users.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Every time I get one of those Apple Music notifications I
| think there must be a way to turn them off and I spend a
| few minutes poking around in settings trying to find the
| toggle before I lose interest. Your comment prompted me
| to figure it out once and for all! They can indeed be
| turned off but the setting is hidden pretty well and not
| at all where I would have expected to find it:
|
| 1. Launch the Music app.
|
| 2. Select the "For You" tab at the bottom (little heart
| icon) this will take you to an advertisement page trying
| to get you to sign up.
|
| 3. Towards the top of the page and to the right of "$date
| For You" there's a profile icon. Select it to bring up a
| tab called "Your Account".
|
| 4. Select "notifications" and you can toggle "New Music"
| off.
|
| Oddly enough, mine was toggled off when I checked and I
| know I've gotten these notifications in the very recent
| past. I wonder if it changed to default-off in a recent
| update in anticipation of iOS 15's new "focus" feature
| and Apple's newfound commitment to battling notification
| pollution?
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > They push Apple Music promos from time to time.
|
| Ah, I _have_ Apple Music, that would explain why I don 't
| see these.
|
| Yeah, that ain't right.
|
| > That is the biggest problem. We get so many
| notifications that many of us simply forget them.
|
| And it's a game of whac-a-mole to turn them all off. And
| keep them off.
| wl wrote:
| I've gotten activity challenge notifications about special
| events, despite me turning off all notifications for
| activity.
| jasonkester wrote:
| Personally, I just want a global setting for "Apps can send
| notifications" that I can turn off.
|
| Every app that I install, I have to go through the same routine
| of finding and killing all the various types of notifications
| it tries to send me. But I don't want apps to notify me of
| things. Ever. I'll check my email a few times a day, and the
| various messenger apps once every few weeks, and they will have
| a list of new messages.
|
| I'm fine with the phone ringing when one of my contacts calls.
| But that's the full extent of where I'm prepared to allow it to
| distract me.
| joenot443 wrote:
| On iOS, apps needs to ask permission before they send
| notifications. If you missed that, there's also a single
| toggle in Settings -> Notifications for each app. There's no
| situation where you should have to "kill all the various
| types of notifications". While I agree a global "Disable
| Notifications" toggle would be nice, I don't think it's too
| much work to just tap "Don't Allow" when an app initially
| prompts you?
|
| The iOS notification ecosystem is actually miles better than
| it was in the iOS 4-10 days, I think it's fairly user
| respectful now.
| manmal wrote:
| There are also trial notifications, which only show up in
| notification center. Every app can just do that without any
| permission.
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications
| /...
| sxg wrote:
| Am I misunderstanding? Isn't this already possible on iOS?
| You can either disable notifications for individual apps or
| just turn on Do Not Disturb mode and leave it on. Fairly sure
| there is a setting to allow phone calls.
| sonofhans wrote:
| Ooh, I agree. Amazon does this, too. I had notifications
| enabled in their mobile app for a while. I work in a cottage
| behind my house, so it's useful to get a notification when
| something's delivered.
|
| Sure enough, after about half a dozen deliveries they started
| spamming me with promo messages as well. I quickly turned off
| notifications.
|
| As usual, spammers ruin everything.
| DrBenCarson wrote:
| Try https://shop.app it's absolutely great for the use case
| you described! You can even login to Amazon directly from the
| iOS shop app.
| bengale wrote:
| Something really should be done about this. The food delivery
| apps are worst for this, they seem to know you can't turn
| alerts off without losing a key feature, but then use it to
| advertise. They should be made to split this out so you can
| turn one off without the other.
|
| I'd love to customise the alert level for news apps. I would
| leave on actually important breaking news, but I have to turn
| it all off because they bombard me with worthless stuff. I want
| to know if the PMs head explodes, but I really don't care which
| royal has had another baby.
| eloisius wrote:
| Agreed. It seems short-sighted of Apple to let notifications
| become an advertising channel. It works against their
| customers. A start could be requiring developers to
| categorize their notifications as transactional or
| advertising, but I'd really like the granularity to switch
| certain types of notifications on and off from the Settings
| app, or on the "manage" menu of the notification itself have
| the option to not get notifications like this one anymore.
| latch wrote:
| > The food delivery apps are worst for this
|
| My bank, which is otherwise great, does this. Critically
| important push notifications and a pretty steady stream of
| meaningless advertisement.
| andai wrote:
| What kind of important notifications does your bank send? I
| don't think I've gotten a single notification from my bank
| about anything. They do still send paper mail though.
| mattkrause wrote:
| I get notifications for large or anomalous transactions
| that must look "weird" but not quite fraud-like to some
| system.
|
| So far, they've all been purchases I authorized, but I
| like knowing that I'd get a heads-up if something shady
| were going on.
| alex-yark wrote:
| Several of my bank apps will send me push notifications
| when a payment requires 2fa so I can authorise in app, a
| much better process than the SMS based 2fa most do.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| How often does your bank flag your transactions? I've
| been called once in a decade to authorize a tx.
| dm33tri wrote:
| In my country we confirm every transaction with 2FA, if
| the site supports secure payments (almost every website)
| alistairSH wrote:
| Sigh. I wish the US would encourage this. It would make
| me feel so much more confident about fraud prevention.
| 05 wrote:
| EU caps card interchange fees (.3% credit .2% debit), so
| the baseline is lower. US has comparably huge card
| rewards, those have to come from somewhere, so with
| 1.5-3% interchange fees the incentive to implement 2FA to
| cut, say, 0.2% off commission is just not there..
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Why would Visa/MC/Discover/AmEx or the banks issuing
| credit card accounts have to lower commissions? They can
| implement 2FA to reduce their fraud costs, but they can
| pocket the difference unless they feel competitive
| pressure. But if there exists enough savings from 2FA by
| preventing fraud such that they can offer more rewards to
| credit card users, then it would be a competitive
| advantage.
| alistairSH wrote:
| The US doesn't even do chip+PIN, just chip. I have to
| assume the US is fine with a higher baseline level of
| fraud than the EU. I don't know how the economics make
| that work.
|
| And online, the validation/authorization isn't any better
| - as long as somebody has the card number and my zip
| code, they can do as they please (until/unless some
| banking anti-fraud algo picks it up).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It's crazy to me too. A few years ago, all the card
| networks told merchants that any in person merchant who
| does not use chip transactions will automatically lose
| chargebacks, so whatever in person merchants have not
| converted to chip are simply not willing to invest in
| updating their systems.
| alistairSH wrote:
| They've pretty much all moved to chip at this point, at
| least IME. It's the lack of PIN that confuses me. All the
| terminals have pin pads already, but whether they request
| the PIN is pretty spotty (seems to be bank card vs true
| credit card?).
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Not OP, but every time I do a purchase online with a new
| shop, my bank does this. Also every time I spend more
| than x euros in one transaction.
|
| Before that they sent an SMS code, I much prefer the app
| notification.
| ilikehurdles wrote:
| I started using M1 Finance, and while they send useful
| notifications about when transfers and rebalances occur,
| they use those same permissions to send marketing type
| notifications that you can't disable: nagging me to take
| out a loan from them or refer friends to their platform.
| It's obnoxious. These should never be notifications, let
| alone ones you can't even selectively opt out of.
| alistairSH wrote:
| I have my banking/credit card apps push notifications
| every time a transaction occurs (transfers, deposits,
| withdrawals).
|
| Sure, 99% of them are expected, but it's nice to confirm
| deposits from my employer were on time, automated
| payments triggered as planned, etc. Plus, it catches
| anything nefarious (we had one card hacked a few years
| ago).
|
| My credit cards also send reminders when payments are
| scheduled or due (1-2 are set to autopay, but 1-2 are
| manual pay).
|
| Edit - none of my banks send junk notices. And most of
| them are configurable for which notices I want, with $
| thresholds as well.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| That's a great way to get people habitually ignoring the
| important notifications
| neither_color wrote:
| I get around this by only enabling notifications when I order
| food, and then disabling notifications after delivery. It's a
| few extra steps but worth the serenity.
| grishka wrote:
| It's more interesting in Android. There's no notification
| _permission_ , as every app is able to send notifications by
| default. But, there are notification categories. You can turn
| them off individually. Yes, the app developer is supposed to
| specify them themselves. And most actually do. Those who don't
| drive me nuts tho. I'm very careful with what I receive
| notifications about.
|
| Apple could definitely copy that. Right now the iOS
| notification system is useless because of how overwhelmed you
| get with everything and how notifications disappear by
| themselves when you unlock the phone.
| andai wrote:
| >notifications disappear by themselves when you unlock the
| phone
|
| I get a bunch of messages from my friend on Steam, so I tap
| to read them, but if I tap the wrong way it opens the app
| instead, makes all the messages disappear, and I have to wait
| until I get to a place with internet again before I can see
| what he said.
| Cheetah26 wrote:
| I'd partially blame this one on the Steam app too. If it is
| able to receive the message and give you a notification, it
| should also let you see that message in-app without
| internet.
|
| Discord is the same way and it drives me mad, especially
| considering how fussy it can be about connecting. Snapchat
| on the other hand handles it right. If I get a notification
| (for an actual chat at least), I am able to open it anytime
| later regardless of whether or not my phone is still
| connected.
| grishka wrote:
| I've been using Android for around 10 years. I'm very much
| used to using the notification shade like a to-do list: I
| often leave non-urgent notifications to hang in there to
| deal with them later.
|
| Another thing that drives me absolutely nuts in iOS, and
| that stems form its lack of a usable notification system,
| is that it considers it okay to interrupt your train of
| thought with modal alerts. When your battery gets low, you
| get an alert in your face. When there's a system update,
| you get an alert in your face when you unlock the device
| (and then an annoying, very dark-pattern-y "enter your
| passcode to install overnight" screen). When there's any
| number of things about Apple services you couldn't care
| less about, you get an alert in your face, too. On (stock)
| Android, all these things are notifications that can be
| ignored for as long as you desire.
| retreatguru wrote:
| This is brilliant and would help just a little bit to bring us
| back from our global phone addiction. It's a start at least.
| josiahpeters wrote:
| This is somewhat off topic. I have read through other people's
| comments about good and bad experiences with push notifications
| on Apple and Android. People use them as Todo lists and for a
| number of things.
|
| For something so critical, why has Apple or Google not created a
| push notification log on your device? Some of us live by our
| notifications and the fact that I accidentally swiped an
| important notification away or I thought I saw a slack
| notification come through but couldn't find it gives me anxiety.
|
| As important as push is to our daily lives, you would think there
| would be more innovation in managing these notifications.
| patrickserrano wrote:
| I'm surprised this isn't more of a thing. From what I
| understand this is coming to Android 11 though
| https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/03/20/android-11-tweaks-h...
| strogonoff wrote:
| One of the effects of a truly feature-complete notification
| center would be that messenger/social media user may lose any
| incentive to open that app.
|
| Which I personally would be fine with; but which goes somewhat
| counter to the currently-mainstream model of "free" ad-
| supported social media and messaging platforms.
|
| This ties into my long-standing argument that we should
| normalize paid social. We should be allowed to pay a fee just
| for the pipe. A paid platform would be incentivized to provide
| its users with all the flexibility, APIs and integrations,
| including third-party GUIs such as OS's built-in notification
| center.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| I've honestly grown to hate my iPhone.
|
| It hit me during a particularly stressful work period about a
| year ago that this device doesn't bring any happiness to my life
| and only brings anxiety, stress and saps my energy like a
| parasite.
|
| Once that stressful period was over the feeling didn't go away
| though and now I can't even get rid of it because all my friends
| use apps to communicate rather than SMS so it's either I allow
| this parasite in my life or I just go disconnect almost
| completely.
|
| and I don't think what I'm saying is ridiculous and I think Apple
| knows its bad otherwise they wouldn't be creating things like
| screentime tracking and focus modes.
| kaba0 wrote:
| May I ask you what are you doing on your iPhone that you
| consider unhealthy?
| albertTJames wrote:
| That must be one of the more interesting blog post I have read in
| a long time. We need more solution driven people, great insights.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Such a complicated solution. Here's a much simpler one: Stop
| using Facebook. Problem solved.
| gwd wrote:
| How do I keep contact with relatives -- like cousins, aunts and
| uncles, etc -- who I care enough about to want to chat with /
| see what's up in their lives, but not enough to call on a
| weekly basis?
| Skinney wrote:
| Call/text them on a _monthly_ basis?
| murrayhenson wrote:
| iCloud photo sharing? Works with people that do and do not
| have iPhones/Macs. At least I know that non-Apple users can
| see photos in a shared album; I don't know if they can add
| photos to a shared photo album as well - I've never tried
| that.
|
| Several years ago I got tired for Facebook and quit it. My
| parents, in-laws, and siblings have an Apple shared photo
| album for "general" content and we occasionally set up albums
| for the same group of folks when there's a big
| event/trip/etc.
|
| We occasionally Facetime or use chat via Messages. Email's
| are in the mix as well.
|
| I feel that it works reasonably well.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| In a conversation with someone the other day, I said I tried to
| participate in my community without using Facebook and it was
| difficult. They laughed.
| bennyp101 wrote:
| I 'solved' this by creating a new account, under a different
| name (yes, I know it's 'against the rules') that is purely a
| member of the local groups. It has no friends, no timeline
| posts, just for staying up to date with community events.
|
| I have no real reason to check it, as there is not really
| anything posted, but I can hop on once or twice a week to see
| what is coming up.
|
| Unfortunately, that's the best way I've found to know what
| goes on in the village vs not actually wanting to participate
| in Facebook
| johnfn wrote:
| Your solution has been around since the dawn of Facebook and
| has had no affect on the majority of Facebook users. The
| proposed solution actually could. Sometimes, it turns out that
| the best solutions are in fact complicated.
| jjice wrote:
| While tricky, I agree in concept. It's hard to stop using
| social media, and as much as I'm proud that I don't use
| Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter any more, here I am, commenting
| on a post on HN. They're different for sure, and HN causes more
| thought and more learning, but there are still days that I
| spent too much time and end up on page 3 of Ask HN.
|
| Part of the fix is having something else to do. If I'm waiting
| on a code review, I might slip into HN or Reddit. I guess a
| solution would be having very flexible, productive tasks to do.
| Duolingo seems like a good one, but I personally don't have too
| much of a want to learn a new language.
| raptorraver wrote:
| I deleted my Facebook account last year. Next week I found
| myself mindlessly scrolling Reddit. I blocked Reddit on my
| phone. Next week I was scrolling Linkedin (sic!). Humans just
| haven't adapted to this new era with endless information in a
| packets that are designed to be as addictive as possible.
|
| I think I should just get rid of my smart phone, but that's
| easier said than done.
| CPLNTN wrote:
| This gives me "If you are homeless, just buy a house" vibes
| paulintrognon wrote:
| How do you explain, with a such simple solution, that there are
| still billions of people using facebook? Are they just stupid?
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Simple =/= Easy
| protoman3000 wrote:
| And stop using Instagram or WhatsApp or TikTok or LinkedIn. But
| can you, though?
|
| Can you be the one single weird person in a group of 50 that
| says "I'd rather not have pictures of this event with my face
| on them posted on Insta, please"?
| criddell wrote:
| Sounds like you might be a fan of abstinence-based sex
| education programs.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| In the same way that an alcoholic can just stop drinking and
| then they're no longer an alcoholic, right? That's not how
| addiction works.
| junon wrote:
| Habitual addiction and chemical addiction are not the same
| things. Cutting Facebook cold turkey has few if any of the
| side effects cutting alcohol cold turkey has.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| It has the effect of the existential dread of being alone
| with your thoughts.
| junon wrote:
| That has nothing to do with addiction.
| philosopher1234 wrote:
| I disagree, i think it's the basis of a lot of addiction.
| kaba0 wrote:
| There is psychological addiction and chemical addiction.
| Both suck, and you are likely better off gradually
| decreasing the activity/drug in both cases, but there is
| a real difference that in the latter case you _must_
| gradually decrease it, else you will have very severe
| side-effects, for example with alcohol it is called
| delirium tremens.
| Ma8ee wrote:
| Of course it has. Just because it isn't directly based in
| a physiological reaction doesn't make it less real. And
| it is in general a mistake to make a clear distinction
| between what is mind and what is matter. They are the
| same.
| LudwigNagasena wrote:
| Do alcoholics overcome addiction with "Time well spent"
| metrics?
| vitro wrote:
| Probably not. But what about "I felt well in my body after
| getting drunk" metric?
| bengale wrote:
| Perhaps alcohol is a bad example because you can quit it
| completely. That's not really the case with something like
| a smart phone, so perhaps the better comparison is food.
| You can't stop eating food completely if you struggle with
| addiction, but you can learn healthier habits.
| kaba0 wrote:
| You can buy a non-smart phone though.
| vincvinc wrote:
| Even worse, it's more like "if you don't want to drink, just
| don't be around alcohol! Just stop meeting people!"
| bb101 wrote:
| True. Planned impediments can help, just like making sure
| alcohol never enters your front door.
|
| I've used my phone's parental features to limit usage of
| social apps to one hour. It's protected by a somewhat
| randomly chosen PIN that I don't memorize but store in my
| password manager. If I want to override the time limit, I
| have to go and look up the PIN. Most of the time... too hard,
| move on to something more productive.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Sure--but it's not just Facebook. And how do people learn they
| should stop using Facebook?
| stef25 wrote:
| For me the only situation I consider "ok" for mindless browsing
| is while keeping and eye on the kids. Reading a book or anything
| else that requires concentration is impossible because you have
| to look up / intervene every x minutes.
|
| The whole mobile online experience has become so bad, it's soul
| destroying. I don't go near social media anymore and prefer to
| just read interesting things. While not signed in to Google
| (because f*ck that), every search I do is met with a Google
| disclaimer I have to tap 3x to reach the bottom and tap once more
| to "agree" (no idea what I'm agreeing to). If you tap the wrong
| way (too quickly?) it zooms in and you have to use two fingers to
| zoom out again.
|
| Then whatever site you end up has a cookie disclaimer, an "enter
| your email" popup and often even a third one with some promo
| crap. So often it's more than 5 fiddly taps just to get to the
| content and then you have to hope there's no paywall.
|
| Infinite scroll is a complete horror show. I find myself
| mindlessly doom scrolling through job and real estate sites,
| tapping likes while I'm not even looking for a job or a house.
|
| I can't quite live without smartphone (GPS, music, audiobooks
| ...) but I almost wish they were never invented.
| GordonS wrote:
| > While not signed in to Google (because f _ck that), every
| search I do is met with a Google disclaimer I have to tap 3x to
| reach the bottom and tap once more to "agree" (no idea what I'm
| agreeing to)
|
| Oh, this drives me nuts - it's every.single.time I open google
| in a private tab! I mean, they _know* that _nobody_ is reading
| this before hitting "I agree".
| [deleted]
| welfvh wrote:
| OP and co-founder of Potential here, AMA!
| lewich wrote:
| Would be really nice to have this, but what are the chances? I am
| still thinking it would be better to be off-facebook (already got
| off twitter, instagram and other networks), but keeping in touch
| with local community is not possible then.
| fudged71 wrote:
| iOS 15 is already doing some great things for ADHD. These
| recommendations look even better!
| vmception wrote:
| Out of all these I like the conditional app unlock
|
| They should extend it to certain urls too!
| cromwellian wrote:
| Another option would be to ship a feature phone, or a feature
| phone _mode_. So you know, your $1000 device can only make calls
| like most of us used phones for 20 years ago.
|
| iOS 15 Humane - your phone is just a phone.
| deanclatworthy wrote:
| I love this, but do we really think that Apple also isn't using
| engagement with your phone as an internal success metric? If
| people use apps less often, they are probably using less apps. If
| people use less apps, Apple's revenue drops.
|
| Unlike Apple's attack on privacy which makes them a
| differentiator in the marketplace, only at the expense of others,
| I don't see what's in it for Apple to do this?
| dannyw wrote:
| Apple still primarily makes money from hardware sales. They'd
| rather get you working out, buy an airpod pro, and subscribe to
| fitness+ than spend time on Facebook.
| londons_explore wrote:
| True, but there are still people who don't use their phone
| much, and therefore don't really mind if they have a 5 year
| old iPhone.
|
| Apple intentionally making that group of users bigger could
| be very bad for revenue
| deanclatworthy wrote:
| Apple made 72.3B revenue from app sales in 2020. This is not
| an insignificant amount of money, regardless of where it
| stands next to their hardware sales.
|
| Furthemore, if people are using smartphones less maybe
| they'll realise they don't need an expensive smartphone to
| check whatsapp...
| alwillis wrote:
| Apple did announce ScreenTime API, which enables developers to
| do some of the things mentioned in the article.
|
| Plus Apple's revenue isn't based on app engagement; it's
| hardware and services primarily. Using some apps less doesn't
| impact the big picture of subscriptions (Music, iCloud+, News*,
| etc.) or hardware purchases like a new iPhone, AirPods, etc.
| irae wrote:
| The article has a few brilliant ideas, for sure. In particular
| asking if the time was well spent. This can be truly valuable and
| it makes sense inside the "screen time" feature apple already
| provides. Including the score in the app store could be a good
| idea, specially if sharing your "well spent" opinion is opt-in
| and only local on the device by default.
|
| On the other hand, Apple is not and should not be punishing
| anything for being persuasive or any other subjective measure,
| and should not ever have a method of punishing anymore
| financially. Any rules to tax or otherwise punish based on
| opinion can also be used as censorship, and not company should go
| there.
|
| Yes, it is Apples interest to help us manage our preferences with
| ease. This is providing a good service. It is not Apples duty or
| right to impose a view/opinion on its users, neither is their
| role to be our savior or bastion on the mess the internet is
| becoming.
| th0rgall wrote:
| I really like the ideation here (and in the HN comments!).
| They're not the first to come up with most of these ideas though,
| the Nudge extension (https://nudgeware.io/) already has nudges
| against infinite scroll & other interventions for
| Twitter/Facebook/, and there are plenty of "app blocker" apps out
| there (for App Conditions). Still, I liked to see concrete
| designs on how Apple could make improvements that only they have
| the power to implement: the persuasive design settings, the Time
| Well Spent/Regret Tax.
|
| But the problem is broader and more systemic than Apple can
| address I'm afraid. "persuasive design" is a direct result of ad-
| based attention-seeking business models. We need purposeful
| social apps like https://readup.com or Strava, whose business
| model incentives are directly aligned with our wellbeing. I'm
| spending 4-10 hours reading on Readup weekly, and I invariably
| consider that Time Well Spent (https://readup.com/@thorgalle).
| [deleted]
| natedubyah wrote:
| Im interested to know if the preliminary thoughts of these new
| ios features were at any all influenced by the pandemic, theres
| a-lot of stuff that would have been really cool during that time
| that is now rolling out.
| spython wrote:
| The article wants Apple to save us from mindless browsing, but I
| see mindless browsing as unavoidable. Not because of some
| technical or legal thing, but because mindless browsing is a good
| thing. We need it. Mindless browsing is like a walk through the
| woods, just looking for what is happening, navigating a huge
| amount of information that is hardly important at the moment -
| oh, the cherry tree is blooming - but could be important later.
|
| The 'outside' is made up of myriads of tiny details - wind is
| moving the leaves, slowly and irregularly, the birds are singing,
| insects flying through the air, the earth feels soft and damp and
| smells of freshness after the rain, the movements of clouds and
| the sun are inexorably changing the lighting. We are, however,
| spending time in concrete boxes where nothing ever moves, and
| even seal off the sounds and air flow from the outside. Within
| those boxes we sit and lie and enter other, flatter spaces of our
| screens, which nonetheless offer us the possibility of some kind
| of change, movement in the world.. Of course we will browse those
| changes mindlessly.
|
| Since mainstream social media has turned into a manipulative
| toxic landscape, I find myself retreating to more niche and
| better moderated sites, devoid of hate and over-strained
| emotions. I also find myself wishing for a digital space, be it a
| game or a website, that would feel similar to a walk in the woods
| - where a lot is happening but not much is important. Like
| watching the breaking of waves on the beach. Like sitting at a
| campfire. Like watching the tree tops move in the wind.
|
| I like mindless browsing. I enjoy it. Just give me the right
| space for it.
| andrepd wrote:
| A walk through the woods is not engineered by Las Vegas casino
| designers backed by petabytes of user data to be as addictive
| as possible.
|
| There's taking an aimless stroll and there's compulsively
| opening reddit or facebook at 3am.
| spython wrote:
| Yes, of course it has a lot to do with information hygiene.
| We need to be more particular about what we let into our
| minds, we just don't have the tradition for it yet.
|
| Browsing facebook is more like taking a walk in a dystopian
| junkyard than a forest, and a sign by Apple saying "you might
| be browsing a junkyard" would just add to this dystopia. This
| is why the proposal is to design better spaces for mindless
| browsing, since we apparently need it.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| Mindless browsing is nothing like walking randomly in the woods
| or on the beach, communing with nature. One thing saps our
| humanity and the other enhances it.
| spython wrote:
| My argument is that we need some kind of movement, some kind
| of change that is happening outside of us. It feels great to
| sit in the backyard and watch the chicken quarrel, but who
| has chickens anymore? It can be enjoyable to sit in a cafe at
| the town square and just witness life happening around you,
| but most town squares are losing this community side.
|
| Since the immediate 'outside' - my home and office - mostly
| lacks this tiny uninterrupted movements that I describe, this
| continuous stream of life happening, I begin to feel isolated
| and turn to the screens around me. They provide a similar
| feeling of being connected to life, even if much less
| fulfilling.
|
| Sure, I could work on changing the social life of my city,
| reviving the town square and planting gardens, but here, on a
| hacker news site, I like to dream about some technological
| solution that might fulfill the need of seeing myself
| embedded in a perpetual movement on life.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Mindless browsing does have it's place, but it's often not in
| it's place, and it's certainly not a walk in the woods. A walk
| in the woods either allows the sounds of your brain to rest or
| for them to come to light and allow you to work on them. The
| pointless information cacophony is the opposite imo; it
| temporarily tranquilizes them, never letting them be addressed.
| Where a walk in the woods can be stress-relieving and possibly
| actually social, mindless browsing just throws your stress into
| a garbage bin, that just gets taken to a dump; you're pretty
| sure you dealt with it, it's not here anymore right?
| johnfn wrote:
| Mindless browsing is in no way a walk in the woods. Just
| observe your mood before and after a walk in the woods, and
| then your mood before and after mindlessly scrolling through
| facebook. One makes you feel better, one much worse.
| toomanyducks wrote:
| It's well past midnight, I've been interacting with apps
| designed to maximize 'user engagement' since 8 PM. I don't have
| coherent thoughts, I'm opening irrelevant tabs habitually. This
| is not healthy. I have a problem. That problem is mindless
| browsing, and it feels engineered.
|
| Not saying you're wrong, just that your ideas don't work for
| me.
| josho wrote:
| A trick that helped me was to put time limits on my apps.
| Then I set the access code to a random number and wrote that
| number down and put the paper in an inconvenient spot (eg. My
| basement cellar).
|
| The result is there is just enough friction that I don't
| bother going to get the number. But if ever I _need_ access I
| can alway go get it.
| heroHACK17 wrote:
| This was exactly me last night. After four hours I realized
| I'd had a headache the whole time (from four straight hours
| of screen-time), and yet, my lizard brain snatched the reigns
| right back before I could make a decision to put it down or
| continue scrolling.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| That's because the internet is no longer a walk through the
| woods. It's now a stumble through a confusing poorly-lit
| casino.
| [deleted]
| alistairSH wrote:
| Well said. 100% agreement.
|
| Last year, I found myself in an unusually unhappy place.
| Partly COVID lockdowns, partly changes at work, partly
| politics (US resident). My wife noticed and told me to get
| off Facebook/Twitter/etc - they were making me visibly
| agitated. As I weaned myself off those platforms, my
| happiness and stress levels improved.
|
| I'm glad to be (mostly) off the platforms. It's been a
| massive improvement.
|
| Facebook was the biggest culprit. I unfriended anybody I
| didn't know in meatspace. I unfollowed anybody I hadn't
| spoken to live in a year or more. My feed is now mostly
| photos my parents post, a few cycling groups, plus some
| marketplace activity. I no longer feel the need to check
| daily (or more) - once a week is plenty.
|
| I do find I use Instagram more now. But, because it's "just
| photos", it doesn't stress me out like Facebook.
|
| Twitter only gets visited when somebody links me to an
| interesting thread from elsewhere (here or other forums). I
| never go on my own.
| Applejinx wrote:
| I outright deleted Facebook and Twitter (or at least, my
| established profiles on 'em, to the best of my ability).
| Also ditched Instagram while I was at it, as I felt like
| I 'should' post stuff to it, not because the things I saw
| there were bothering me.
|
| I made a twitter account specifically to not have any
| friends and not do anything, and treat it the same way
| you're treating it.
|
| Same reaction: it's been a massive improvement. I
| wouldn't go back. Looking at that stuff from the outside
| now, it feels like a trap. Amazing how they can turn
| making you miserable, into an addictive behavior.
|
| We are apparently, as a species, more driven by panic
| than pleasure, and the algorithm optimizes for this.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| > Facebook was the biggest culprit. I unfriended anybody
| I didn't know in meatspace.
|
| I stopped using it because I was getting cross-ways with
| people I otherwise highly respected, over political
| comments which invited open disagreement. I didn't want
| to be at odds with these people, but Facebook has
| designed the service to facilitate this, and has
| engineered the degradation of personal relationships
| because of it.
|
| That's strike one. We all know how to avoid difficult
| conversations in real life, because we can feel them
| creeping up on us, and we change the subject. On social
| media, you state the whole argument, and then people feel
| free to do the same, and put their spin on it.
|
| For thousands of years, people have ebbed and flowed
| through life, met new people, and stopped seeing others.
| A very large part of the problem with Facebook is that it
| destroys this natural flow of life, and tempts you to
| connect with every human being you've ever said 2 words
| to, and then keep that connection forever.
|
| That's strike two. When you compare this situation to how
| humans have lived for thousands of years, it's an almost-
| grotesque abrogation of the natural order of things.
| There are relationships that SHOULD fade away, and others
| you should ACTIVELY eliminate once you know where they
| really stand. All social media platforms are designed to
| treat your follower number as the end-all-be-all sacred
| metric.
|
| I don't have a strike three. That was enough for me.
| potatolicious wrote:
| Couldn't agree more - I still have FB but honestly time
| on it just makes me more agitated than happy, and I
| should really just get off of it completely.
|
| FB's problem is fundamental in the way that you described
| but I'd add a few points to it:
|
| Not only does FB artificially try to revive relationships
| that have run their course (and also gives all of these
| past relationships permanent access to your thoughts),
| IMO FB fundamentally misunderstands "connection" - that
| or they understand it fine but are utterly cynical about
| it.
|
| In what way is mindlessly thumbing through a high school
| classmate's wedding photos "connecting" people? People
| who you haven't spoken to in a decade or more? The
| primary uses of FB seem to be passively perusing the
| musings of people you don't care much about, which
| despite what FB PR insists, isn't making me care much
| more about them.
|
| The FB news feed is one of the _least_ social things I
| can think of! It is consumed passively, nearly always by
| yourself, and doesn 't actually create any interaction
| between myself and others besides simple "likes".
|
| I keep waiting for the arrival of social networks that
| actually meet their own lofty claims - software that
| actually facilitates the development of meaningful
| relationships.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| > In what way is mindlessly thumbing through a high
| school classmate's wedding photos "connecting" people?
| People who you haven't spoken to in a decade or more?
|
| I'll do you one better. I deleted my account back in
| 2016, in the run-up to Trump's election (cause I just
| didn't want to hear it). Just before I did, there was a
| whole rash of connection requests from my high school
| classmates. Facebook blasted out that one person had re-
| connected with me, and a dozen others suddenly thought
| that would be a good idea too. I graduated THIRTY years
| ago, and hadn't spoken to ANY of the others since. Most
| of the requests were coming from people I wouldn't even
| have called friends AT THE TIME. That's just not normal,
| but on Facebook it is!
| sodality2 wrote:
| Reminds me of the song, "Welcome to the Internet":
|
| "Could I interest you in everything
|
| All of the time
|
| A bit of everything
|
| All of the time
|
| Apathy's a tragedy
|
| And boredom is a crime
|
| Anything and everything
|
| All of the time"
| handrous wrote:
| This features in Bo Burnham's latest comedy special
| (though with Burnham, maybe comedy belongs in scare-
| quotes, since his last two specials have leaned much
| harder on wry commentary than actual laugh-out-loud
| humor) produced largely on his own and filmed almost
| entirely in what looks to be a one-room guest house of
| his. It's on Netflix and I'm sure the part with that song
| is on YouTube somewhere (hahaha).
| sodality2 wrote:
| Yep- it's totally different from his previous work but I
| absolutely loved it. Especially "Welcome to the
| Internet", because I can see firsthand what the song is
| about.
|
| Here's the video on Bo Burnham's own channel:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU
| welfvh wrote:
| Excerpt from a poetry slam I did 2 years ago:
|
| What are we paying, when we're paying attention?
|
| We pay with what we could've done and what we could've
| learned. We pay with the people we could've met, and the
| conversations we could have had.
|
| We pay with every future us, that we could've been, We
| pay with the values we did not live by, We pay with the
| goals we did not reach, We pay with every opportunity to
| become more fully alive, that is now gone.
|
| We pay with the moments of joy that never happened, We
| pay with the peaceful sleep, and the refreshed feeling in
| the morning, that we didn't get.
|
| Because we were busy paying... attention.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| I regret that I have but one upvote to give to this
| comment.
| welfvh wrote:
| We'll make a wall with attention poetry and this will be on
| it
| kaba0 wrote:
| Unfortunately, I'm also prone to this. I don't even notice
| when I click skip on the time limit setting.
|
| But unfortunately it is a human problem (exploited by apps,
| but still a human one), and anything done by another app is
| just treating the symptoms without treating the underlying
| issue.
|
| I recommend the book titled Atomic Habits. For short term
| "solution" you may try rearranging app icons like reddit, fb
| to some obscure position to make it just a bit harder to find
| them (do not totally hide them since you will just revert
| it), and I read that turning on grayscale also deceases the
| "joy" we get from addictive apps. But I found the last one
| way too limiting on usability.
| cout wrote:
| I did the same thing for years, mindlessly browsing well past
| a sane hour. What changed is I started going to bed early and
| getting up early, before the sun rises. I still browse
| mindlessly on occasion, but my after-coffee morning browsing
| is a lot more directed than my drowsy evening browsing.
| itsthejb wrote:
| Another solution is no phones (chargers) in the bedroom.
| Have your "charging station" in the living room
| welfvh wrote:
| for me listening to audiobooks, music or podcasts is really
| helpful to keep the mind stimulated but slowly wind down in
| the evening
| [deleted]
| headmelted wrote:
| Even at that, Downtime is already a feature. Personally I'd
| want the mindless browsing feature on all the time, but it
| would be fairly trivial to assign it to Downtime same as
| other quality-of-life features already in the OS.
| threatofrain wrote:
| FB may try to maximize whatever appeal they have, but does
| persuasive design really stack up against persuasive friends?
| What is the fundamental ammo behind FB's ability to
| manipulate FOMO?
|
| Isn't it friendship and social delight?
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Except that many FB friends aren't really friends. We don't
| have a word for "People we don't talk to about anything
| important but who also enjoy cat videos."
|
| If we did, that's where FB would live. It's a kind of
| friendship surrogacy - noisy and occasionally entertaining,
| but facile and shallow.
|
| And that's the definitive effect of ad tech. It makes
| _everything_ facile and shallow.
|
| Politics becomes polarised and infantile and hostile to
| nuance. Social interactions become gamified ("Follow me and
| I'll follow you back to help both of us reach
| 1,000/10,000/100,000/millions!") Clicking Like becomes a
| displacement activity which avoids real political change.
| Relationships become performative. Businesses become all
| about engagement and persuasion - using the same old
| template of techniques and page designs - and not about
| social value.
|
| I think it's naive to expect Apple to push against this,
| because Apple are part of the problem. Apple World is a
| shiny place which includes exactly the correct number of
| minorities and age demographics all living the officially
| approved clean, smiling, sunny, fit, healthy, efficiently
| organised, and brightly decorated middle class consumer
| lifestyle that Apple products try to personify.
|
| This isn't even about technology. FAANG (and Microsoft)
| have created a shockingly undiverse collection of
| overlapping online worlds which define too many elements of
| work time and personal space - and all with a 1950s tone of
| optimised conformist consumption, mandated self-
| improvement, and transactional time trading.
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Facebook/messaging app/etc creates a sense of friendship
| that minimizes risk. It allows us to control the level of
| engagement so that it optimizes our own personal
| Goldilocks zone of immediate comfort.
|
| Because it wasn't an issue yet, our mothers didn't put an
| arm around our shoulders and say "aw honey, the
| ingredients of friendship include awkward movements,
| inconvenience, sacrifice, vulnerability. You can't do it
| without those essential ingredients."
| [deleted]
| Applejinx wrote:
| No, it is not. It is panic and fear of something harmful
| just out of sight. That drives WAY more engagement than
| 'friendship'.
| spython wrote:
| I totally get it and often find myself doing the same. Mostly
| when I missed out on winding down in the evening in a better
| fashion. Then I visit the sites with the 'engineered
| engagement' and polarizing content and find myself quite
| literally taken for an emotional ride.
|
| It's hard to find content that doesn't overstimulate you in
| that state. Sitcoms and chill twitch streams work so well
| exactly because the extent of what is happening is safe,
| predictable and confined, yet the process is slightly
| different every time.
| hollerith wrote:
| Browsing the web without a goal feels to me more like
| daydreaming than it feels like walking in the woods.
|
| Sometimes I daydream _while_ walking in the woods, but I am
| more likely to daydream while staring at a blank wall or while
| waiting for a bus on a boring street with nothing but concrete
| and asphalt rectangles to look at.
|
| In fact, my whole purpose in walking in the woods is to stop
| the mental chatter, including the daydreaming. If I find myself
| daydreaming during the walk, I consider that a failure and tell
| myself that next time I walk in the woods, I should take along
| a friend or a dog to make the walk more engaging and
| consequently more effective at stopping the chatter -- or that
| I should find more interesting woods.
|
| This comment could be extended greatly by introducing the
| concepts of "focused attention" and "involuntary attention".
| Very briefly, focused attention is how we pay the bills and
| contribute to advancing our civilization and all, but focused
| attention eventually tires the mind. The best way to recover
| from the tiredness and to restore the ability to focus the
| attention is to do things that engage "involuntary attention",
| e.g., taking a walk in the woods where there are things that
| attract attention involuntarily (without raising the blood
| pressure like the sirens and the horns of the city tend to do).
| That will restore the ability to pay focused attention (to
| whatever the person choose to focus on) faster than would being
| in a room alone and staring at a blank wall. Some people advise
| spending as much time as possible either engaging in focused
| attention or recovering the ability to focus one's attention
| and advise against daydreaming and aimless browsing of the web
| because those are sub-optimal ways of restoring the ability to
| focus attention. (Spending time with friends or walking in the
| woods with a dog are much better ways.)
| gerardnll wrote:
| The article offers you the choice to keep mindlessly browsing.
| What we have now it's not really an option. This would be like
| nutritional warnings for apps.
| indigochill wrote:
| This is why I enjoy hanging out in the tildeverse
| (https://tildeverse.org/). It's just a loose group of public
| boxes you can SSH into and chat on (some of them share mailing
| lists, but others don't). Some people make websites or games or
| tools or whatever. But none of it is organized. It's just
| people hanging out online.
| foobarbecue wrote:
| Thanks, tildeverse looks fun! Just found the first clear,
| simple explanation of Makefiles I've read on there.
| spython wrote:
| This seems just wonderful!
| nicbou wrote:
| I disagree. Exercise and walks in the woods feel like taking my
| brain to the dog park. Mindless browsing keeps my mind just
| busy enough to prevent me from thinking about anything or from
| being bored. It's like fast food for the mind.
| bipson wrote:
| I disagree wholeheartedly.
|
| Mindless browsing will occupy my attention, keeps me
| _distracted_ and on the edge, draining my energy and mental
| capacity, makes me jittery - even if this realization took me
| quite some time.
|
| A walk in the woods is refreshing and my mind is focused,
| wandering maybe aimlessly, but well-paced, on its own time,
| makes me relaxed and open-minded.
|
| We like distraction, our mind craves it, often we don't want to
| think about what bothers us. But allowing all the random itches
| that bother us is the only way to address them and let them go.
|
| Also, I have zero, _NIL_ creativity after mindless browsing, I
| am drained.
|
| Alone with myself and my thoughts on a train or a walk the
| thoughts are no longer buzzing, they are forming, transforming,
| becoming real ideas.
| [deleted]
| blitz_skull wrote:
| This comparison is apples and oranges. Fresh air and sunlight
| actually has tangible physical benefits. Staring at a dim blue
| screen while contorting your thumbs isn't doing you any favors
| physically.
|
| To say NOTHING of how infuriating anti-social it has made us as
| a society.
|
| Nature is mostly good. Mindless scrolling is mostly bad.
| Kiro wrote:
| I don't want fresh air or sunlight. I want to sit in a dark
| basement with a big Unix beard. I hate this "lifestyle and
| health" dogma that has poisoned hacker culture.
| mjrbrennan wrote:
| I am not sure if this is entirely what you mean, but for a game
| Red Dead Redemption 2 can scratch this itch. The natural
| environment, ecosystem, and weather effects are amazing. You
| can easily just avoid the main game and just wander around the
| environment, and there are a lot of woods to walk in!
| pizza wrote:
| When I walk through the woods, it's like the environment scrubs
| my mind of accumulated exposure to mental poisoning. When I
| scroll a news feed, the platform tries to jam my mind full of
| the most saccharine palaver possible. I end up feeling less
| like a prism, and more like a pack animal.. Perhaps there's a
| midpoint
| Jenz wrote:
| This is the most comforting thing I ever have read (and right
| now, I needed that).
| flohofwoe wrote:
| I wouldn't compare it to a walk through the woods, more like
| walking through a busy street with angry people and
| advertisements screaming at you all the time ;)
| ospohngellert wrote:
| I actually really like apple's screen time limit capabilities.
| Being able to limit my time on twitch/youtube has been really
| helpful for me. However, one thing I would like to see is
| limiting the number of times I can open an app. Even if I limit
| email to 3 minutes, I can still open it 15 times a day :D
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