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Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

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Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#71

Post by agumonkey »

dschuetz wrote: post #42
agumonkey wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called balance. They made it an official notion and released a few things. It's a tangible effort. I give them a bit (a bit) of trust regarding the wisdom needed to make a good "business". I don't subscribe to the responsibility shift. Unless they make their notification and metrics bogus, hard to notice etc it's a good measure. And yes, let's make user "responsible" or IMO.. in control. The system informs me, I…

Well, in my opinion, the users actually are always in control. Don't buy shady and addictive stuff. Or throw away, sell whatever you've got. But, let's face it, that's not a productive solution Google would suggest, right? Making good and lasting tech is really expensive, there is no denying that. But I'd rather have that, instead of shady and addictive consumer products. The tech industry always fails to deliver neu…

I kinda disagree. Your phone is a pocket computer that transfered the desktop usages, you didn't have that much time in your computer before so life took care of time constraints. "Ubiquitous computing" means neverending internet .. and this scales the problematic usages to the point people realize they've been somehow hijacked by their devices, something they didn't sense before. More and more articles talk about that, and now brands are trying to give users hints about unforeseen effects.

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#72

Post by Qwertie »

reificator wrote: post #36
Qwertie wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of googles products are not based on addiction. You use google search because you have to find something. You don't spend hours randomly browsing search results. Youtube will take a hit from this but the rest of google is not an addiction business.

Most of Google's revenue is based on addiction. You see more ads the longer you use the internet.

Google search is very needs based. You need to search things pretty much every day, You will use their service regularly simply because it's so useful for getting things done. You don't need to check facebook every 5 minutes and make regular posts or comments.

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#73

Post by partiallypro »

eutectic wrote: post #10

Corporation's are made of people and people don't only have the direct interests of the company in mind. I don't understand the commenters responding negativepy to these proposals; by all means be circumspect, but don't criticize a company for making a positive change just because you think it doesn't go far enough.

The company, as a company, would not move forward with these measures if it didn't help their bottom line or hurt their competition in some way. They aren't doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. Sure, it may have started as a well meaning thing by a few workers, but it's pretty clear that it's to hurt their largest advertising rival, Facebook. If Google can make their advertising and data more valuable than their alternative they will grow. Does that mean that what they are doing is inherently bad, and won't benefit society if it's successful? Not at all.

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#75

Post by bitL »

ghostcluster wrote: post #4

I am inherently suspicious of these types of nanny-tech initiatives. Nintendo did something similar recently in many of their games — warning you that you've been playing for X amount of time, mayba take a break? — and it came off very grating and presumptive, to the point that there were many popular memes created to make fun of it. It's hard to do these types of warnings with a naive implementation because the syst…

> warning you that you've been playing for X amount of time, mayba take a break?

You've been playing /r/outside for too long. Maybe take a break?

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#76

Post by bitL »

maelito wrote: post #22

What about a warning telling us to look away from the phone every 20 minutes of intense use (eyes staring at the screen continuously) ?

That would be so awesome when you are reading some scientific paper for university and have to focus! "Hey, you are reading too much, get off! Phone locked for the next 5 minutes!"

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#78

Post by Ldorigo »

"It will even display what you did inside various apps–and on this front, third- party developers will be able to specify trackable metrics inside their software."

Well, that sounds like a totally disinterested move that has nothing to do with Google's strive to track every single thing you do.

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#79

Post by wpietri »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #16

My cynical read of this is that it's an attack on Facebook. Google has a giant attention platform in YouTube, but Facebook and Instagram are attention platforms. I think YouTube will decline a bit as a result of this, but the rest of Google - and the data collection of Android are untouched. If people become less addicted to their phones, they're still going to have their phone when they go to restaurants and take ph…

Another possible cynical angle is that they are getting out in front of a major PR problem. The rumblings about the addictive nature of tech have been getting louder for years. I just talked to a startup that was just going to replace the whole Android launcher to help solve this. And there are plenty of HNers who have their own custom solutions to this, some going as far as downgrading to a dumbphone.

If they can shift the discussion from "phones are bad" to "some apps are bad", suddenly it's not their problem anymore. People looking to collect scalps will be focused on the ones creating the most exploitative experiences. Which is not only good for Google, but good for everybody, in that's putting pressure closer to the right place.

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