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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

#81

Post by wpietri »

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.

Agreed. Plenty of people struggle with the problem they're solving here. Especially at Google, where they a) think of themselves as a nice, mission-driven company, and b) they do a lot of user-focused stuff that doesn't immediately contribute to quarterly revenue, and c) they have a workforce that can easily switch jobs, there's plenty of reason to think that they're sincere here.

It's surely true that execs looked at this and made sure the ROI wasn't blatantly large and negative. And there's definitely another level of analysis where a lot of good behavior turns out to be useful to the organism, in the same sense that moms love kids because genes need new meat-robot bodies to run around in. But that complimentary to your frame of analysis, not contradictory to it.

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#82

Post by visarga »

amelius wrote: post #9

How about an option where a parent controls during what times the phone has a data connection?

I tried that and my kid hacked the phone (and PC). So now I just take the keyboard in the evening and return it the next day. I think Google and Apple have an opposing interest to parents.

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#84

Post by quadrangle »

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…

> My cynical read of this is that it's an attack on Facebook

Yah, and hooray. Google may be more powerful and invasive even, but there's tons of reasons they have a less-manipulative, less-awful business model overall. Any successful attack on Facebook is a good thing.

All these companies are bad, but Facebook is the worst of them. I'd say Facebook All these companies are shitty in certain ways, but some are shittier than others. Apple's walled-garden censorship of copyleft software on iOS is what led me to embrace GNU in the first place, but the level of dark-patterns they do is nothing like Facebook.

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#85

Post by marricks »

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.

I hate it, and my personal biggest gripe is we the people should be making the rules to protect ourselves through laws, cheeringng on a company for doing this is just encouraging and enabling “self regulation”.

They’ll also hold shareholder value above “product values” (as google users are their product). It encourages half measure and ineffective solutions.

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#86

Post by lghh »

quadrangle wrote: post #84
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…

> My cynical read of this is that it's an attack on Facebook Yah, and hooray. Google may be more powerful and invasive even, but there's tons of reasons they have a less-manipulative, less-awful business model overall. Any successful attack on Facebook is a good thing. All these companies are bad, but Facebook is the worst of them. I'd say Facebook All these companies are shitty in certain ways, but some are shittier…

Why Google over MS? 5-10 years ago I'd agree, but not as much now. They are trying to be a cloud service company funded by enterprise and there's nothing inherently wrong with that as far as I can see. I'd also put Amazon below MS due to labor abuses that are not as prevalent at MS.

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#87

Post by omg_ketchup »

lghh wrote: post #86
quadrangle wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My cynical read of this is that it's an attack on Facebook Yah, and hooray. Google may be more powerful and invasive even, but there's tons of reasons they have a less-manipulative, less-awful business model overall. Any successful attack on Facebook is a good thing. All these companies are bad, but Facebook is the worst of them. I'd say Facebook All these companies are shitty in certain ways, but some are shittier…

Why Google over MS? 5-10 years ago I'd agree, but not as much now. They are trying to be a cloud service company funded by enterprise and there's nothing inherently wrong with that as far as I can see. I'd also put Amazon below MS due to labor abuses that are not as prevalent at MS.

MS charges for their product, which means the users are not the product. Agreed.

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#88

Post by devmunchies »

marricks wrote: post #85
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.

I hate it, and my personal biggest gripe is we the people should be making the rules to protect ourselves through laws, cheeringng on a company for doing this is just encouraging and enabling “self regulation”. They’ll also hold shareholder value above “product values” (as google users are their product). It encourages half measure and ineffective solutions.

> we the people should be making the rules to protect ourselves through laws

The government has a moral obligation to make sure we aren’t spending too much time on our devices? People can’t think for themselves anymore.

It’s the same thing as the war on drugs. The government can provide medical assistance and services but otherwise it’s not their place.

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#89

Post by Ensorceled »

jacksmith21006 wrote: post #53

I do not agree with any of this. It is a personal choice. I am old and spent much of my day behind a screen my entire life. Do not need anyone to tell me to take a step away. Google really just needs to do their own thing and stop listening to all the chatter about this and that.

This is exactly like moderate drinker complaining about AA programs, R.I.D.E. stops[1] and Smart Serve[2].

It's not about you. Stop humble bragging about your lack of an addictive personality and simply move on.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduce_Impaired_Driving_Everyw...

[2] https://www.smartserve.ca/

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#90

Post by paulddraper »

yellow_postit wrote: post #69
gant wrote: post #59

If Google really wanted to help here, why don't they just, you know, make every part of YouTube less optimised for maximum view time. Remove autoplay, turn down the recommendations. Nah, we're gonna throw some optional, possibly ineffective shit into our mobile OS instead so we can say we did something.

Those features you listed seem like quite useful ones for day to day usage. Many things won’t have a bright line “this makes the product useful” vs. “this makes the product addictive” feature classification.

> Many things won’t have a bright line “

Agreed.

Though how often have you found autoplay by default makes YouTube useful?

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