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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

#121

Post by evrydayhustling »

omg_ketchup wrote: post #87
lghh wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or, they sell both the license and the users by having an install base that has trouble switching. Remember windows 10 ads? https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2017/3/17/14956540/mic...

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#122

Post by quadrangle »

aylmao wrote: post #103
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…

Yikes. So much to say. > Google may be more powerful and invasive even, but there's tons of reasons they have a less-manipulative, less-awful business model overall. They sell ads too. Sure, they don't have THE newsfeed, but they're still trying. Google Now is a feed with personal and non-personal content they're trying to sneak into your life. They're still trying to make their way into your feelings and social netw…

I'm not an expert, but I'm not a trend-follower either. I've been anti-Facebook from early days. It was obvious from the beginning that they were far more of an attack on the open internet than Google.

It was Google Plus that pushed Facebook to even acknowledge and support at all the idea that people had different personas in different contexts and wanted to relate to and share with different people in different ways.

Google has long offered far more actual control and transparency than Facebook. Google offers products that should exist at least, such as web searching to state the obvious. Facebook-style social media shouldn't exist — they want to be an AOL-type walled-garden.

My opinions have nothing to do with the media, and I'm not apologizing for Google or Amazon's real problems.

I don't want to get into defending Apple (their direction with iOS years ago was the final straw that drove me to move to GNU/Linux full time). I could go on about why I now still feel MS is worse though.

Overall, you speculate a lot about how my judgments are probably superficial. What I'll admit is that they ARE general impressions, not a detailed analysis. But my concerns are not johnny-come-lately scapegoating or unthoughtful.

> some sort of moral high-ground

GNU has the moral high ground here, not even Linux has that.

To be clear, I'm not even saying Facebook is useless. It has some value and has captured a ton of value (which is why it makes sense for people to use it to get the value they've captured). On that note, consider that Facebook does far more to destroy the long-term archival value of the internet than Google.

There aren't comparable complaints like this: https://daringfireball.net/2017/06/fuck_facebook for Google or the other companies, even though they have their own serious issues.

I'm highly critical of them all.

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#123

Post by remir »

paulddraper wrote: post #114
remir wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For multi-parts videos?

Multi-part videos exist? Just...why? Youtube videos are up to 12 hours. That's reminiscent of the good ol' VCR days.

Because for certain things, it's better to split the content on multiple parts. For example, I was watching a series of videos on Windows Server administration and the content was split into multiple parts and it made sense.

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#125

Post by gant »

remir wrote: post #123
paulddraper wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multi-part videos exist? Just...why? Youtube videos are up to 12 hours. That's reminiscent of the good ol' VCR days.

Because for certain things, it's better to split the content on multiple parts. For example, I was watching a series of videos on Windows Server administration and the content was split into multiple parts and it made sense.

Still, why does YT need to default to autoplay on every time I load a watch page?

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#126

Post by aylmao »

quadrangle wrote: post #122
aylmao wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes. So much to say. > Google may be more powerful and invasive even, but there's tons of reasons they have a less-manipulative, less-awful business model overall. They sell ads too. Sure, they don't have THE newsfeed, but they're still trying. Google Now is a feed with personal and non-personal content they're trying to sneak into your life. They're still trying to make their way into your feelings and social netw…

I'm not an expert, but I'm not a trend-follower either. I've been anti-Facebook from early days. It was obvious from the beginning that they were far more of an attack on the open internet than Google. It was Google Plus that pushed Facebook to even acknowledge and support at all the idea that people had different personas in different contexts and wanted to relate to and share with different people in different ways…

Thanks for the thoughtful answer, I agree with you, and am glad you don't consider yourself a trend-follower. Stay critical, HN.

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#127

Post by siempohn »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #119
siempohn wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out http://www.getsiempo.com - we built a launcher that incorporates this thinking throughout the UI. We'd love feedback on the beta!

Thanks! I will play with this. Based on the website and the PlayStore video, I already love two of your ideas: unbranded icons and batching notifications. Not sure if the former might have much productivity or health impact, but it sure as hell makes the interface looks nicer. EDIT: I saw a comment on PlayStore about opt-out telemetry in your product. Could you elaborate on exactly what kind of data you're sending? O…

Awesome!

Most of what we collect is aggregated & anonymous. Our privacy policy explains the categories of information that we collect and how we use it. Within each category, we collect too many data points to create an itemized list. For example, for users who haven’t opted-out, we collect aggregated & anonymous event logs for every tap on every screen within the Siempo launcher. However, we could offer to answer any specific questions. Anyone is welcome to do there own packet trace, but that won’t help them understand what is anonymous and what isn’t.

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#128

Post by remir »

gant wrote: post #125
remir wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because for certain things, it's better to split the content on multiple parts. For example, I was watching a series of videos on Windows Server administration and the content was split into multiple parts and it made sense.

Still, why does YT need to default to autoplay on every time I load a watch page?

"User engagement"

Re: Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

#129

Post by Flenser »

cromwellian wrote: post #8
baxtr wrote: post #6

Regardless of how serious google is about this (their main customers are advertisers not android users), I don’t find the measures convincing - shush: if you place your phone on the table you’ll pick it up from time to time anyways, it won’t be out of sight - colors: I’ve turned my smartphone screen B&W, I haven’t noticed a big difference yet, but maybe there is some research out there - monitoring: I installed a mon…

They don't have to be effective on you, if they are effective on even a small percent, it might be worth it. We hear this every time there's a new public safety campaign: Drunk driving, seat belts, texting and driving, safe sex, stop smoking, gun safety, etc Every single time, the cry is "but but, this won't solve all the problems, it won't work on everyone." But we have reduced drunk driving deaths, we have reduced…

This is a good point, and the people who this will help most are probably driving a lot of notifications to their friends, so this will help their friends too.
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