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New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

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Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#201

Post by tinus_hn »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #75

I'm the dev that built Netflix's autoplay of the next episode. We built it first on the web player because it is easy to A/B test new features there. We called it "post-play" at the time. When I worked there the product team at Netflix had two KPIs all new features were tested against: hours watched and retention. We would come up with all sorts of ideas to try out, and release them to small user populations of about…

At least I can turn this ‘feature’ off, unlike the obnoxious auto playing trailers.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#202

Post by jwilk »

tlibert wrote: post #18
tantalor wrote: post #2

“If I take the bottom out of this glass and I keep refilling the water or the wine, you won’t know when to stop drinking” That's not how drinking works. That's not how anything works.

He utterly mangled it, but there is an experiment which proves the underlying concept (which I'm guessing was his intent, live testimony is hard): Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake Objective: Using self‐refilling soup bowls, this study examined whether visual cues related to portion size can influence intake volume without altering either estimated intake or satiation. Research Me…

There are reasons to be skeptical about the results of this study:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2018/feb/1...

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#203

Post by logfromblammo »

pmontra wrote: post #185
logfromblammo wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not on the inside, but I have a possible explanation. Netflix has competitors. If we assume that leisure-time hours are fixed in the short term, the more hours you spend watching Netflix, the less you have available for Hulu, Amazon Prime, CBS, HBO, MLB, or Disney streaming services. Thus, if all those have comparable prices, more hours watching Netflix translates to greater subscriber-perceived entertainment val…

> Netflix has competitors. If we assume that leisure-time hours are fixed in the short term, the more hours you spend watching Netflix, the less you have available for Hulu, Amazon Prime, CBS, HBO, MLB, or Disney streaming services. Not only those competitors but any other activity, from reading HN to working to going out with friends, etc.

We could lump those together as screen-time versus non-screen-time.

I hypothesize that converting an hour from one subcategory of screen-time to another is easier than converting it from non-screen-time to screen-time. I.e. it's easier to convince someone to watch Netflix instead of watching Hulu, than it is to convince them to watch Netflix or Hulu instead of hosting/attending a summer outdoor grilling party.

Netflix would show greater gains relative to competitors by converting more hours spent watching their streams. Any attempt to bring in more hours from the outside would also tend to help competitors, since they would then have an easier time poaching those hours from Netflix later. That might be beneficial in a nascent industry, but I think we're past that now. Nobody is going to be launching an explicit "stay in, and watch more TV" campaign any time soon, but apparently they all will whisper "now that you're already watching TV, why not just keep doing it?" via autoplay mechanisms.

And time spent working is definitely not leisure time, by definition.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#204

Post by calais »

ilovetux wrote: post #164

I would like to see warnings on certain websites which use user retention tactics such as these to prominently display warnings like cigarette companies are required to do. Something like the following: "Facebook is known to be addictive and use deceptive practices in user interface design to influence you into spending an unhealthy amount time on their platform in order to maximize the number of advertisements you v…

That would be a much better law than the lawmakers'.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#205

Post by eridius »

easymodex wrote: post #175
lloeki wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find autoplay on Netflix highly inconvenient. Disable it and you can continue to watch the next episode with just one button press. There is no need for navigating around. Also super useful when you happen to fall asleep in front of the TV so that it doesn't keep pumping all the way through the night. Autoplay on Netflix is IMHO a dark pattern to feed on attention and FOMO.

I strongly disagree. Autoplay does exactly what I want when binging through series. I would watch it either way, but why would I need to click buttons for each episode when it can be automatic. I support automation, not manual labor.

This would be fine if it were opt-in (and especially, opt-in per session). It's not. It's opt-out, and the opt-out is rather hidden (IIRC you have to use a web browser, you can't even opt out from devices running Netflix).

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#206

Post by eridius »

I could support something like this if, instead of banning it, simply made these practices opt-in. Autoplay is great if you want it. It sucks if you don't. And Netflix makes it so dang hard to disable (you have to use a web browser and find an obscure preference). So instead of autoplay, it should require interaction the first time, with an option to autoplay for the rest of the session. Similarly for infinite scrolling, how about we don't infinitely scroll the first time, but have a footer you can click to load more, with an option to infinitely scroll for the rest of the session.

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#207

Post by mattkrause »

SkyBelow wrote: post #42
FabHK wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: see caveat from K-Wall below. Can't trust anything these days :-/ That's exactly how it works, to an extent. In a study [1], people with self-refilling soup bowls ate 73% more soup (p Nudge or in Mindless Eating . [1] Wansink, B., Painter, J.E., & North, J. (2005). Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake Obesity Research, 13 (1), 93-100 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.…

How replicated has the study been? Even a fully credible researcher should not be trusted when their research has not been replicated due to just how prevalent replication issues are in psychology.

In anything…

People like to rag on psychology for this, but the same replicability problem affects a lot of fields. Some of it is sloppiness (or straight-out fraud, which is more likely here) but it's also just that science is hard!

Re: New bill would ban autoplay videos and endless scrolling

#208

Post by mattkrause »

jwilk wrote: post #202
tlibert wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He utterly mangled it, but there is an experiment which proves the underlying concept (which I'm guessing was his intent, live testimony is hard): Bottomless Bowls: Why Visual Cues of Portion Size May Influence Intake Objective: Using self‐refilling soup bowls, this study examined whether visual cues related to portion size can influence intake volume without altering either estimated intake or satiation. Research Me…

There are reasons to be skeptical about the results of this study: https://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2018/feb/1...

That's polite! I would say that I doubt nearly everything that's come out of that lab…
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