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A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

minimizedistraction.com

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Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#61

Post by Bjartr »

lamontcg wrote: post #46

Make junk mail and spam e-mail illegal to start with. Then start doing something about regulating advertising. In an ideal world intrusive advertising would be banned and we'd have to go looking for ads to find them instead of them constantly demanding that we pay attention to them. But that'd entirely blow up Google's whole business model.

> Make junk mail and spam e-mail illegal to start with.

CAN-SPAM[0] does exactly that for US businesses. Any email from a US business that is for advertisement or otherwise promotional (as distinct from transactional[1]) then it:

* Must not have false or misleading from/to/reply-to

* Must not have a deceptive subject

* Must be labeled an ad

* Must include a valid physical postal address

* Must have a clear and conspicuous[2] way to opt-out

* Must have a working opt-out process within 10 business days of the user opting-out

* Must follow all these rules, even if the business contracts out their email marketing

Obviously, fly-by-night businesses and scams aren't going to follow these rules, but by-and-large all legitimate businesses do because each individual email that violates this rule can incur a $40,000+ fine

The FTC has a site[3] for reporting fraud violations, and CAN-SPAM violations fall under the "something else" category in the generic fraud violation report form according to the FTC's FAQ[4]

[0] https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-center/guidance/can...

[1] i.e. it's not to inform you a something happened in the app/site e.g. you have a notification or some action you initiated has completed

[2] in practice, a link with text "Unsubscribe" at the bottom of the email is sufficient.

[3] https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/

[4] https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/#/faq/faq-search/spam

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#62

Post by valw »

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Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#63

Post by aiisjustanif »

tomaskafka wrote: post #43
aresant wrote: post #25

This presentation is wonderful for its PR value "people here care" but naïve bordering on malicious in its approach and understanding of Google's business. 11 years ago PG called the iPad the "hip flask" of the internet (1) and it's 10x worse today than it was then. The incentives of every major ad-supported tech platform are the same - maximize engagement to maximize profit. Every dollar of profit, every promotion,…

This. In a long term, company will never do anything against incentives their business model sets up. Google is the ad company. Don't work for ad conpany.

Tell that to the many SF tech workers optimizing for profit.

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#64

Post by asteroidbelt »

Presentations like these assume people are dumb animals not being able to control their lives. They need to artificially constrained to help them live. Saying bluntly, they need a nanny.

I'm an active user or Google, Facebook, Apple, Twitter and all of them. I turned off GMail notifications for non-important mails. I unsubscribe/report spam promotional e-mail. YouTube autoplay is off (simply because the recommender is not good enough, but I'd happily turned them on otherwise). I unsubscribed from junk groups on Facebook, but the connections on Facebook is very important since I can't meet with most of my friends in person. My Twitter notifications are off, and I do mute often, but the remaining Twitter suggestions are quite interesting. Almost all notifications are off on my phone, but remaining are very helpful. And so on.

The largest distraction in my life is a chat app which is used by my employer. But this is not service provider/product problem: it's company decision to use that application instead of e-mail. Other chat apps I'm used for communication with my friends are not distracting.

The suggestions by the presentation author is irrational: let's stop business growth assuming it will make people more happy. This is not how the world works: if a company start making less efficient product, it will die, and not because of ads revenue, but simply because users will leave for someone who knows how to retain attention.

That guy Tristan Harris who did the presentation is morally dishonest person: he wants to his cake and eat it. He got his millions from Google, and then decided to play good guy by virtue signalling with this presentation and by playing in Social Dilemma: working against the same companies which made him wealthy enough to not worry about money for the rest of his life.

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#65

Post by polynomial »

JTN, this was actually what Medium led with when they originally started* (minimizing distractions) to clear all the rubbish out of sight when you are reading a single article, and not have other content & CTA's competing for your attention.

Of course, it turned out that alone doesn't imply you actually respect your users' attention, as we saw what Medium turned into.

[*the year before this presentation, actually]

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#66

Post by asteroidbelt »

lamontcg wrote: post #46

Make junk mail and spam e-mail illegal to start with. Then start doing something about regulating advertising. In an ideal world intrusive advertising would be banned and we'd have to go looking for ads to find them instead of them constantly demanding that we pay attention to them. But that'd entirely blow up Google's whole business model.

Junk e-mail is not an issue at all (at least in GMail, not sure about other providers): they go by default into "Promotions" folder (not visible by default), and it's not hard to go to that folder once a day to click "report spam" on those which are not important, and that's enough for train Google classifier to send them to spam next time.

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#67

Post by zarkov99 »

Swizec wrote: post #59
aresant wrote: post #25

This presentation is wonderful for its PR value "people here care" but naïve bordering on malicious in its approach and understanding of Google's business. 11 years ago PG called the iPad the "hip flask" of the internet (1) and it's 10x worse today than it was then. The incentives of every major ad-supported tech platform are the same - maximize engagement to maximize profit. Every dollar of profit, every promotion,…

At the dawn of my career I made myself two commitments: 1. Only projects/companies you enjoy 2. Only projects/companies where users are the customers So far so good. It’s amazing the cool stuff you can build when engagement-at-all-cost is the opposite of your goal. When the goal is “Provide so much value users are beyond delighted to pay”. Feels nice to be aligned

I like your way of thinking. What companies do you think fit that goal?

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#68

Post by mountainb »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #10
cmehdy wrote: post #2

For other readers: this seems to be an internal google presentation made public to tell engineers to respect users' attention. I guess as a user of the website it didn't respect my attention enough to make me want to click through the whole thing. I dropped out after twenty or so clicks, having read less and less stuff after a few slides.

Agreed. Ironically, the slideshow format is extremely 'low density', and frustrates my ability to quickly read what they have to say. I didn't get all the way through it either.

It's a great format for reaching functional illiterates, which accurately describes huge portions of the white collar workforce.

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#69

Post by [deleted] »

aresant wrote: post #25

This presentation is wonderful for its PR value "people here care" but naïve bordering on malicious in its approach and understanding of Google's business. 11 years ago PG called the iPad the "hip flask" of the internet (1) and it's 10x worse today than it was then. The incentives of every major ad-supported tech platform are the same - maximize engagement to maximize profit. Every dollar of profit, every promotion,…

[deleted]

Re: A call to minimize distraction and respect users’ attention (2013)

#70

Post by bqui »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #26
cmehdy wrote: post #2

For other readers: this seems to be an internal google presentation made public to tell engineers to respect users' attention. I guess as a user of the website it didn't respect my attention enough to make me want to click through the whole thing. I dropped out after twenty or so clicks, having read less and less stuff after a few slides.

That was my reaction. Terrible UI with grainy graphics, took a long time to get to the point. Talk about wasting time! I gave up about 20 slides in too.

"Terrible UI", is that a concern for you ? this world should go to shit, that man put himself in a uncomfortable situation to give the world a preview.
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