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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)

#191

Post by Zelphyr »

kmstout wrote: post #150
Stratoscope wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate "engagement". I am a weird person. When I used to go to a movie theater, I stayed and watched the credits at the end. There would be some closing music, and maybe a few outtakes. It was always interesting to see how many people it took to make a movie and what they all did. A nice way to unwind and acknowledge everyone who created the movie. Lately I've been watching The Sopranos on Amazon. As soon as the end…

Likewise radio stations' playing songs back to back without a gap. "Stairway to Heaven" deserves a second or two of silence after finishing.

Or playing the beginning of one song over the end of another. Or talking over the last 15 seconds of a song.

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

#192

Post by elihu »

Zelphyr wrote: post #90

All I've heard for the past 12+ years is "engagement". The singular focus on that one word to the exclusion of everything else is astounding to me. As if it is some magic incantation on the part of BizDev (or whatever they're called these days) that instantly transmogrifies users into profits. At one company I worked at, we had a digital product that was part of a suite of services our company provided. It was useful…

The thing that frustrates me about the idea of optimizing for engagement, is that the winning strategy seems to be to make the interface worse. If it's hard to navigate and find things, then people spend more time using the product.

I assume that web developers have some techniques to determine whether people are spending more time on the site because it's legitimately useful and they're getting a lot of value out of it versus blundering around and not finding what they're looking for, but the whole idea of "engagement" seems like it could be summed up as "we don't think the distinction between those two things is important".

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

#193

Post by dredmorbius »

Mandatum wrote: post #182
grecy wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've made laws against plenty of thing in the advertising world. - In Australia advertising cigarettes is illegal. - In New Zealand billboards are illegal. - In Australia there are very strict "truth in advertising laws" and breaking them has big penalties. If we really care enough about this issue, we could absolutely make laws preventing certain dark patterns on the web. Given it seems likely that all commerce wil…

> In New Zealand billboards are illegal. Yeah right. Billboards are everywhere, not sure where you got that idea.

There is or was a ban in Auckland, specifically. Few mentions online so I suspect it may have expired or been repealed, but it's mentioned in this 2012 Guardian article:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/apr/20/ban-ou...

(Generally: respond to the points or assertions, if you have evidence of falsity, provide it. If you find a claim unsupported, request references.)

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

#194

Post by dredmorbius »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #173
dredmorbius wrote: post #157

In the 8 years that have elapsed since this pitch was made at Google, one conclusion is absolutely crystal clear: the industry has as little self-regulatory control over its use of such dark patterns as the public has over avoiding them. Regulation, taxation, and where necessary, criminalisation, are obvious and necessary. I'll note that for once, the patterns are not entirely synonymous with massive tech monopolies,…

Criminalization of dark patterns? It’s not impossible to imagine — intentionally tricking a user is sometimes called fraud — but I’m not sure we’ve thought through the implications of criminalizing website design. The biggest companies are the ones least affected by regulation, because they can invest resources into complying. Small startups sometimes can’t. A teenager in their bedroom usually can’t. And that’s no sm…

The scale argument against regulation is a frequent one. I'd like to see regulation have specific mandates for increased responsibility with size. There are examples of this elsewhere, e.g., exceptions from food inspecition and licensing regulations for home cooks, even for sales at relatively informal markets such as farmers' markets.

http://www.fma.alabama.gov/HomeProc.aspx

The case for the Internet is an interesting one, as there are numerous cases where a single individual does in fact provide services used widely (Alexandra Albakyan of Sci-Hub, and Chet Ramey of OpenSSL come to mind). Defining "scale" and commensurate "responsibility" does require some nuance.

The overregulation trope is a frequent one of the Libertarian movement, and appears frequently at (and on HN, from) Reason.com, among other sources. One suspects that Koch Industries and ilk would like to be similarly exempted from such onerous requirements as the individual hairdresser they so often performatively defend (often with a gross ignorance of the issues involved in hair care, beauty treatments, and hygiene).

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

#195

Post by AlbertCory »

edmundsauto wrote: post #189
AlbertCory wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's contrast two addictive and harmful phenomena in order to see what's controlled them and what hasn't: 1) Cigarette smoking: In the last 50 years, the % of adults who smoke has fallen dramatically. WIN. 2) Slot machines: I don't have revenue numbers, but I'd be surprised if the $$ figures have fallen by anything like smoking's. LOSS. Internet addiction (and smartphone addiction) IS harmful. If you disagree with t…

Aren't you using a somewhat circular definition? The trick is to differentiate smartphone usage from addiction, which is determined by whether it's harmful.

I don't think it's circular. There are articles (I can't point to them now, sorry) about the effect on the brain of intermittent rewards, and how that IS addiction.

Although certainly not identical to that of heroin, which is well-studied.

So no, I don't agree that "the trick is to differentiate smartphone usage from addiction." It's to define a (probably) new type of addiction.

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

#196

Post by madrox »

Having heard this call for years, I've come to the conclusion that this is the 21st century's "TV rots your brain." We've replaced channel surfing with doom scrolling. TV stations are mostly run by white men, too.

At best, I can say that there's a fundamental human need to stare into space for a while. We could delete all technology tomorrow, and we wouldn't magically be less distracted. At least now, there's a hope of seeing things we care about, instead of what we got in the 80s that was designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Sitting through toilet paper commercials are actually the worst.

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

#198

Post by dredmorbius »

grecy wrote: post #180
sillysaurusx wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criminalization of dark patterns? It’s not impossible to imagine — intentionally tricking a user is sometimes called fraud — but I’m not sure we’ve thought through the implications of criminalizing website design. The biggest companies are the ones least affected by regulation, because they can invest resources into complying. Small startups sometimes can’t. A teenager in their bedroom usually can’t. And that’s no sm…

We've made laws against plenty of thing in the advertising world. - In Australia advertising cigarettes is illegal. - In New Zealand billboards are illegal. - In Australia there are very strict "truth in advertising laws" and breaking them has big penalties. If we really care enough about this issue, we could absolutely make laws preventing certain dark patterns on the web. Given it seems likely that all commerce wil…

Do you have a cite for the NZ outdoor advertising ban?

Best I can find (see down-thread) is one that applied in Auckland, though not the rest of the country. It's peculiarly little-referenced online, and I suspect has lapsed.

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

#199

Post by soumyadeb »

an1sotropy wrote: post #108
novok wrote: post #31

This was made in 2013: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristan_Harris

thanks for this info. I recognize him now from the Social Dilemma movie.

Watching "Social Dilemma" on Netflix (a movie made by Netflix) was quite an irony. Most people "waste" more time on Netflix than all other social platforms combined.

Yet, "Social Dilemma" covered/blamed every company except Netflix :)

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

#200

Post by toast0 »

tchalla wrote: post #145
Stratoscope wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate "engagement". I am a weird person. When I used to go to a movie theater, I stayed and watched the credits at the end. There would be some closing music, and maybe a few outtakes. It was always interesting to see how many people it took to make a movie and what they all did. A nice way to unwind and acknowledge everyone who created the movie. Lately I've been watching The Sopranos on Amazon. As soon as the end…

> Lately I've been watching The Sopranos on Amazon. As soon as the end credits roll, a "Next Episode" box pops up in the corner and I am in a race against time to click the teeny Cancel button. I think they give me five whole seconds before auto-starting the next episode. There should be a global setting to switch Autoplay Off in your settings.

Turning off autoplay is helpful, but it'd still be nice for it to not shrink the credits to try to entice me to watch something else.

Almost as bad as when I went to the cinema recently and the projector turned off when the end credits started scrolling. Ugh, turns out there was a mid credits scene I missed too.

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