261–270 of 285 posts
Oh wow, that's from 8 years ago. And then it got leaked outside of Google 3 years ago it seems -- this article [1] provides a ton more context. Just for context, and before people start accusing Google of hypocrisy or anything -- these slides never represented an official (or unofficial) Google position or anything. They're not PR. They're just a single employee's opinion in slideshow form, an opinion he was trying t…
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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 interesti…
> (often with a gross ignorance of the issues involved in hair care, beauty treatments, and hygiene). wait.. you seriously going to defend hairdresser regulations? Care to enlightenment me on why they are a net good for society? I always thought they are a punching bag for libertarians because they are such an obvious net negative for society...
I'm not going to argue that all regulations and licensing within the industry are sensible, that's simply never the case. And there is self-serving regulation for all the usual reasons (guilds, education, limiting competition and entry, all of which you can find in, oh, to pick a random example, the tech sector).
But the case is also not nearly as black and white as Reason would like to have you believe.
More generally, in my view, in any technology, the greatest elevation of knowledge and expertise comes not in applying the basics and in positive effects of the methods and systems involved, but in what I've called hygiene factors: the unintended consequences, side effects, complex interactions, and risks.
The notion of manifest and latent functions was developed by sociologist Robert K. Merton.[1] In discussing these, Merton makes the perceptive observation that because latent functions are not immediately apparent, obvious, or significant, they represent a greater increment of knowledge and understanding than manifest functions, which are obvious, evident, easily understood and communicated, etc.
TL;DR: there are nonevident hygiene and side-effect factors.
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Notes:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_and_latent_functions_...
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…
Your point?
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> I fail to see how what we have now is inherently worse...especially for cultural minorities. Exploiting psychological weakness to keep people's attention goes back a long, long way. That's never going away The "attack surface", so to speak, is larger with individualized content consumption. With TV at max we have N channels that can broadcast N different viewpoints with the intention to rile M people up, at most in…
> As for hard evidence, we could use non-work screen time as a proxy, To play devil's advocate, screen play time (i.e. video games) has inspired a whole generation of computer engineers to follow this career. I would argue that screen play time is essential to a child's development in the 21st century, and is just as valid as 'outside' play time or 'social' play time. Of course, all things in moderation still applies…
I hear you. Our games were mostly indie though and computers weren’t connected to the internet, and when it did, it wasn’t to this internet.
The distraction of notifications, or "sign up for our email news letter" distractions I'm certainly against. But, the fact of having my time wasted (getting a notification I don't care about) has highlighted other things that waste my time such as Movies that start with 1-3 minutes of company logos. An animation of "A Scott Free Production", followed by an animated logo of "Bad Robot", followed by yet another animate…
> The same with both movie trailers and game trailers. I go to see the game trailer and there's 30 seconds to 2 minutes of logos. > They aren't respecting my time. Imagine going to a movie theather, paying to watch a film, only to be subjected to over 15 minutes of trailers for other movies and advertising for local businesses before what I want to watch finally starts. I don't go there anymore.
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> Presentations like these assume people are dumb animals not being able to control their lives You're vastly underestimating the potential to exploit human nature. Just by being here ranting like this shows that the topic bypassed your rational executive function and fired up your sympathetic nervous system.
> You're vastly underestimating the potential to exploit human nature. Human nature were exploited for thousand years, and humans are still doing fine. I didn't see strong arguments why current megacorp mind control is worse than usual. > Just by being here ranting like this shows that the topic bypassed your rational executive function and fired up your sympathetic nervous system. I didn't get it. Are you stating th…
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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.
Maybe it's more like sugar?
If "gambling addiction" is a real thing (just search the web for it), then "social media addiction" can be, too. Casinos don't let kids under 18 gamble.
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…
Small time crooks who steal $100 go to jail, but corporations who steal $millions go unpunished.
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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…
> Criminalization of dark patterns? Criminalisation is actually better than regulation. Regulation is about what you do. Criminalisation takes into account what you did and what you intended to do. One year ago, you followed every website design of the time, and made the "Please respect my privacy" button look like a the text in some terms and conditions, but the "Please sell all my data in a way that will increase m…
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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…
Possibly unpopular opinion, but I don't see why so important to protect "small startups" from regulation in any situation. If you serve a million users then those million users will be affected by your mistakes and your unethical business decisions, no matter how many people are on your payroll. If you don't have the resources to comply, why are you serving a million users in the first place?