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The Tyranny of the Marginal User

nothinghuman.substack.com

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Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#631

Post by Iulioh »

pif wrote: post #626
Iulioh wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing Another thing destroyed by the infinite growth model

You mean: another thing destroyed that a few people used to enjoy when the developers had no chance to have it economically better!

Man, you can have a profitable thing and just..have that?

Like if you have the same let's say 20% profit in the world of business is not enough, you want the RATE of your return to go higher even if the product allowed you to stay stupidity rich.

Economically better is a good pair of words that leads to enshittification via greed

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#632

Post by oxfordmale »

oasisaimlessly wrote: post #597
wbobeirne wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always push back on this argument, because it came up a lot. As someone higher up at the company once put it, if people are sufficiently convinced that you can find them what they're looking for in a dating app, there's almost no amount of money they wouldn't spend. People churn after not getting what they want out of an app. And relationships end, and people will return to apps they felt they had success with. Wor…

> people will return to apps they felt they had success with So then the trick is to provide the illusion of successful relationships (but of course not ones that actually pan out in the long term).

Long lasting relationships are based on common values. However, you can have succesful medium term relationships based on common interests and good looks.

OkCupid, in its heydays, indeed managed to match people on common values by asking detailed questions. A lot of modern dating apps are far more focus on looks and common interests.

Yes they look cute, and love rock climbing too, but hate children, and never want any. It will result in a good match in your mid twenties, but likely going to result in irreconcilable differences when you approach 30. Unless of course you both hate children :-)

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#633

Post by gwd »

opsimist wrote: post #606
lovich wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t that just Eternal September? At least in the internet

Can we reverse Eternal Eptember? Can we create IQnet just for nerds?

Sure, just make something that has a barrier to entry that will filter out non-nerds. From what I can tell Ham radio is basically just a chatroom with an entrance exam, for instance. Anything done in a constructed language like Esperanto would be another filter.

There's nothing stopping anyone from making a website duplicating the original OKCupid method. It's just that it requires someone willing to say "no" to the Marginal User and stay niche.

And from what I can tell, Mastodon is duplicating the original, pre-value-extraction Twitter experience. But the main filter it has at the moment is the network effects from Twitter and Facebook; as it grows that filter effect will be reduced.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#635

Post by pif »

Iulioh wrote: post #631
pif wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean: another thing destroyed that a few people used to enjoy when the developers had no chance to have it economically better!

Man, you can have a profitable thing and just..have that? Like if you have the same let's say 20% profit in the world of business is not enough, you want the RATE of your return to go higher even if the product allowed you to stay stupidity rich. Economically better is a good pair of words that leads to enshittification via greed

Enshittification is only a problem from the point of view of the non-paying user. But the on-paying user has no say in what happens to the app.

As they say, if you are not paying for the product, you are the product.

Enjoying the generosity of other people is fine, but it gives you no right to expect it to last indefinitely.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#636

Post by pif »

Iulioh wrote: post #631
pif wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean: another thing destroyed that a few people used to enjoy when the developers had no chance to have it economically better!

Man, you can have a profitable thing and just..have that? Like if you have the same let's say 20% profit in the world of business is not enough, you want the RATE of your return to go higher even if the product allowed you to stay stupidity rich. Economically better is a good pair of words that leads to enshittification via greed

> enshittification via greed

You are right. The greed of affectionate users who refuse to pay has destroyed many a service!

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#638

Post by Sharlin »

mhb wrote: post #407
Sharlin wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like a layman can have a good idea of whether a dentist has done a good job, except in cases where the job was clearly botched. People can't realistically make an informed choice based on dentist competence, so soft metrics like patient comfort and general bellyfeel dominate. Moreover, people hopefully don't need dental services very frequently, so gathering enough data takes a long time.

OK. But a single payer addresses none of those issues.

Single payer has many, many more data points from which to draw conclusions.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#639

Post by camgunz »

I like this article, but I have to say it spills a lot of ink just to say that engagement metrics fucked us. These products stopped trying to empower us and started commodifying us. Marl isn't the problem; those execs are the problem.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#640

Post by TheDong »

BWStearns wrote: post #89
ultra-jeremyx wrote: post #82

Are there any examples of _consumer_ software that has an interface for the Marginal User, and a different interface for others? The only example that comes to mind is something like TweetDeck, but I believe that was killed off in the new Elmo/X era.

gmail had a kind of hidden option for adding keyboard shortcuts and their labs options. Not really a fully different interface but for a long time they kept that pretty lively. Unfortunately gmail has fallen off pretty hard lately. I can't even reliably expect my attachments to actually send the past few weeks.

email still has non-marginal-interfaces available in general though.

You can still configure some combination of mutt, offlineimap, sendmail, etc to work with gmail and view your emails locally in a proper viewer.

Or use thunderbird I guess, though thunderbird feels pretty "marginal user" focused compared to mutt.

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