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Stop big tech from making users behave in ways they don't want to

economist.com

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Re: Stop big tech from making users behave in ways they don't want to

#91

Post by thedougd »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #88
ngriffiths wrote: post #9

Sure, making instagram as addictive as possible seems bad but I disagree with the framing a bit. Dark patterns get users to do things they don't want, that's why they get super annoyed at the design or the process or the outcome. Addictive apps are a different thing to me. I don't think it's that compelling to say "obviously no one wants to be on Instagram and they're getting manipulated into it." ...yeah they do! Th…

I absolutely did not want to go to these websites and did it anyway. I ended up blocking them in my hosts file to get me to stop.

It's wild. I reinstalled Facebook to sell some things on Marketplace. Thirty minutes later I'm doom scrolling through shit I wouldn't have sought out. I uninstall the app after I no longer have items to sell.

Re: Stop big tech from making users behave in ways they don't want to

#94

Post by bheadmaster »

shimman wrote: post #39
thinkingtoilet wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's literally what it was. These technologies are addicting. Is it as bad or the same as heroin? No. However, they are designed to be addicting.

Well seeing how we are all granted with one single life, maybe we should be more upset at things that take away our valuable time and replace it with things that make us angry? Who's to say that these things aren't worse than heroin? Lots of people would argue otherwise, I'm becoming one of them myself. Heroin only impacts one individual, social media impacts every connected person on the planet. Mass misery is still…

We should, but we also shouldn't decide what other people consider proper use of their time

Re: Stop big tech from making users behave in ways they don't want to

#95

Post by pbasista »

ryandrake wrote: post #77
cortesoft wrote: post #12

While I agree with the premise, I do wonder how you can write a law that would stop the behavior we want to stop without hurting beneficial features or allowing the law to be too easily bypassed. How do you describe in a legal way the difference between a useful feature people want and an addictive feature they don’t want?

> How do you describe in a legal way the difference between a useful feature people want and an addictive feature they don’t want? I don't know how you'd write it in a law either, but if you're in a meeting at your tech company, and the product owner or tech lead uses language like "We need to get users to do..." and "We need to incentivize..." and "It should be easy to do X and hard to do Y..." then do whatever is i…

> It should be easy to do X and hard to do Y

> you're pushing a behavior-modification scheme onto users

In general I think that your comment is reasonable. I just would like to point out that such "behavior-modification" schemes are sometimes introduced for genuinely good and ethical reasons.

For instance, it is in my opinion desirable to make it more difficult for users to delete all their photos by e.g. having to confirm their decision in a dialog first. Because it prevents them from accidentally doing something they might not want to do and which is potentially impossible to revert.

Re: Stop big tech from making users behave in ways they don't want to

#96

Post by fragmede »

apsurd wrote: post #72
dakiol wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. It seems then that all these "elite" engineers on HN aren't as smart as we thought (and yeah, I include myself in that bag). It's deeply sad to see how our most beloved work (those side projects we pour ourselves into purely for the joy of it) will, at the end, be the very reason most of us lose our jobs (not all of us, but the majority). Openai/antrhopic/etc and others simply took all of that and turned it to…

All is not lost though is it? We can invest our efforts into local models and frontier competitors. I'm not blind, I have Claude pro (not max) and Cursor subscription. But I'm really hesitant to go balls to the wall on the most powerful models because it isn't sustainable; I don't want it to be. So how much can I get from the older models, the smaller, cheaper ones that will hopefully inevitably be commoditized. I th…

Why not?

Re: Stop big tech from making users behave in ways they don't want to

#97

Post by tardedmeme »

pembrook wrote: post #73
tardedmeme wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, buried within this extended mostly-non-answer, it seems your definition of an addiction is something that drives someone to steal copper pipes.

Litigating the semantics of a word doesn't get us anywhere closer to defining the limits of personal responsibility. You'd like the goalposts to sit closer so its easier to offload responsibility onto abstract external entities. I'm arguing this doesn't change who has to be the one to close the app, shut off the TV, turn off the video game, close the bag of candy and take risks in the real world.

And I'm not understanding what point you're trying to make, except that you don't think social media is addictive because people don't steal copper pipes to get more of it.

Re: Stop big tech from making users behave in ways they don't want to

#99

Post by cortesoft »

ryandrake wrote: post #77
cortesoft wrote: post #12

While I agree with the premise, I do wonder how you can write a law that would stop the behavior we want to stop without hurting beneficial features or allowing the law to be too easily bypassed. How do you describe in a legal way the difference between a useful feature people want and an addictive feature they don’t want?

> How do you describe in a legal way the difference between a useful feature people want and an addictive feature they don’t want? I don't know how you'd write it in a law either, but if you're in a meeting at your tech company, and the product owner or tech lead uses language like "We need to get users to do..." and "We need to incentivize..." and "It should be easy to do X and hard to do Y..." then do whatever is i…

I feel like they will just frame it differently: “Users aren’t getting the full value from product x, so let’s change the workflow to help enable them to get more value with no additional effort” or “Users are losing out on a ton of value by cancelling their subscriptions without realizing what they are losing out on, so let’s implement feature x to make them less likely to mistakenly cancel”

Re: Stop big tech from making users behave in ways they don't want to

#100

Post by nathan_compton »

bheadmaster wrote: post #94
shimman wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well seeing how we are all granted with one single life, maybe we should be more upset at things that take away our valuable time and replace it with things that make us angry? Who's to say that these things aren't worse than heroin? Lots of people would argue otherwise, I'm becoming one of them myself. Heroin only impacts one individual, social media impacts every connected person on the planet. Mass misery is still…

We should, but we also shouldn't decide what other people consider proper use of their time

I don't think this is obvious at all. I think its a reasonable function of the state to pursue policies that improve the mental and physical health of its citizens, partly because the negative effects of an unhealthy population are not limited to the individuals who are unhealthy. Liberty is great. I wouldn't want to live anywhere where it wasn't one of the primary goals of a society, but there is no stone tablet from God saying its needs to be the only goal a society can set.
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