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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

#141

Post by LPisGood »

joe_mamba wrote: post #74
LPisGood wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t looked at OpenClaw but I get the impression anyone could build it. It doesn’t do anything technically impressive, does it?

>anyone could build it Then why hasn't anyone else done it before? With hindsight, it's always easy to say anyone could have done it too, but there's more to product success than just coding and shipping an app out the door. The first iPhone was built using COTS(commercial off the shelf) parts that Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola also had access to, and SW tools they also had access to, yet Apple won and buried the othe…

I agree it was a good idea and there’s more to product success, but you were specifically talking about coding skill level.

There are some things I could easily say I (and many others) could not build even in retrospect. Solidworks, for example is beyond a lot of people’s skill level and very difficult to build.

Flappy bird and open claw, not so much.

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

#142

Post by XorNot »

xg15 wrote: post #117
Terr_ wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This reminds me of the TikTok ban that lasted all of twelve seconds. That timeline has way more to do with the corrupt politicians than consumer behavior. _______________ Both in the sense that the original semi-bipartisan law should've been ruled unconstitutional [0], and also in how the Republican party turned around and broke portions of that law for months until Trump could ensure the assets were handed to his…

I found it interesting that congress never took issue with any other social media platform, and was fine with TikTok once again as well after it was sold to an American owner. So looks like politicians never had any problem with the addictiveness of social media, they only have a problem when it's used by foreign adversaries and not by domestic companies...

Absolutely no one was running it on "social media is harmful". The policy was overtly that it had to be American owned.

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

#143

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#144

Post by gavmor »

joe_mamba wrote: post #74
LPisGood wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t looked at OpenClaw but I get the impression anyone could build it. It doesn’t do anything technically impressive, does it?

>anyone could build it Then why hasn't anyone else done it before? With hindsight, it's always easy to say anyone could have done it too, but there's more to product success than just coding and shipping an app out the door. The first iPhone was built using COTS(commercial off the shelf) parts that Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola also had access to, and SW tools they also had access to, yet Apple won and buried the othe…

Many people have! Nanoclaw, LocalGPT, Moltis, Thoth, Q-Claw... the list goes on.

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

#145

Post by recursive-call »

tardedmeme wrote: post #97
pembrook wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe the argument is that for something to be addictive, the user has to feel compelled to keep using it that they would take some outsized/extreme risk/action in order to keep using it. It doesn’t have to literally be about stealing copper pipes, just, any action that an ordinary person wouldn’t do, justified because it lets them keep using. e.g drug addicts will steal, even from their own families, or lose their homes because they spent the rent money on drugs. So then the question becomes: if you had to pay to use social media, are there people who are so addicted to it that they would steal, or choose social media time over their bills? If you can actually imagine someone being so addicted to it that they would do this, then you can say social media is addictive.

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

#146

Post by funimpoded »

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 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! The question is can you make a compelling case that spending time on it is harmful.

I want to follow news and deals from a handful of vendors and local businesses I like a lot. The best way to do that is following them on instagram. It’s the only reason I signed up and installed the app. If it’d been one or two, I’d not have bothered, but it’s that way for lots of them.

I never want to see the “feed”. I would disable it if I could. I would make it default to my “following” view if I could. Instagram so very much wants me not to do that that they went out of their way to make it impossible to achieve that even with iOS’ built in shortcut-like system (you used to be able to).

As a result, sometimes I get distracted by one or two of the top items on the feed. That doesn’t mean I actually want to see them. That I open the app once every couple days doesn’t mean I like the app. I think it’s terrible.

People taking what folks do with a sharply constrained set of options as an expression of “why they want” or revealed preference or whatever is frustratingly wrong.

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

#147

Post by octoberfranklin »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #136
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?

You create an agency and give it a mandate that requires it to balance concerns.

This answer can be applied to pretty much any social question.

If it were so easy, we'd do this all the time. We already do it a lot, and there are heaps of examples where it goes wrong.

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

#148

Post by octoberfranklin »

Aurornis wrote: post #104
general1465 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very simple - force companies into data interoperability. That will allow users to move to competition without any data loss. I.e. nobody actually cares that GitHub is constantly down because you can move your repos to a different git provider or to your own server.

> I.e. nobody actually cares that GitHub is constantly down because you can move your repos to a different git provider or to your own server. I honestly can't tell if this is serious or satire, so apologies if missed the joke. Pushing a git repo to a new server is built into git itself. Github project data is easy to export: https://docs.github.com/en/issues/planning-and-tracking-with... There are import tools for m…

> Github project data is easy to export: https://docs.github.com/en/issues/planning-and-tracking-with...

Only the project owner can do that.

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

#149

Post by Aurornis »

octoberfranklin wrote: post #148
Aurornis wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I.e. nobody actually cares that GitHub is constantly down because you can move your repos to a different git provider or to your own server. I honestly can't tell if this is serious or satire, so apologies if missed the joke. Pushing a git repo to a new server is built into git itself. Github project data is easy to export: https://docs.github.com/en/issues/planning-and-tracking-with... There are import tools for m…

> Github project data is easy to export: https://docs.github.com/en/issues/planning-and-tracking-with ... Only the project owner can do that.

As a project owner, I don't want random individuals exporting my project data and cloning it somewhere else

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

#150

Post by andai »

andai wrote: post #107

> SOMEWHERE IN META’S servers sat a slide deck marked “Confidential”. Written in 2019, its conclusion was blunt: “Teens can’t switch off from Instagram even if they want to.” Found this document: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2026/04/29/stop-big-... Headlines (quote): Instagram is an inevitable and unavoidable component of teens lives. Teens can’t switch off from Instagram even if they want to. Instagram ha…

Kinda sounds like the older generations have abandoned them, and now they settle for IG.
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