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“User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”
111–120 of 349 posts
Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”
#112Lots of good points here. I particularly like the "dark triad" bit, though I think a lot of nuance around different types of likes/upvotes/whatever is missing. It makes a difference whether those are shown to others and/or used to sort others' feeds. That last point is very close to montenegrohugo's about algorithmic feeds, with which I completely agree. Algorithmic feeds, especially those which show content from people/groups I don't even follow, definitely deserve a place in the Dark Tetrad.
To illustrate these points, consider HN itself. Yes, HN uses an algorithm to determine story prominence. Yes, it has upvotes. Yes, it uses relative timestamps. OTOH, the upvotes are not shown to others and it doesn't have infinite scroll. I also wouldn't consider it a "feed" like Twitter or Facebook. On the third hand, even the features HN does have arguably contribute to echo chambers and audience pandering. I think this well illustrates that it's not easy to determine good vs. bad social media, and it would be hard to argue here that all social media are bad. ;)
Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”
#113I'm increasingly finding that I have to actively struggle to take ownership of my time and attention. Without an active, conscious, effort to reclaim your mental resources you WILL be caught up in the never-ending cycle of dopamine-dependency to novel information or visual stimulation. Your attention is a valuable resource and many companies have spent billions on figuring out how to farm it. Some of my more effectiv…
I experience the same. I've noticed that if I start my day with a dose of Twitter, I tend to be much more absentminded and less focused on tasks that need to get done.
Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”
#114Yes, and "influencer" is code for psychological manipulator.
I personally call it "selling yourself out on the Internet".
The rise of small-time influencers, the "nanoinfluencers", is particularly worrying trend. There are degrees to how antisocial advertising is, but nanoinfluencing is near the top, along with MLMs - people literally get paid to cheat their family and friends out of their hard-earned cash. It does damage to the fundamental relationships in the society, and to the minds of everyone involved.
If you think I'm overdramatizing, consider if it's a healthy state of things, when asking a family member for advice or having a casual conversation, when you have to wonder whether they're being honest, or just shilling you some crap. That's a fundamental assault on basic interpersonal trust.
Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”
#115Yes all the social medias are addiction merchants. The people know full well that they sacrifice their data, but they do not care about that or ads.
The people use them for gratification about likes and as a platform to be "heard" or voice their opinions.
Society is punishing drug users and vendors, which might be the right thing to do or not, I am not a decision maker. But the addiction should be measured in dopamine emissions and withdrawal symptoms. Does not matter if the product is a recreational drug or a virtual saas. Do not let the addiction merchant hide behind marketing terms like social media. The corporations use social to tick a compliance box and mislead the customers. To make it sound harmless or less dangerous. Similar to vegan, bio labeled food. Social media is targeting the most vulnerable and young. Sounds drastic? I do not think so
Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”
#116I'd add that algorithmic feeds are another part of the triad (quartet?), and probably the worst offender. Personalized addictive content is on the rise (tiktok, YouTube, even Facebook and Twitter curate your newsfeed "for you" ), and these ml-determined feeds drive engagement to the highest possible levels, leading to an incredible waste of time, a distorted world view (mostly the posts with the highest engagement wi…
> even Facebook and Twitter curate your newsfeed "for you" At least for Twitter, it allows you to turn that algorithm crap off and it respects that choice - iirc even across devices. Facebook, meanwhile, has entirely turned off that ability.
The functionality is still there, but they've made it harder and harder to access. It used to be an obvious choice. Then it was buried in options, then deeper in options, and now I can't even find it any more. However, if you add the magical "?sk=h_chr" to your Facebook bookmark you'll get a chronological feed (at least until you click on the icon to go back to the top so refresh instead).
I'm sure they'll completely break it some day. They broke it briefly once already. Since I was working at Facebook at the time I filed a task on it. The response was the rudest I ever got in 3.5 years at the company. If it works, as long as it works, it's basically by accident (or because some front-end developer is resisting management's constant pressure to deprecate it).
Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I play a lot of Apex Legends and recently I found out that when you go purchase a loot box it explicitly tells you the chance of each item's rarity. My initial thought was that it's a step in the right direction (of banning loot boxes entirely), but it also made me wonder how anyone can be sure those numbers are actually true in their backend.
It is also pretty useless. Normal people can't parse probabilities - otherwise nobody would play in the lottery. If you have a list of 20 items with non-uniform chances, can you tell how long you need to play before it's likely you'll get an item you want? You and me can, by doing little math in head; most people can't (and it's another question whether one has the willpower to do such math and follow it through whil…
I'd prefer “you'll need to buy about 50 more loot boxes, on average, to get that item” as wording. Bonus if there's a question mark next to it that explains probability (specifically, why the gambler's fallacy is wrong – though not necessarily mentioning the fallacy).
Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”
#118I did an internship with a very profitable Swedish mobile game before the pandemic, and it was really interesting to see the doublethink: everyone knew we were making a drug, but people avoided speaking of it in that way. It was always "our most engaged players readily spend on in-game items", and never "the most addicted users spend money so they can continue playing" It was a great workplace, but I don't think it w…
F2P-with-purchases games should (a) require disclaimers, (b) be illegal and stiffly penalized for allowing minors to play, & (c) have their algorithms open to a gaming regulator (in the same way Las Vegas does).
> F2P-with-purchases
this misses the core issue. a game like path of exile is completely playable for free - and they release new content quarterly and yearly (again, for free). a game like Raid Shadow Legends is not - you very rapidly hit a paywall and it would take years of free play to acquire power equivalent to spending $100.
the exploitative nature is pay to win, where youre simply playing a different game unless you spend money.
Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
What?
The AI determines which political articles and posts you see. The AI determines if you get reminded to register/vote. At the extremes the AI has a very strong impact on whether you believe Obama is a secret Muslim or Trump is a Russian asset.
Which means people best able to play people to increase the "this post is good" score of the AI will sway the election results. It's not enough to control them, but I'd imagine you can tip a close election by 10% or so.
Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”
#120I did an internship with a very profitable Swedish mobile game before the pandemic, and it was really interesting to see the doublethink: everyone knew we were making a drug, but people avoided speaking of it in that way. It was always "our most engaged players readily spend on in-game items", and never "the most addicted users spend money so they can continue playing" It was a great workplace, but I don't think it w…
Yep, I spent many years at a large, public US mobile game company and it was the same. We had a considerable number of players who had total spend in the 5-figure range, and a few into the 6's. And that's on one single game. The constant rationalization around the office was basically something like: "They're paying for fun, it would otherwise be drinks/movies/real gambling/etc, we're just a different medium". This,…
It may be an artifact of the division between body and mind, common in Western cultures. Any problem related to the psyche is treated differently (ie taken less seriously) from problems related to the body. I wonder how many millenia this ostensibly subtle difference in conception will keep on giving us pain and mental anguish. Its so deeprooted, I wonder what it will take to pull it out.