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“User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

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Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#131

Post by asidiali »

goalieca wrote: post #126
asidiali wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.04206.pdf

> Even though the environment of r/unpopularopinion encourages users to freely express their opinion, the dominant population of this community is young white males, and only the opinions representing them are supported by general users and brought up to the front page. Consequently, the minority opinions are neglected and it results in another spiral of silence phenomenon in the community I don’t know if young white…

I mean, they took a sample of the sub, and that is what they found (see their notes on data collection process done via Reddit Chat)

Regardless, I agree with you, the groupthink is the issue here - I do think it is telling though, that it is a groupthink (allegedly) skewed by the white male perspective. Which I think is also an issue, lack of representation in such echo chambers. But you’re right - two separate issues that happened to be intertwined here. Anti-racist echo chambers are still echo chambers.

Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#132

Post by cannabis_sam »

minikites wrote: post #74
Consultant32452 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait until people figure out how much power the AIs already have over election outcomes.

What?

Most people in democracies are entrenched into two blocks (even in European multiparty systems), and AI/ML/statistical methods/mathematical optimization allows interested groups to target the people inbetween the blocks. And based on their personality profile you can goad them to one side or the other with targeted advertising.

(I’m not making any claims about where or how or how much these things are happening.)

Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#133

Post by skohan »

ramphastidae wrote: post #82
skohan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have sometimes mused about how we have worried about "sky net" since the 90's, but we've already let AI have power to control our lives to some extent. For instance, there are cases you can point to where some normal person on Twitter with a couple dozen followers posted the wrong thing, it blew up into an international story, and they eventually got fired from their real-world job for it. Who made the decision tha…

> Who made the decision that this person's views should be widely scrutinized? This is a serious stretch. The algo didn’t force that person to sign up and post their every ignorant thought on a public forum. People can just put down their phones but they love the attention. Individuals are just as guilty for giving power over themselves to social media.

I'm not "blaming the AI" for this person's behavior. My point is that there was a non-human component in this decision process which led to this person losing their livelihood.

To make an old-world analogue, in 1980 for someone to be held to account for an objectionable view, it probably would have involved some journalist making the decision to write a story about the comments which someone made. That human component in deciding what is newsworthy has been replaced by a machine in some cases.

Another example would be dating apps. Now we have algorithms which make decisions about which parts of the dating pool an individual will have access to. In a real sense, non-human intelligence is playing some role in who gets to pass on their genes to the next generation, and with whom.

I'm not saying that our lives are ruled by machines, but they're not completely not governed by machines either.

Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#134

Post by mywittyname »

ramphastidae wrote: post #82
skohan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have sometimes mused about how we have worried about "sky net" since the 90's, but we've already let AI have power to control our lives to some extent. For instance, there are cases you can point to where some normal person on Twitter with a couple dozen followers posted the wrong thing, it blew up into an international story, and they eventually got fired from their real-world job for it. Who made the decision tha…

> Who made the decision that this person's views should be widely scrutinized? This is a serious stretch. The algo didn’t force that person to sign up and post their every ignorant thought on a public forum. People can just put down their phones but they love the attention. Individuals are just as guilty for giving power over themselves to social media.

If anything, the next generation of people will learn to avoid online polarized engagement using their own identities. They will create these curated and sterile personas under their real name while using a nom de plume for actual content.

I'm kind of surprised that aliases have not widely taken off already. But I suppose the consequences are not very severe yet.

Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#135

Post by mym1990 »

mod wrote: post #129
TeMPOraL wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Normal people can't parse probabilities - otherwise nobody would play in the lottery. Yes, they would. The lottery is about giving up something of little value ($1 or $2) for some entertainment and the chance at a truly life-changing situation. I doubt anyone is unaware there's almost no chance they win, and that they're losing on every dollar they spend. Interestingly, the lottery is occasionally +EV to play. I ot…

I agree, playing the lottery is a little like buying insurance for something. Everyone knows that insurance is a losing proposition, but no one buys it to save 500$ on that fender bender, people buy it so that they can get through a catastrophic event like 500,000$ in medical bills.

Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#136

Post by Spivak »

ethbr0 wrote: post #51
luplex wrote: post #41

I 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).

Eh I don't really think "think of the children" is the right narrative here. These games, while especially bad for children, aren't much better for adults. Absolutely require 18+ to play and require them be labeled as gambling but I don't think that's enough.

If we're counting on adults "knowing better" which makes it okay to play these games while the industry profits on precisely those adults that don't then there's a problem.

Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#137

Post by scoutt »

tppiotrowski wrote: post #69

This is what I think The Social Dilemma missed. I worked at one of these companies and did not see anybody evil looking to enslave users in front of their screen. Instead we built new features and celebrated when time spent in our app went up or a new feature was used because we assumed the user must be getting value. After some time we switched metrics from time spent in app or daily active users to Net Promoter Sco…

They don't necessarily need to look evil. "Evil" doesn't sell and probably won't make you work for them. They have to look like a sane environment in which you can't pinpoint anything (philosophically, morally or ethically) wrong.

It's just a matter of language (how they communicate what the company is trying to do), with slogans like "making the world a better place by doing X". But if you think that at the end of the day, all they care about and all the trouble is just for the mighty Dollar, with a little change in perspective you can elucidate:

"time spent in our app": time lost in our app.

"user must be getting value": while getting even more value out of an unaware user.

"feature ... making it “better” (used even more)": more addictive? costing less for the company? costing more for the user?

"to be more productive": productive as in "making money faster but for someone else, while being paid the same".

Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#138

Post by werber »

I recently joined tiktok and their algorithm really freaked me out. It took maybe twenty minutes for it zone into some incredibly specific interests of mine. I enjoy the app, but I've never felt so pushed into the content I want to see so quickly. I'm quite A bit older than their average user but the mental impact on a child seems immense.

Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#139

Post by mym1990 »

luplex wrote: post #25
montenegrohugo wrote: post #8

I'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…

I think this is how AI takes over humanity. Humans are so short-sighted, we don't even need a superintelligence to outsmart us. We happily stand by and collect profits while letting the AI do whatever it wants. Really, we need regulation that makes companies care about side-effects of their AI technology.

It reminds me of Spirited Away and how everyone fed No Face for a little gold in return, but in the end they all got eaten.

Re: “User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

#140

Post by kingkawn »

brnt wrote: post #120
drchopchop wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This division is on the verge of self destruction under the own weight of its inconsistencies.
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