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“User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

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

#141

Post by wincy »

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…

Well because evolutionarily, gambling must pay off sometimes, and the people who are averse to gambling might become rarer if it pays off in a big way.

Ten thousand years ago doing something risky might result in you going from being a male with no prospects to having a harem with 50 wives. It makes sense that when your ancestors could have made a risky gambled (say raiding the village next door), they’d go for it, much like someone will put everything on 21 Black because the payoff could be so big.

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

#142

Post by bromuro »

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…

Gaming today is not that different than gambling. I started playing some games on iOS recently, I got addicted too and spent way too much money I should have.

Meanwhile ads displayed in the app offer me “real money” and “millions each month” playing cards or by “putting my finance at risk” or playing similar addictive games.

(Yes, I paid for the game but there are ads for extra scores)

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

#143

Post by Funes- »

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…

>I don't think it was adding much value to the world

I believe this statement can be applied to the vast majority of jobs, or capitalistic endeavors in general. Not to defend them in any sort of way, as I abhor these practices, but I think we should acknowledge that reality (and perhaps work our way out of it, somehow)

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

#144

Post by Spivak »

throwaway29389 wrote: post #67
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…

Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radicalization I'm honestly surprised to see the world "radicalization" used as a net negative thing, rather than positive/negative/neutral depending on context. E.g. Gandhi would have been called "radical" without implying any violent tendency.

I think this emerges as a collective version of the "my views are always normal" fallacy.

* Anyone who drives slower than me is an idiot and anyone who drives faster than me is reckless.

* Anyone who's worse than me at me at Overwatch is a noob, anyone who's better than me has no life.

* Anyone who's views are less extreme than me is a sheep, anyone who's views are more extreme than me is a radical.

It takes a lot of effort to realize that I'm on the "radical" spectrum for a lot of my political views (I'm hella progressive) and that that isn't a bad thing, but neither are other people's, in my view less aggressive, ideas for tackling problems.

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

#145

Post by TeMPOraL »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #117
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…

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).

Good catch, I agree yours is better.

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

#146

Post by tesseract »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #117
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…

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).

"Most players will get the item after buying 26 more boxes"

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

#147

Post by anticensor »

notacoward wrote: post #116
mschuster91 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

It is still working. But no, uncurated chronological feed is just too dense for me.

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

#149

Post by wizzwizz4 »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #127
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Dr. Robert Epstein has done some research on this and has testified before Congress about it. Here's one article. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-google-search-bia...

[flagged]

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

#150

Post by scoutt »

koonsolo wrote: post #73

Could we introduce this kind of addiction in healthy things, like excising or healthy diet or anything like that? I've never seen it work in practice, so why are we not able to do that?

All addictions are kind of a bad thing... A moderate use of social media is fine. The problem comes with the abuse (product of the addiction). The same abuse can come from "healthy" things which might derive in other problems like image, behavioral and diet disorders.

Exercise addiction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exercise_addiction

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