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“User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

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

#151

Post by TulliusCicero »

toto444 wrote: post #97
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 have moved from using reddit to frequenting a traditional forum where the content is ordered chronologically and that makes an insane difference to the quality of the conversation. You go from the most outrageous at the top to the most discussed at the top. All content gets a chance to be read. Even if it the first user find it uninteresting. On reddit, if what you post gets a downvote very quickly, you're basicall…

Yes, Reddit basically encourages flashy comments.

But the rub with traditional message boards is, that they don't scale well. Some subreddits have many, many thousands of active regular participants. It's hard for a single subforum to operate at that scale.

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

#152

Post by mysterydip »

dleslie wrote: post #121
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,…

I left casual games because of this; every partner and publisher we worked with was heavily pressuring us to optimize for whales. They wanted the long tale for marketing, and the whales for revenue; and once hooked, the core interaction loop was to be as addictive as possible. When I left it was Candy Crush that was the top of the field; and we were in awe. They were _always_ rewarding players, and were pushing micro…

The frustrating part is there are lots of people making games to tell stories and explore worlds, but they fall into the void almost inmediately after launch due to the slot machine games taking the lion's share of the attention and money.

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

#153

Post by taylodl »

I'm blessed to be an older programmer who started my career back when we were selling products to people who had to make a business case for the purchase of our software systems. We were helping businesses achieve more. Most of the businesses my previous employers were helping were public utilities, communication companies, and manufacturers. You could feel good about your work and that you were contributing to a better world.

Today I'm blessed to work for an electric utility. Whenever I'm having a bad day I remind myself that I'm helping to provide the foundation of modern civilization. It's much better for your soul than knowing that in the end you're just working for a drug dealer and contributing to the destruction of people's lives. I'm glad I'm close to retirement and don't have to do that kind of work just so I can put food on the table.

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

#154

Post by gugagore »

Spivak wrote: post #144
throwaway29389 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It certainly feels tricky because "radical" can apply to ideas about goals and also to ideas about ways of achieving goals ("tackling problems").

It's hard to suss out people's goals. They might not understand their goals themselves, and "goal" may be an abstract and unknowable thing. But I think it's necessary to find some goals to be a bad thing in order to figure out your own politics.

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

#155

Post by iamatworknow »

mywittyname wrote: post #134
ramphastidae wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

>I'm kind of surprised that aliases have not widely taken off already.

The funny thing is that these aliases already existed, but we've largely eschewed them for our "real" identities. Prior to probably Facebook I think every interaction I had with other people online was behind a screen name detached from my real world identity.

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

#156

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#157

Post by techer »

dleslie wrote: post #123
red-montaigne wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great example of how language is a tool for thinking, but it's also a tool for not thinking. If you want to ignore or obfuscate something, you can seal it off with euphemisms and misrepresentations, kind of like putting an interface in front of an implementation. And as you pointed out, you can use this tactic to deceive not only others but also yourself.

Casual game design uses many of the same nouns as casino operators.

“Compelling”

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

#158

Post by [deleted] »

mywittyname wrote: post #134
ramphastidae wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#159

Post by iamatworknow »

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?

Anecdotal but the gamification of exercise with respect to some of the newer products out there (Peloton, Zwift, Apple Fitness+) seems to be a step in this direction. I've been using Zwift for the past couple of months and have ridden my bike more than I have probably in the previous year combined. Most of it I don't really care/bother with, but when it keeps track of your records and you beat one during an exercise, it does give you a little of that dopamine rush.

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

#160

Post by bordercases »

wincy wrote: post #141
mod wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, m…

But who gives a damn about the EEA?
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