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Non-Consensual Personalization
161–170 of 239 posts
Re: Non-Consensual Personalization
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I think that's probably from my own habit of never using full screen windows. Though I'm not sure how to deal with the fact that it's very hard to read long lines of text. Most printed books, newspapers, and so forth use that width (max 60ch) specifically because it's hard to follow lines longer than that. I chose to follow book guidelines specifically because that format has been largely stable for some thousan…
On Firefox mobile, it's more like 11 characters wide. Pretty much unusable.
Hmm, strange. It doesn't have these proportions? https://memex.marginalia.nu/pics/encyclopedia-mobile.png>
I sadly can't diagnose since my phone isn't powerful enough to run Firefox. Looks as intended on Firefox desktop with emulation mode, though.
Re: Non-Consensual Personalization
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I think that's probably from my own habit of never using full screen windows. Though I'm not sure how to deal with the fact that it's very hard to read long lines of text. Most printed books, newspapers, and so forth use that width (max 60ch) specifically because it's hard to follow lines longer than that. I chose to follow book guidelines specifically because that format has been largely stable for some thousan…
On Firefox mobile, it's more like 11 characters wide. Pretty much unusable.
Works for me on Firefox for Android (Firefox for iOS being just a safari skin). I get 6-7 words per line (looks like the site authors emulated screenshot), so like 40 or so characters
Re: Non-Consensual Personalization
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Importantly, to get the data to learn from it to improve faster than their competitors can.
We realized our competitors were copying us at a company long ago. We geofenced a/b tests so they wouldn’t see what we were testing and intentionally made the web app worse for that area (mostly as a “fun” 20% type project). Interestingly, the “worse” version starting doing really well even though we were giving them “control” for all older features. We ended up rolling back several months of changes to the entire pr…
I would love to read a blog post with more details
Re: Non-Consensual Personalization
#165I feel like the implication is that people prevent you from customizing stuff for ego reasons, but isn't it a lot of code and testing to implement the personalization UI? But thinking about it more, I suppose the answer is to let the users write their own clients. Netflix should have a JSON API that's a list of all the programs, and each record should contain a link to video file. They don't do that because of DRM an…
People who create and build things tend to have strong emotional needs to control that thing. This includes for example, the ui designers at netflix, and the people who run the company. You see this in all kinds of domains from filmmakers who don’t want their movie released on certain formats even though fans want it, to game designers nerfing beloved tricks because content gets skipped, and making cutscenes unskippable, apple wanting control of what apps you put on your phone and how you repair it and so on.
Often there is a profit motive as well but I think the underlying prime cause of this stuff is just control
Netflix has some vision for how their service should be used, and they don’t want you fucking with it, and various weird contractual obligations and profit optimizations are gonna get you less and less choice.
The people who want to customize are a small minority so there isn’t any competitive advantage to offer it, and niche players can’t exist in domains like netflix, or iphone.
Re: Non-Consensual Personalization
#166Instead of asking me what I want, they decide what I want. I'm not sure if authoritarianism is the right name for this trend, but I think it's also related to companies no longer wanting users to think of themselves as owning the products they bought, and the shift to subscription-based services. They want to turn users into dumb, docile, obedient cows to be milked for $$$, and what better than to start them down tha…
I think Paternalism best describes the practice in this context. It is fairly annoying to not have options in most facets of software, and especially vexing that I can't own something I pay for wrt to subscriptions.
However, I'm fairly young and despite thinking that my fellow cohort would be "digital natives" and interested in controlling the preferences in their hard/software, the vast majority do not care.
If there is a step to change something for their stated benefit that requires more than a button press and some siping gestures, I've seen people just giving up and living with it. This is worrying to me, because that apathy will be the herald to something of far greater import in the years to come, whether that's politically, economically, or just a microcosm of society. And it does not bode well to me.
Re: Non-Consensual Personalization
#167I think in general there is this trend in UX toward treating users as helpless children, and it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you take away someone's agency, then yes absolutely they will be helpless. They will learn to be helpless, to act like children. I don't think that's something we want to aim for in general. It's bad for society and disastrous for democracy. Maybe it's from looking too much at the…
A few months ago I had a discussion here with someone regarding good/bad design, what was personal preference and what could be considered objective judgment. They mentioned something about a design philosophy in which there should never be more than one button, or if there were two then one should be the main button that people really should click on. It seems there is an effort to raise a whole school of new design…
> one should be the main button that people really should click on
I don't think there's something wrong with CTAs.
You can misuse/abuse this technology as you can with every, but providing a structured way to achieve a desired result is not bad per se.
It helps build muscle/"brain" memory and can help you perform your task better/quicker.
Re: Non-Consensual Personalization
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
A few months ago I had a discussion here with someone regarding good/bad design, what was personal preference and what could be considered objective judgment. They mentioned something about a design philosophy in which there should never be more than one button, or if there were two then one should be the main button that people really should click on. It seems there is an effort to raise a whole school of new design…
I think there's a middle ground. Providing clear options and deliberate choices can be done through not having a thousand options and buttons. Wikipedia is a clear example of not taking this into consideration. There's a hundred links mixed with the text, and buttons and doodads everywhere around it, which makes it very clear to actually think about what you want to do. If you compare Encarta '96 with Wikipedia: http…
Not much to add except wanted to say that I enjoyed becoming aware of the impact Wikipedia's design decision had on me, as a reader.
Seeing the encarta/marginalia version vs the wikipedia one really drives home the point. It's interesting how the design had a strong impact on my experience, and yet I never really noticed it before.
I feel a bit like a fish suddenly aware of the water they're in.
Re: Non-Consensual Personalization
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's why you should measure many things - especially all your important things - in every a/b test [=
With the Simpson paradox, even if your metrics go up, across all your segments, it’s actually going down. Measuring only takes you so far.
Sure - this is why Google Search constantly makes less money. Measuring only takes it so far.
Re: Non-Consensual Personalization
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there's a middle ground. Providing clear options and deliberate choices can be done through not having a thousand options and buttons. Wikipedia is a clear example of not taking this into consideration. There's a hundred links mixed with the text, and buttons and doodads everywhere around it, which makes it very clear to actually think about what you want to do. If you compare Encarta '96 with Wikipedia: http…
Not much to add except wanted to say that I enjoyed becoming aware of the impact Wikipedia's design decision had on me, as a reader. Seeing the encarta/marginalia version vs the wikipedia one really drives home the point. It's interesting how the design had a strong impact on my experience, and yet I never really noticed it before. I feel a bit like a fish suddenly aware of the water they're in.
I was confused by the claim that the Encarta version is quieter until I read that it was because of the inline links. I thought the Wikipedia version was quieter because it doesn't have a distracting background image. I think this confusion is evidence that inline links are actually not distracting. I don't feel I have to make a decision whenever I see one because I know they'll still be there later.