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But what if I want a faster horse?

rakhim.exotext.com

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Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#181

Post by jMyles »

bobxmax wrote: post #138
scarface_74 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re giving it way too much of a positive spend. None of the companies are using analytics to increase the desirability for the majority of users. They are doing it to increase “engagement” and so more people will stay on their site longer. Why else wouldn’t Netflix show the “continue watching” row first instead of forcing you to scroll past algorithmic generated crap? It is the same reason that Google went from de…

What's the difference between that which optimized for what you call "engagement" and what the average user wants? Presumably the best thing for Netflix is to have a happy userbase, so why do you assume it wouldn't optimize for that?

> What's the difference between that which optimized for what you call "engagement" and what the average user wants?

People want joy, education, entertainment, etc. from watching a video.

But there may be other ways of appealing to people (addiction, insecurity, base stimulation) which boost engagement but which do not give users what they want.

Obviously on even slightly longer time scales, users will gravitate toward services that do not trade their health for engagement, but equally obvious is that many of today's apps are not optimizing for long time scales.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#182

Post by tiagod »

chasd00 wrote: post #79
cjs_ac wrote: post #16

For any given thing or category of thing , a tiny minority of the human population will be enthusiasts of that thing , but those enthusiasts will have an outsize effect in determining everyone else's taste for that thing . For example, very few people have any real interest in driving a car at 200 MPH, but Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches are widely understood as desirable cars, because the people who are into car…

Luxury watches are a good analogy too. A $5 watch from the gas station will give you the time just fine but there’s a market for watches costing hundreds of thousands of dollars.

In the case of watches, the luxury ones will actually be much worse at telling time than the $5 quartz one, by design!

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#183

Post by mcpar-land »

ballenf wrote: post #12
arkh wrote: post #4

All the result of A/B tests. Everything will converge to give you an engaging experience for most people. The only not too bad student is reddit which lets you keep using their older UI if you want to. But everything else is pushing new driven by A/B tests UI optimized for engagement.

My hunch is these algos are also optimized for hiding the long tail of content that's more expensive to serve as it's not edge-cached. And it was the long tail that drew many of us to these services in the first place. At least that's my feeling using Youtube and Netflix these days.

This is absolutely true. Spotify employs "ghost artists" that create the most inoffensive, royalty-free background music possible, and then they prioritize them in their auto-generated playlists.

https://harpers.org/archive/2025/01/the-ghosts-in-the-machin...

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#184

Post by dswalter »

There's a fundamental reality that shapes both Netflix and Spotify's trajectory: content licensing. 2012 Netflix had access to vastly more of everyone else's library, so it was closer to an indexed search of what was available that one could watch and then getting that video onto your screen. Over time, other companies understood that they were underpricing their content and Netflix was reaping the benefits. Once external forces adjusted, the TV/film bidding wars began. Today, netflix doesn't have nearly as much content as they used to have.

That risk (losing all content and facing extinction) is what pushed Netflix in the direction of being a content-producer, rather than a content aggregator. I agree with everyone's points on the influence of the median user in diluting the quality of the content Netflix produces, but that's not the only forced that pushed us here. Spotify faced a similar crossroads and decided to broaden beyond music once they started losing bidding wars for licensing.

Being a faster horse wasn't an option available to either Netflix or Spotify; there is no path for a 'better 2012 version of netflix or spotify' in 2025. They each had to change species or die, and they chose to keep living.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#185

Post by jgilias »

yakkomajuri wrote: post #42
jgilias wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s because WeChat has really taken off in China. So there are companies in different markets trying to replicate that. And, well, from business perspective it does make sense. If you manage to pull it off, the reward is massive.

Yeah definitely. I'm not oblivious to the potential gain to the business. I'm just frustrated with the user experience of the core banking products. And it seems like this is the direction other banks might like to follow.

I feel you. Having a chat function is the last thing I want in my banking app lol.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#186

Post by mrweasel »

JackMorgan wrote: post #39
furyg3 wrote: post #9

The TikTok-ification of advertising supported platforms is terrible, but makes sense to me. LinkedIn pivoted from making money on subscriptions and fees for job postings to ads, which mean the leading drivers are 'engagement' e.g. time you spend doom scrolling on their platform. This will end in disaster for the platform as a place to find jobs or employees. Netflix I understand much less. They make money from subscr…

You've got it backwards, Netflix doesn't want people to just doom-scroll, the users want to doom-scroll. Attention destroying apps reduce the long term focus and reward centers such that doom-scrolling through the catalog probably feels better than just watching something. Most of the folks I know who start a movie or show immediately pull out their phones anyway to scroll elsewhere.

> the users want to doom-scroll.

That's depends on your definition of "want". They might not want to on, but their monkey brain does.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#187

Post by jerf »

MortyWaves wrote: post #173
jerf wrote: post #163

Sometimes you just have to do it yourself. I'm lucky enough to have had a CD collection before music streaming is a thing. Now my phone has enough capacity (since I still use phones that can take SD cards) to casually carry my entire collection around. I can play it in any order I want. I've even still got a streaming service I can do exploring on, since YouTube bundles one with Premium. I find it's a good thing I ha…

Where do you buy videos from? Do you mean new films and shows? How, I thought practically all of it is locked down DRM only streaming? Or do you mean DVD/BluRay?

DVD and BluRay, yes.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#188

Post by bbor »

shakna wrote: post #104
JKCalhoun wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say they're popular because they are expensive. It's bragging rights, conspicuous consumption…

If it was just expense, then Koenigsegg would be a household name. Most enthusiasts will know them, but the average person won't. There's something more that leads culture in such a way to uphold a particular brand.

Really great, succinct way to make this point. Here's an NGRAM of mentions of these brands in the English Fiction corpus, 1860-2025 -- Ferrari dominates until ~1970, when Porsche gains dominance. Obviously, Koenigsegg is barely on the graph at all.

P.S. I think it's telling that Porsche wasn't mentioned almost at all in English until the mid 1950s, given their role in the war!

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Ferrari%2CLamb...

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#189

Post by ragnese »

darkhorse222 wrote: post #150
bluGill wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can can git rich by growing slowly in many cases - but it will be a long hard road. You could instead sell out today and get rich instantly. If you start the slow growth path at 30 and retire at 65 you will overall make more money from that thing vs someone who sells out at 35. There are some catches though. The person who sells out can go on to the next thing which in sum total may be more sell out enough to make fa…

The issue I think you're outlining is whether someone builds because they believe in their product and its value or if they are profiteers charading as believers. I'm not saying profit isn't a factor, but a lot of these founders are five year founders, they are using the company as a means to their end. Basically I'm criticizing short sightedness and what it does to our economy. That's why I've turned against the sto…

> The issue I think you're outlining is whether someone builds because they believe in their product and its value or if they are profiteers charading as believers.

I do agree with your overall criticism of short-sightedness and the short term incentives of VC and the stock market, etc.

But the people involved are not quite as binary as you lay out in the quote above. You can't discount the group of people who really do start out as true believers and who become seduced/deceived by VCs. Some of these VC types are real vultures. They'll convince the founder that the best way to share their vision or product with the most people and do the most good for the world is to let the VC guys use their capital to scale up and expand the reach of the product, etc. The money surely helps to lower one's skepticism/cynicism, but I can imagine that it must be very hard to say no to getting your dream project out to millions of people.

Re: But what if I want a faster horse?

#190

Post by red_admiral »

cjs_ac wrote: post #16

For any given thing or category of thing , a tiny minority of the human population will be enthusiasts of that thing , but those enthusiasts will have an outsize effect in determining everyone else's taste for that thing . For example, very few people have any real interest in driving a car at 200 MPH, but Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches are widely understood as desirable cars, because the people who are into car…

I get your point but I think the browser analogy is wrong.

IE had something like 90% market share back in the day because it was bundled with the OS and cost $0.

Chrome ate everyone's lunch because everyone was using google to search for stuff, and they could advertise their browser on their home page or together with their search results. They also took out ads, in some countries, on billboards, in newspapers and even in cinemas.

I'm sure technical people talking to their families had a small effect (though wouldn't they recommend firefox, because FOSS?), but I think that pales in comparison to google being able to advertise chrome on their search page.

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