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“User engagement” is code for “addiction”

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Re: “User engagement” is code for “addiction”

#21

Post by edmundsauto »

CivBase wrote: post #10

If a service is monetized with ads, then the user is the product. We say that a lot but I think a lot of people still don't understand it, especially outside the tech sphere. "Engagement" isn't about building a better service; it's about serving more ads. "Driving user engagement" should be seen as synonymous with "psychologically manipulating users to use the service so they see ads".

Why not “providing value to users so they use the service so they see ads”? A lot of providing value is marketing and engagement. It can be manipulative and it can also be beneficial to the user - both should be accounted for.

Re: “User engagement” is code for “addiction”

#22

Post by viraptor »

edmundsauto wrote: post #21
CivBase wrote: post #10

If a service is monetized with ads, then the user is the product. We say that a lot but I think a lot of people still don't understand it, especially outside the tech sphere. "Engagement" isn't about building a better service; it's about serving more ads. "Driving user engagement" should be seen as synonymous with "psychologically manipulating users to use the service so they see ads".

Why not “providing value to users so they use the service so they see ads”? A lot of providing value is marketing and engagement. It can be manipulative and it can also be beneficial to the user - both should be accounted for.

Different metrics. Providing value could be measured in different ways concentrating on that. Engagement doesn't even have to provide value. User going through more pages to get to the thing they need and spending more time in the app is engagement.

Re: “User engagement” is code for “addiction”

#23

Post by rossdavidh »

teh_infallible wrote: post #16

The word “addiction” is overused in my opinion. Bad habits are not addictions. An addiction is something which actively harms you, but you can’t stop doing it. Yes, you can argue social media is harmful, but it generally does not cause people to lose their jobs or spend all their money.

I agree that "addiction" can be overused (irony unintentional), but I think it can be objectively defined by whether or not it causes a lasting biochemical change in the user (eventually), which causes discomfort or pain upon withdrawal. Food, for example, does not; we enjoy it (sometimes), but having more does not make us eat ever-larger amounts (if it's, say, a green salad; high-fructose corn syrup I admit the jury is still out).

So, the assertion that social media is "addictive" would translate to, "it conditions the user to require a dopamine (or whatever) hit that they will return to the social media to acquire, and will feel bad (worse than before they used it) if they stop using." Whether or not that's true of social media is debatable, but I think it is raising at least a valid question.

On the other hand, even though Stack Overflow has a lot of the same software features, it has no such problem, so I think the important question is what does Facebook do differently than Stack Overflow to cause people to spend ever-larger amounts of time on it, to no real purpose?

Re: “User engagement” is code for “addiction”

#24

Post by mstipetic »

crowdhailer wrote: post #11

Very much so. It's something we're trying to push back on at https://sendmemo.app But how do you measure success, we're a messaging app. - Total messages sent - Number of conversations. Measuring any of this will mean we optimise keeping users on the platform. We're trying active conversations, where to be active means only at least one message per week. We'd love to find a metric which went up as each individual use…

Why not just ask every now and then "did you enjoy interacting with our service?" Or "are you finding value here?" and have people rate it.

I've often thought how different facebook would look like if they asked that and optimized for that metric

Re: “User engagement” is code for “addiction”

#25

Post by mpalmer »

teh_infallible wrote: post #16

The word “addiction” is overused in my opinion. Bad habits are not addictions. An addiction is something which actively harms you, but you can’t stop doing it. Yes, you can argue social media is harmful, but it generally does not cause people to lose their jobs or spend all their money.

COVID has been more harmful than a deadlier disease would be because it spreads more effectively.

If social media caused people to lose their jobs or spend all their money, far fewer people would use it, and public engagement with the problem would be greater.

I suggest that social media's harm to society is greater because it's less harmful to the individual than gambling, etc.

Re: “User engagement” is code for “addiction”

#26

Post by HNfriend234 »

Social media is a perfect example of where this is used. I know countless people that are literally addicted to it. They want to see every new update continuously and the social media apps are designed to do this through notifications.

I saw this clear as day when I was at jury duty. We were waiting for the court to get back into session. There was a girl sitting next to me on the bench and I noticed about every 5 minutes she would open up her phone and go through her routine. First pull up facebook, scroll through it. Close the app then pull up instragram, scroll through. She did this consistently for the entire 2 hours we were sitting there (the court was delayed). If that isn't addiction, I don't know what is.

Then look at all the mental health problems young people are having these days - bullying, depression, suicide etc. and I would say a big part of that is influenced by social media. People see other people living the "good life" and they get depressed because they can't have the same. Young women see "pretty" women on Instagram and they know they can never compete with that, so their self esteem drops to nothing. Then you have all the bullying that goes on as well. Completely toxic environment.

Social media is the cigarette of our generation.

Re: “User engagement” is code for “addiction”

#27

Post by benlivengood »

crowdhailer wrote: post #11

Very much so. It's something we're trying to push back on at https://sendmemo.app But how do you measure success, we're a messaging app. - Total messages sent - Number of conversations. Measuring any of this will mean we optimise keeping users on the platform. We're trying active conversations, where to be active means only at least one message per week. We'd love to find a metric which went up as each individual use…

The "time to solution" metric sounds a lot like SRE's mantra; automate ourselves out of a job. This is often measured in how many hours of human labor we can save for better use elsewhere.

The optimal app requires zero interaction time from the user but still provides tangible benefits. Aside from entertainment, most people don't really want to interact with software.

Re: “User engagement” is code for “addiction”

#28

Post by benlivengood »

teh_infallible wrote: post #16

The word “addiction” is overused in my opinion. Bad habits are not addictions. An addiction is something which actively harms you, but you can’t stop doing it. Yes, you can argue social media is harmful, but it generally does not cause people to lose their jobs or spend all their money.

> The word “addiction” is overused in my opinion. Bad habits are not addictions. An addiction is something which actively harms you, but you can’t stop doing it.

I suggest parasitism as a more accurate description of what seeking "user engagement" is.

Re: “User engagement” is code for “addiction”

#29

Post by PragmaticPulp »

I don't like the current trend of social media apps burying users under push notifications, calls to action, and other engagement hooks.

However, there's a second, parallel problem adding fuel to the fire: The more we talk about overindulgence in social media (or Netflix, or video games, or fast food) as an act perpetrated by evil corporations on us helpless individuals, the less sense of individual agency we give ourselves. I'm not suggesting that we let social media companies off the hook, but battling this problem is going to require more than simply shaming them in Medium posts. We have to start reminding people that they are in control of their decisions, and that they can take steps to reduce their social media usage to healthy levels.

I know the common refrain is "Delete Facebook!" but that's the equivalent of abstinence-only education. We need to start talking about how to configure Screen Time on iOS, or how to use Facebook's built-in tools to hide content you don't want to see. We also need to encourage people to take control of their feeds, muting users and topics who draw them into unproductive discussions.

Re: “User engagement” is code for “addiction”

#30

Post by benlivengood »

edmundsauto wrote: post #21
CivBase wrote: post #10

If a service is monetized with ads, then the user is the product. We say that a lot but I think a lot of people still don't understand it, especially outside the tech sphere. "Engagement" isn't about building a better service; it's about serving more ads. "Driving user engagement" should be seen as synonymous with "psychologically manipulating users to use the service so they see ads".

Why not “providing value to users so they use the service so they see ads”? A lot of providing value is marketing and engagement. It can be manipulative and it can also be beneficial to the user - both should be accounted for.

This would be great if the metric was measuring value. Measuring value is hard; the closest quantified analog we have is money.

So a valid comparison might be "how much would anyone actually pay for this ad-funded thing?" It turns out the answer is often $0.

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