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“User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction”

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

#201

Post by svachalek »

Kaze404 wrote: post #59
ethbr0 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

F2P-with-purchases games should (a) require disclaimers, (b) be illegal and stiffly penalized for allowing minors to play, & (c) have their algorithms open to a gaming regulator (in the same way Las Vegas does).

I play a lot of Apex Legends and recently I found out that when you go purchase a loot box it explicitly tells you the chance of each item's rarity. My initial thought was that it's a step in the right direction (of banning loot boxes entirely), but it also made me wonder how anyone can be sure those numbers are actually true in their backend.

I don't think you realistically can trust these as there will never be serious audits, and they exploit all kinds of psychological weaknesses. They really just need to be illegal. Sell content piecemeal, sure. But not loot boxes.

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

#203

Post by mminer237 »

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…

A bit part of the lottery is that everyone knows that it's unlikely, but most people are capable of comprehending just how unlikely it is. Most people would probably say it's like "one-in-a-million", when it's really hundreds of times worse than that. People are just bad at understanding really big numbers. Everyone still feels like, "I know it won't, but it could happen to me," when even if you bought a lottery ticket every single week for your entire adult life, it would take you over a thousand lifetimes for you to finally have a 1% chance to win the lottery.

I think people at least initially have better grasps on things like 50-50 chances or 10% chances, even if other gambling fallacies kick in the more you play them.

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

#204

Post by PoignardAzur »

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 once read "The best game developers are like weed dealers: they sell you something they love. The worst game developers are like heroin dealers: they would never, ever touch the stuff, or let their own children get within a mile of it."

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

#205

Post by mminer237 »

deeeeplearning wrote: post #167
tppiotrowski wrote: post #69

This is what I think The Social Dilemma missed. I worked at one of these companies and did not see anybody evil looking to enslave users in front of their screen. Instead we built new features and celebrated when time spent in our app went up or a new feature was used because we assumed the user must be getting value. After some time we switched metrics from time spent in app or daily active users to Net Promoter Sco…

>I did not see any evidence of malicious intent towards our users but a genuine belief we were enabling them to be more productive. The Banality of Evil, this is just a version of "We were just following orders"

In so far as ice cream makers are all evil for trying to make their ice cream taste better when they know deep down it's not good for people's health.

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

#206

Post by PoignardAzur »

Kaze404 wrote: post #59
ethbr0 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

F2P-with-purchases games should (a) require disclaimers, (b) be illegal and stiffly penalized for allowing minors to play, & (c) have their algorithms open to a gaming regulator (in the same way Las Vegas does).

I play a lot of Apex Legends and recently I found out that when you go purchase a loot box it explicitly tells you the chance of each item's rarity. My initial thought was that it's a step in the right direction (of banning loot boxes entirely), but it also made me wonder how anyone can be sure those numbers are actually true in their backend.

I don't have any more information than you do, but my gut feeling is "80% of companies won't bother to lie on the numbers, 20% will lie, and will occasionally provoke a scandal when they get caught in the rare audit or get the whistle blown on them by a spiteful employee".

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

#207

Post by djoldman »

logshipper wrote: post #185
djoldman wrote: post #165

Discussion of the addictive qualities of social media often strikes me as bizarre. Where is examination of the person doing the scrolling? Isn't the flaw there? (The following applies to adults): Ostensibly, the person should be allowed to spend their time as they like if they're engaging in legal activity. If people thought that engaging in social media was bad for them, they would stop. Are we really saying that pe…

In a world where every party was rational, your points would make total and complete sense. The reality, however is that social media companies with their curated feeds, dopamine buttons, echo chambers, and sheer size can push products to the market that cause detriment to the overall cultural environment. The average Joe does not understand that his Twitter feed is _designed_ to keep him hooked. I bet you, if he kne…

>The reality, however is that social media companies with their curated feeds, dopamine buttons, echo chambers, and sheer size can push products to the market that cause detriment to the overall cultural environment.

Given the nature of the internet, any entity can bring a product to the market that could be negative for users. What's the solution beyond the current legal framework?

>Your argument essentially posits that opioid addicts be held responsible for their addictions rather than our legal system clamping down on big pharma.

There's a wide gulf between consuming and engaging with intangible media content and abusing biologically powerful physical substances. Someone becoming addicted to a controlled substance like opioids is different from social media in a profound way. I think society recognizes this given that opioids are largely controlled substances.

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

#208

Post by Kaze404 »

svachalek wrote: post #201
Kaze404 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I play a lot of Apex Legends and recently I found out that when you go purchase a loot box it explicitly tells you the chance of each item's rarity. My initial thought was that it's a step in the right direction (of banning loot boxes entirely), but it also made me wonder how anyone can be sure those numbers are actually true in their backend.

I don't think you realistically can trust these as there will never be serious audits, and they exploit all kinds of psychological weaknesses. They really just need to be illegal. Sell content piecemeal, sure. But not loot boxes.

I agree completely. I would've spent ridiculous amounts of money on that game at this point if it weren't for loot boxes, but alas it wasn't meant to be.

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

#209

Post by TulliusCicero »

starpilot wrote: post #168
TulliusCicero wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Isn't this the same as the algo-driven placement of HN stories and comments?

To a certain extent, yes, though my understanding is that HN's comment ranking algorithm is substantially different from Reddit's.

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

#210

Post by mdoms »

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…

It's such a shame that most hobby-related content has moved to Reddit. Because of the way the algorithms work there are no long-running threads and recent content is heavily favoured.

This is terrible for hobby boards because it means that content from long-timers gets drowned out by newbies asking the same questions over and over. In my experience hobby subreddits are completely dominated by inexperienced newbies giving one another the same cargo-cult advice. That, and straight up image posts with literally 0 value (for example the front page of /r/simracing at any given moment is usually about 30-50% pictures of just a steering wheel / rig from someone saying "got my new wheel/rig today").

The old days of forums were great for hobbyists because the long-running threads would stretch into the dozens or hundreds of pages of comments. Newbies could be directed to the longer threads or deep-linked directly to older comments. The format surfaced all posts, but did not favour recency - old threads could be revived (necro'd) or kept up top indefinitely. It wasn't perfect but it was a system that favoured long-timers over newbies.

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