“User Engagement” Is Code for “Addiction” • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by nonbirithm » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 6:29 PM UTC

drchopchop wrote: post #50

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…

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 was watching a livestreamer that currently organizes their schedule almost entirely around F2P mobile games. I find it hard to tell such a person on an individual level that they are being exploited, because that sounds like moral posturing to me. But from the perspective of the company I could imagine how the effects of time limited sales and events could drive their KPIs on a macro level. How many of those people contributing to the 5 and 10 percent upticks were "exploited" in the truest sense of the word, as in they could not help themselves even if they wanted to? I have to wonder how many of these people would rather stop but are addicted or otherwise not conscious, versus those on the spectrum that see the games as a legitimate outlet for entertainment (and can stop themselves from spending too much).

I don't play them though, since I know I'd spend too much money and time on objects intangible.

The thing that strikes me the most about F2P is how societally acceptible it is. The people for whom the notion of "casinos" doesn't fit their interests can now have their own preferentially targeted equivalent of a casino in their pockets at all times, branded with things like television show franchises that ground them in a sense of familiarity.

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

#222

Post by rhizome » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

thecupisblue wrote: post #93

Kaze404 wrote: post #10

I still haven't fully grasped that we reached this point of perversiveness online. We have brilliant minds and a ridiculous amount of money working on making Alabama's soccer moms click more ads, and we have reached the point of making people addicted to websites to reach that goal. Obviously this is nothing new, and the cigarette industry has been profitting off addiction for decades, but I never expected the same t…

Fixing bullshit left by others, refactoring parts of the machine, copying other apps, working on pointless panels and ideas that will be killed in a hot minute or forgotten about, working on internal tools or mostly - fighting internal political battles to get a promotion/more money/authority/status. Most of the people are not there to innovate but to earn money and status for themselves by working at the big F***K

Every idea is vulnerable to the monster understatedly known as "business rules." If you want to change how these companies operate, how they treat users, or, really, how the company makes money in a user-driven economy, you have to be able to affect "business rules."

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

#223

Post by karpierz » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

andrewla wrote: post #215

csallen wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that some people fail to accomplish a thing doesn't mean others can't. Of course you can engineer addictive games. We know quite a lot about addiction. What do you think casinos are, exactly?

Tell me this -- do casinos fail? If you look only at examples of successful things and say "it is addictive" but don't look at the same principles as applied to failed examples of the same thing, then you're being intellectually lazy. In order to establish some facet as "addictive" it needs to work both ways, otherwise you're just using "addictive" as a synonym for "successful" -- Edison's light bulb was "addictive"…

Do bars fail?

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

#224

Post by rhizome » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 6:38 PM UTC

mminer237 wrote: post #205

deeeeplearning wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Rivalrous goods are an inapt analogy.

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

#225

Post by ryandrake » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 6:40 PM UTC

ketzo wrote: post #198

djoldman wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should have made "If people thought that engaging in social media was bad for them, they would stop" into question rather than a statement. That said, my follow up questions stand: If people can't stop doing an activity that is definitely hurting them, don't they need professional help? Do all these social media users need professional help?

Interesting, I got too focused on that point. I think you're absolutely right, or at least have the potential to be; I have certainly known people in my life who have had deeply problematic relationships with social media, to the point where professional help was either used or (IMO) would have been a good idea. I mean, I've personally had days where I wished that someone would just yell "get off fucking reddit!" at…

I predict Social Media Rehab is going to be a huge and lucrative business in about 5-10 years. Invest now.

...

I initially wrote that as a joke and intended to just hit Reply and move on with my life, but reflecting for more than a minute, there may be something to this. We have drug rehab programs which work to varying degrees. I wonder what research is being done on how to rehabilitate victims of social media, and if any specific techniques are known yet. Social Media has been known as a societal ill for some time, so surely someone is investigating this!

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

#226

Post by judge2020 » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 6:45 PM UTC

jsmith45 wrote: post #190

dleslie wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thankfully, PC Gaming strangely hasn't been dominated by this phenomenon, despite EA's, Activision's, and Epic's best efforts. Fortnite is addiction-tuned F2P casinowear, and it's done gangbusters, but the industry hasn't managed to copy that formula with great success.

At least fornite cosmetics have limited gameplay impact (although not zero impact). It is quite possible to be a relatively competitive player without spending a single cent (and without needing excessive grinding to do so, or at least, no more grinding than a paying player). This is a lot better than most mobile games (pay more or wait # hours to continue), or games with lootboxes whose results give serious competit…

> although not zero impact

For reference https://twitter.com/jmantheguy/status/970497516566347776?s=2...

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

#227

Post by AlexandrB » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

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…

This really puzzles me. Productivity can roughly be defined as (output / time). How can increasing "time" possibly increase productivity? Of course the catch with advertising-funded products and services is that "time" is what gets you paid.

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

#228

Post by ohdannyboy » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

slothtrop wrote: post #57

Mauricebranagh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this that much different to similar "concerns" about kids watching to much tv back in the 60's 70's etc.

With youtube you're one "recommended" video away from both morally dubious content targeting kids, and qanon conspiracy content.

Is that actually your experience on YouTube or is this just something people say to encourage deplatforming? I don't think I've seen anything at the level of flat earth or Q on my related videos since like 2017... I've even attempted to seek out some of these videos just to see the claims and it was difficult to maneuver past Youtubes search redirections.

Want a non-conspiracy example? Search "obama is gone" on youtube then on DuckDuckGo. Even a stupid crab rave meme is buried, presumably for the purposes of preventing Obama related conspiracy theories from emerging.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=obama+is+gone https://duckduckgo.com/?q=obama+is+gone+site%3Ayoutube.com

I'd still never park my kid on Youtube but things aren't like they were pre-adpocalypse.

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

#229

Post by SethMurphy » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 6:53 PM UTC

Mauricebranagh wrote: post #61

slothtrop wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With youtube you're one "recommended" video away from both morally dubious content targeting kids, and qanon conspiracy content.

I think that's more a problem for the grandparents and parents

While not related to TV (but possibly radio), My political radicalism probably peaked in 4th grade due to my surroundings. Young minds can be very easily influenced before they fully develop critical thinking.

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

#230

Post by twobitshifter » Tue, Feb 16, 2021, 6:54 PM UTC

Really some of these techniques are just scaling what is standard at arcades and bringing it online. Anyone who has ever been to an arcade knows how many tokens/quarters you can go through to keep playing and playing.

The danger with mobile gaming is that you never really get to leave the arcade and you don’t have to intrinsically budget the way you used to at arcades. At the arcade you usually have a fixed number of tokens to spend and you always have the allure of other games pulling you away.