Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Tyranny of the Marginal User

nothinghuman.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 840 posts

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#641

Post by strken »

lelanthran wrote: post #593
uoaei wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://web.archive.org/web/20100725135317/http://blog.okcupi... I don't think you're characterizing the results accurately, particularly point #2. I don't think they really had a way to measure #3. #1 is just obviously true but doesn't add much.

> I don't think you're characterizing the results accurately, particularly point #2. I don't think they really had a way to measure #3. #1 is just obviously true but doesn't add much. Maybe not, but #2 was from a blog that specifically looked at the data of messaging: how many men received messages, how many women received messages. IIRC, nearly all the women received messages and sent messages, while only about 10%…

It strikes me that if women and men sent messages in exactly the same long-tail shape of distribution, and you had a knob that controlled how frequently each sent messages, you'd be able to turn each knob until 100% of women and 10% of men received messages.

This is not to say you're wrong or right, but I don't think the numbers tell us much without seeing the full distribution.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#642

Post by TalEs »

I always wanted to make something like OkC, that caters to power users, but also to Marl. I will admit, I am Marl a lot of the time, so I know what Marls' want in a product. I already have an outline of my idea, but I won't give it away fully. Basically, I wanted something that is simple enough for Marl, but the internal features can be quite complex if you want to tweak them to find the perfect someone. It has to be an app primarily, and have a website as secondary. My ADHD brain is only good at ideating but I can't bring myself to work on them. I am no software dev, so it's always been just a dream.

I wanted an app, that has the question and answer capabilities of OkC, to get to know a person, without actually having to type anything. It would have filters for partners or personalities. It can have more provocative questions to get the users desires, morals and values. It would be a blind date sort of deal, to prevent it becoming a beauty contest. Meeting in-person would be the main goal, with safety in mind of course. Dating would not be the main point of the app, meeting people would be, doing activities together and such.

It would have a public dashboard of users, like ratio of M:F. I would love the return of the OkC blogs too.

In terms of scaling, I don't care about infinite growth, it would be like a B-Corp with a sustainable growth model. The monetisation could be a 3-6 month full-feature subscription. If it didn't work out, the user could just move on. The other worse option would be ads. The app could be open-sourced or a freemium model, I am not sure about the feasibility.

After going through the comments here, it seems @com2kid had already made something similar but I have some ideas to make it better. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37512127

Would love to know what he had learnt from working on that project!

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#643

Post by brainwad »

camgunz wrote: post #639

I like this article, but I have to say it spills a lot of ink just to say that engagement metrics fucked us. These products stopped trying to empower us and started commodifying us. Marl isn't the problem; those execs are the problem.

Engagement metric focus can come from the bottom up, too. If you're an engineer who just build a feature you think is cool, but which nobody is using, it's very tempting to start applying growth hacks to make it more "popular". I have been through a few cycles of this on various projects in big tech.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#644

Post by SpookyChoice »

sneak wrote: post #459
ryandrake wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, I've worked with software engineers who had absolutely no ethical qualm with implementing basically anything their boss wanted them to implement. Dark patterns, Benchmark cheating, Excessive user data collection, I'm sure they wouldn't even balk at writing Malware or Ransomware. This is why ethical engineers opting out of the project or job will never work: There's always someone lined up willing to write the…

I recommend that everyone read Stanley Milgram's book Obedience to Authority about his fake shock experiments. Some people simply suspend moral judgement entirely in circumstances where someone else is calling the shots. They no more regard themselves as culpable for the bad outcomes as they do an automobile operated by a drunk driver. At a certain point, many people just switch off the moralizing, automatically assi…

I recommend the the article about the infantry men who did not shoot https://www.americanheritage.com/secret-soldiers-who-didnt-s... Or better yet the book humankind from rutger bregman. Who wrote a whole chapter about why this experiment does not support this conclusion

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#645

Post by TalEs »

com2kid wrote: post #83
afarrell wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A dating site could work sustainably if it was a site for planning date nights. Make profiles based on activities and swipe right or left on the activities you want to do. Revenue sources would include: - Ads for local businesses, classes, and events. - Annual subscription which is cheaper after the first year and gives you discount codes to events and restaurants. Once you get the site to work for date nights, let p…

I ran a startup making something similar to this pre-covid, it wasn't just date night, it was "find something to do in under 5 minutes". Groups of 4 to 6, partnering with local businesses who hosted the events. You opened the app, said what you wanted to do and when, and you were automatically put into a group. You could select how many people you already had going with you (date, or just a group of 2 friends who nee…

Your idea is exactly what I would like to have in an app, with a ML twist and also more on matchmaking people based on their traits, personalities, morals and values. Below is my comment on it. It an idealistic solution, but I have an outline of such an app, that might need some refining. I would love to talk about if its it's even doable or feasible, and you seem to the the best person for it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37520545

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#646

Post by Iulioh »

pif wrote: post #635
Iulioh wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, you can have a profitable thing and just..have that? Like if you have the same let's say 20% profit in the world of business is not enough, you want the RATE of your return to go higher even if the product allowed you to stay stupidity rich. Economically better is a good pair of words that leads to enshittification via greed

Enshittification is only a problem from the point of view of the non-paying user. But the on-paying user has no say in what happens to the app. As they say, if you are not paying for the product, you are the product. Enjoying the generosity of other people is fine, but it gives you no right to expect it to last indefinitely.

That's not even remotely the point.

Have you read the post or seen how the things go?

The paying user get fucked too, just give it time.

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#647

Post by RugnirViking »

npsimons wrote: post #282
somedude895 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very good point that I think some commenters here should take to heart. No matter how enlightened we think we are, we're all part of the masses and behave this way at one point or another.

> No matter how enlightened we think we are, we're all part of the masses and behave this way at one point or another. While this is true, it stands to question: why build systems to encourage this? Shouldn't we be trying to do better? If nothing else, how can one avoid falling into these traps?

> While this is true, it stands to question: why build systems to encourage this? Shouldn't we be trying to do better?

until incentives change, people will continue to encourage this. The base instinct behaviors when one is stressed and tired and checked out are the most profitable, the most susceptible to adverts etc.

The way to encourage conciencousness, taking pride in creation etc is to see a few (the right amount of) others (who are seen by the user as peers, not unnatainable far off creators) doing the same. Maybe stretched/challenged a little - one or two at most people above their skill level, who appear approachable and humble.

It's the format of most true knowledge creation, be it classrooms, effective workplaces, sports programs, and others

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#648

Post by smukherjee19 »

I personally have a different name for the Marl-type of people: NPCs. Every time I get on the train I see them on their phones, mindlessly scrolling through TikTok and having the eyes of a dead fish. It's almost as if their brains are turned off.

It's really sad that all software has become like the article states...

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#649

Post by RugnirViking »

robotresearcher wrote: post #577
rglullis wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now, let's find any single company/product that actually is successful by encouraging us to become better versions of ourselves.

In apps: Ten Percent Happier and Headspace? In meatspace: Nike, Adidas?

these are kinda depressing. I was thinkinbg duolingo as well but something I realise especially with the meditation apps is how much they almost impressively manage to subvert what they were origianlly. As time goes on they cater more to marl and less to actually achieving anything.

Like the duolingo redesign.

It's one of the reasons I generally seek out smaller companies for stuff like this. The biggest company in these sorts of categories gets there by being entirely unhelpful at its stated goals :(

Even the shoes. You'll get so much better service from a mid sized distributor that actually cares than mass market conglomerates. If you ask for advice it will be sincerely given rather than a premade statement calibrated to tap into base impulse version of you to increase your likelihood of spending the most

Re: The Tyranny of the Marginal User

#650

Post by RugnirViking »

wk_end wrote: post #540
ivee wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree. If you walked up to Marl, built trust with him, and asked him whether he wanted more meaningful content in his life (for a definition of meaningful which made sense to him) I think he would say yes. So it's not really about Marl's preferences but about the way those preferences are collected and Marl's (sadly mostly justified) lack of trust.

If you walked up to me, built trust with me, and asked me if I wanted more exercise in my life I’d say yes. And yet.

and yet if you became friends with someone that encouraged you in the right way, or found a routine that let you get exercise in a way that didn't suck, you'd probably feel really good about yourself and want to keep doing it.

It's not that its impossible to work with people to raise them to a higher stanardard. It's harder, sure. But not impossible. And the result is usually worth its weight in gold

Post reply on HN