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Google, Meta, others will have to explain algorithms under new EU legislation

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Re: Google, Meta, others will have to explain algorithms under new EU legislation

#91

Post by psyc »

wrboyce wrote: post #87
psyc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the last iOS update, Apple nagged the shit out of me to setup Apple Pay, for two days. No way to say ‘fuck off’ - only ‘remind me’. No obvious way to stop the nagging. Finally I gave them just the tip, and then pulled out before the money shot, and that seems to have shut them up for now.

How is that even relevant? Your phone was trying to onboard you to a _free to use_ feature. If you can’t see the difference here, then I suspect there probably was a button labelled “fuck off” and you didn’t see that either. Honestly.

Windows regularly tries to nag me into free features I don’t want too.

At no time has the term ‘dark pattern’ ever been necessarily dependent on getting you to pay money.

Your argument is that I sound stupid, so I must be wrong?

There’s no button.

https://www.cultofmac.com/538999/apple-under-fire-apple-pay-...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-insists-iphone-users-enro...

My other peeve is when streaming apps put a button in the bottom-right of an ad, same size and style as the ‘skip’ button one reflexively clicks. Except it turns out to be an ‘engage even moar’ button.

Re: Google, Meta, others will have to explain algorithms under new EU legislation

#92

Post by KMag »

wrboyce wrote: post #87
psyc wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After the last iOS update, Apple nagged the shit out of me to setup Apple Pay, for two days. No way to say ‘fuck off’ - only ‘remind me’. No obvious way to stop the nagging. Finally I gave them just the tip, and then pulled out before the money shot, and that seems to have shut them up for now.

How is that even relevant? Your phone was trying to onboard you to a _free to use_ feature. If you can’t see the difference here, then I suspect there probably was a button labelled “fuck off” and you didn’t see that either. Honestly.

"Free to use", but presumably comes with a user agreement that opens you to some financial liability. There's a (granted small) chance that a bug, security incident, or fraud lands you in a Kafkaesque debt nightmare.

I had a bit of a nightmare where one of the credit reporting agencies was convinced my residential address was inside my bank. Their online system referred me to their phone system or sending them mail. Their phone system referred me to their online system or sending them mail. I sent them mail 3 times and got no reply. An online cheat guide for getting to an actual human through their phone system didn't work, and I eventually just started hitting random keys in their phone system and got to a human who was able to sort it out.

You can't even get a secured credit card (backed by a cash deposit) without a credit check (I looked into it), which is going to fail if your residential address is wrong.

Opening a financial account that might misreport something to a credit agency shouldn't be taken lightly.

Re: Google, Meta, others will have to explain algorithms under new EU legislation

#93

Post by pwdisswordfish9 »

jasfi wrote: post #5

If you read the article they're asking for more than explaining algorithms. Overall they want the the tech providers to be responsible. Explaining algorithms could, in theory, give away a competitive advantage. However fairness to users seems to be a priority in this decision.

> Explaining algorithms could, in theory, give away a competitive advantage.

Which is good. We could use some more competition on the market.

Re: Google, Meta, others will have to explain algorithms under new EU legislation

#94

Post by wrboyce »

joe_guy wrote: post #90
wrboyce wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that even relevant? Your phone was trying to onboard you to a _free to use_ feature. If you can’t see the difference here, then I suspect there probably was a button labelled “fuck off” and you didn’t see that either. Honestly.

Apple makes money off the interchange fee. It might be "free" to the end user, but the corporate motivation is the same as Prime's -- money. And please don't ad hominem attack people you're responding to.

Yeah you’re right, there was no need for the last bit. I’m still struggling to see the relevance though, trying to get me to buy things is very different from trying to get me to use a feature you profit from (in my opinion). You also have to bare in mind that HN represents the more technical users, plenty of people probably do need the popups to discover these features. Saying that, a “no thanks, don’t remind me again” button would be a nice inclusion - perhaps with a secondary confirmation.

Re: Google, Meta, others will have to explain algorithms under new EU legislation

#95

Post by ugjka »

tjbiddle wrote: post #25

> “Dark patterns” — confusing or deceptive user interfaces designed to steer users into making certain choices — will be prohibited. The EU says that, as a rule, cancelling subscriptions should be as easy as signing up for them. This is an excellent addition.

I hope this makes Google Pay app subscription cancellations actually cancel them instead of postponing them for 3 months or so

Re: Google, Meta, others will have to explain algorithms under new EU legislation

#96

Post by wrboyce »

psyc wrote: post #91
wrboyce wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that even relevant? Your phone was trying to onboard you to a _free to use_ feature. If you can’t see the difference here, then I suspect there probably was a button labelled “fuck off” and you didn’t see that either. Honestly.

Windows regularly tries to nag me into free features I don’t want too. At no time has the term ‘dark pattern’ ever been necessarily dependent on getting you to pay money. Your argument is that I sound stupid, so I must be wrong? There’s no button. https://www.cultofmac.com/538999/apple-under-fire-apple-pay-... https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-insists-iphone-users-enro... My other peeve is when streaming apps put a…

Apologies for the implication you’re stupid, I didn’t really mean that and it was uncalled for at any rate.

I don’t disagree regards dark patterns, your example just felt a bit irrelevant to the specific topic being discussed (Amazon pushing a paid for product / cancelling a paid subscription).

Re: Google, Meta, others will have to explain algorithms under new EU legislation

#97

Post by blihp »

otherotherchris wrote: post #41
thedeadfish wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google manually adjusts its results for censorship reasons. This is probably why google has gotten so much worse, they don't want information to be freely accessible, they only want things they approve of to be seen.

I reckon you're right, but I doubt that it's manual or under Google's control. Google is too important a tool of control to be left in the hands of Silly Valley idealists. I've always wondered why Sergey Brin and Larry Page retired when they did, it coincides almost exactly with the beginning of the SERP quality decline. Wonder what sort of conversation they had with intelligence to quietly walk to the door, cash out…

What happened was they got what they wanted: full control of running the business. Then they quickly learned that was actually a lot of work and not very much fun, made some fairly unpopular decisions (business, product and policy) with a fair amount of public backlash, put Sundar in charge and backed away.

Re: Google, Meta, others will have to explain algorithms under new EU legislation

#98

Post by psyc »

wrboyce wrote: post #96
psyc wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows regularly tries to nag me into free features I don’t want too. At no time has the term ‘dark pattern’ ever been necessarily dependent on getting you to pay money. Your argument is that I sound stupid, so I must be wrong? There’s no button. https://www.cultofmac.com/538999/apple-under-fire-apple-pay-... https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-insists-iphone-users-enro... My other peeve is when streaming apps put a…

Apologies for the implication you’re stupid, I didn’t really mean that and it was uncalled for at any rate. I don’t disagree regards dark patterns, your example just felt a bit irrelevant to the specific topic being discussed (Amazon pushing a paid for product / cancelling a paid subscription).

I can understand why you would make the distinction. Making distinctions is good, in general. However from my perspective as a frustrated user being antagonized by ‘my’ devices, it’s all the same battle to me.

Re: Google, Meta, others will have to explain algorithms under new EU legislation

#99

Post by dehrmann »

dontblink wrote: post #71

Regarding the rules surrounding fake information, I wonder why the be EU hasn't taken a similar stance against Fox News equivalencies?

Rules around fake information scare me because they're a limit on speech, and as Russia has recently shown, fake information is anything a dictator doesn't approve of.

Re: Google, Meta, others will have to explain algorithms under new EU legislation

#100

Post by dehrmann »

tyingq wrote: post #22
ekianjo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google doesn't know what the algorithm is anymore You are an insider?

They haven't talked much detail since Matt Cutts left, but over time they did sort of outline the basics. That the core ranking is still some evolution of PageRank, weighting scoring of page attributes/metadata and flowing it down/through inbound links as well. But then altered via various waves of ML, like Vince (authority/brand power), Panda (inbound link quality), Penguin (content quality), and many others that ta…

It's clear the public and lawmakers like the idea of knowing how the algorithm works, but what you posted is about as deep as people can reasonably understand at a high level. I don't think they realize how complex a system built over 20 years that's a trillion-dollar company's raison d'être can be.
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