Apps have become too good at their jobs(meteamedia.org)
meteamedia.org
Apps have become too good at their jobs
https://meteamedia.org/22723/opinions/apps-have-become-too-good-at-their-jobs/
72 comments
For what it's worth, http://old.reddit.com/ is more or less as usable as it's always been, and has no nagging pop-ups. (There's a small "TRY REDDIT MOBILE!" banner that pops up once every few months or so if you're using a mobile browser, but that's about it.)
Do you have a similar (web based, no mobile apps) workaround for Twitter?
I don't have Twitter installed on my phone as I don't want to be bothered by notifications and I don't want to see my personalized feed. But sometimes I want to catch up on some breaking news or hear a commentator's thoughts on a recent event, and Twitter is either a good place or the only place for that.
Unfortunately, the Twitter web app shuts me down when I scroll too far into a page.
I don't have Twitter installed on my phone as I don't want to be bothered by notifications and I don't want to see my personalized feed. But sometimes I want to catch up on some breaking news or hear a commentator's thoughts on a recent event, and Twitter is either a good place or the only place for that.
Unfortunately, the Twitter web app shuts me down when I scroll too far into a page.
You can use https://nitter.net (just replace Twitter.com in the URL)
nitter.net provide the front end for twitter.
Just add the username you want to read.
https://nitter.net/username
On iOS, Brave allows you to automatically redirect URLs. Nitter and old.reddit would be an ideal use case:
https://twitter.com/brave/status/1552063664920100864?t=JTcyu...
https://twitter.com/brave/status/1552063664920100864?t=JTcyu...
> Unfortunately, the Twitter web app shuts me down when I scroll too far into a page.
The twitter mobile experience is awful, but I found that if you tap signin in the infamous undismissable modal and then you go back with the browser it will not nag you for a while.
Then there's Nitter if you are after an alternative frontend.
The twitter mobile experience is awful, but I found that if you tap signin in the infamous undismissable modal and then you go back with the browser it will not nag you for a while.
Then there's Nitter if you are after an alternative frontend.
You can also use third-party clients on mobile. I use rif (originally known as Reddit Is Fun).
It's absurd, Reddit isn't usable from browser anymore. I've never seen a company deliberately destroying its product user experience like this just to feed a smaller portion of its services.
Where are the investors? Where's the board? Do they use the product? Reddit used to be in a dominating position for everything between 4chan and Facebook, why are they trashing everything to squeeze a bit of data? If that's benefitting the company (and I'm really in doubt of that) it's just in the shortest term... You'll see a small boost in sign ups maybe, app downloads, but the company's reputation is lost forever.
Where are the investors? Where's the board? Do they use the product? Reddit used to be in a dominating position for everything between 4chan and Facebook, why are they trashing everything to squeeze a bit of data? If that's benefitting the company (and I'm really in doubt of that) it's just in the shortest term... You'll see a small boost in sign ups maybe, app downloads, but the company's reputation is lost forever.
Reddit won, they are the internets forum there is nothing else that comes close.
Given that and the fact that the majority of their users are probably on mobile now not desktop, I'm sure their investors and board are cheering them on to convert mobile users to App users, they're likely much more valuable.
Given that and the fact that the majority of their users are probably on mobile now not desktop, I'm sure their investors and board are cheering them on to convert mobile users to App users, they're likely much more valuable.
To me, there's Hacker News, Stack Exchange sites, and the Fediverse.
When Reddit chose to cater to "normies", I was fine with it. But when they started to become hostile to techies (the insulting mobile and new web experience, and the decay of the old UI), I just visited less.
I also stopped visiting Facebook since they didn't let me paste links in IceCat. The message field would break in strange ways.
So long, and thanks for all the dysfunctional JavaScript.
When Reddit chose to cater to "normies", I was fine with it. But when they started to become hostile to techies (the insulting mobile and new web experience, and the decay of the old UI), I just visited less.
I also stopped visiting Facebook since they didn't let me paste links in IceCat. The message field would break in strange ways.
So long, and thanks for all the dysfunctional JavaScript.
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> The era of the open internet where people could freely visit different pages with a single browser is slowly coming to a close.
I prefer to think it's just taking a short nap.
I prefer to think it's just taking a short nap.
> For example the Reddit website has been borderline unusable for many years, especially on mobile
I've heard this many times, but I've always had exactly the opposite experience -- the infinite scroll and poor resource management makes the performance of Reddit on desktop essentially unusable, while mobile is still paginated. As long as you switch from the awful Card view to the Compact, which should have been the default in the first place, mobile seems like a far superior experience to me. I refuse to use the app, so I can't compare there. Why do people cite the mobile web experience as being worse than desktop?
I've heard this many times, but I've always had exactly the opposite experience -- the infinite scroll and poor resource management makes the performance of Reddit on desktop essentially unusable, while mobile is still paginated. As long as you switch from the awful Card view to the Compact, which should have been the default in the first place, mobile seems like a far superior experience to me. I refuse to use the app, so I can't compare there. Why do people cite the mobile web experience as being worse than desktop?
The comment viewing experience on the mobile Reddit interface is quite unpleasant. My biggest complaints are:
- It does full browser reloads to expand "3 More Comments" instead of asynchronously loading them, and it does this multiple times to let you see a full conversation
- When you do click to read more comments the page loads are jarring and don't take you to the comment content, making you scroll to find where you were
- It inserts irrelevant content (things like other posts) between the comments in a way that makes it unclear there's more to read.
- Of course they also pop up at you multiple times nagging you to use their app instead.
Reddit's main draw is the comment section for me. Of course in the default subs and r/popular you mostly want to avoid them, but in smaller subs they're still the heart of the community.
- It does full browser reloads to expand "3 More Comments" instead of asynchronously loading them, and it does this multiple times to let you see a full conversation
- When you do click to read more comments the page loads are jarring and don't take you to the comment content, making you scroll to find where you were
- It inserts irrelevant content (things like other posts) between the comments in a way that makes it unclear there's more to read.
- Of course they also pop up at you multiple times nagging you to use their app instead.
Reddit's main draw is the comment section for me. Of course in the default subs and r/popular you mostly want to avoid them, but in smaller subs they're still the heart of the community.
I generally agree, however I would offer a view that if you compare the internet to a library. Then it's still a big open place if you're willing to go looking. It's just so many people are so lazy these days they never get into the deep content of blogs of smaller forums that arn't FB or Reddit.
There's stacks of really good information and internet that's not just rent seeking. It's just sadly places like Reddit (which i use) and Facebook have been so hostile to users that only the oblivious remain devotees.
There's stacks of really good information and internet that's not just rent seeking. It's just sadly places like Reddit (which i use) and Facebook have been so hostile to users that only the oblivious remain devotees.
Youtube Shorts are terribly good at what they do, and I presume is the same for something like TikTok. In fact they are so good at grabbing attention that I feel like a resposible company would quickly have discontinued Shorts, to avoid doing to much damage.
The quality of the content in most Shorts is extremely low, yet it’s very addictive. There’s basically no psycologic break for users. You have to be a pretty cold person to think that stealing hours of people life every day as a business opportunity.
The quality of the content in most Shorts is extremely low, yet it’s very addictive. There’s basically no psycologic break for users. You have to be a pretty cold person to think that stealing hours of people life every day as a business opportunity.
It's not like the people are blameless. Before online, most just turned on the TV and watched whatever was on. Then you binged series on Netflix. Now you open youtube or tiktok or whatever and watch whatever is on.
While the companies behind the videos are probably more predatory than what was there in the past, the tendency is there in everyone.
Maybe the way to get out of this is to educate people that binge watching video content is not good for you.
While the companies behind the videos are probably more predatory than what was there in the past, the tendency is there in everyone.
Maybe the way to get out of this is to educate people that binge watching video content is not good for you.
I'm the opposite. YouTube was binge watched before netflix, then Netflix, now, it's swung back to youtube.
Problem is now they're pushing shorts which suck. If I wanted short content I'd sign up to TikTok or Instagram. Personally I think youtube should target longer content which will, I think, probably outlast short content.
Problem is now they're pushing shorts which suck. If I wanted short content I'd sign up to TikTok or Instagram. Personally I think youtube should target longer content which will, I think, probably outlast short content.
The length of content on YouTube is a bit weird for me. I don't like Shorts, for multiple reasons, but length is one of them. It's hard to do meaningful content in less than one minute. Some are able to and make good stuff though. I also don't like 20 minute videos, because they seem to be mostly stretched to facilitate monetization and ads. 10 minutes is the sweet spot for me, but that's not longer viable for the creators.
Could you elaborate on what makes it so addictive? Neither Tiktok nor YT Shorts seem to "work" on me, but I've heard from a lot of people, including intelligent & thoughtful people that I respect, that Tiktok's recommendation algorithm is unusually fantastic. I was a little skeptical that Tiktok had broken new ground in a _very_ well-trod space, and had chalked it up to the format and volume of content, which you'd expect to extend to YT shorts too. It sounds like you share this perspective, so I'd be interested to hear more about what you consider to be so addictive about the format.
This isn't some slyly-boastful "what's the big deal, _I_ don't have any issue with it", comment. I assume that this particular hook just missed my brain, and there are others that grab me more (I'm def not thrilled with the amt that I use Twitter). I'm just genuinely curious about the details of what makes the format so hyper-addictive, and can't really explore it by experimenting with my own brain.
This isn't some slyly-boastful "what's the big deal, _I_ don't have any issue with it", comment. I assume that this particular hook just missed my brain, and there are others that grab me more (I'm def not thrilled with the amt that I use Twitter). I'm just genuinely curious about the details of what makes the format so hyper-addictive, and can't really explore it by experimenting with my own brain.
Do you have experience with YouTube or Wikipedia rabbit holes? Try imagining that, but instead of a 5-20+ minute long video or an encyclopedia article, it is a saccharin video mill full of memes, music, fun facts, and anything else that can fit inside a one minute video while only requiring users to swipe their finger.
The TikTok algorithm, to put it another way, is really good at delivering relatable content within an hour or two of app engagement (liking, commenting, subscribing).
The work to reward ratio favors the user heavily. Most videos on tiktok are within 20 and 30 seconds so the user invests very little and can consume a lot with little time.
The TikTok algorithm, to put it another way, is really good at delivering relatable content within an hour or two of app engagement (liking, commenting, subscribing).
The work to reward ratio favors the user heavily. Most videos on tiktok are within 20 and 30 seconds so the user invests very little and can consume a lot with little time.
Firstly, Most things I'm interested in can't be consumed within 20 or 30 seconds. Secondly how can one present information and arguments supporting information in 20 to 30 seconds? You can't, it's purey gossip or similar at that speed. And then you'd have to follow up with further investigation, and you may as well have watched something longer format in the first place.
> memes, music, fun facts
The very things I try to avoid.
The very things I try to avoid.
I have this same question. I've tried using Tiktok twice. Both times I was as honest as I can be about my interests and both times it quickly devolves into stuff I simply don't care about and will never deliberately take time out of my day to seek out.
Just had a thought... is there a psychology to "idle browsing" that I just don't have? I never browse the Google Play store for apps but more than 50% of users discover my apps this way. I never browse Netflix for recommendations. I almost never browse Youtube's recommendations unless I'm listening to a playlist and want to discover similar music (while doing something else).
In almost all of these contexts I discover content through word of mouth or browsing discussion forums and search for exactly what I'm looking for.
Just had a thought... is there a psychology to "idle browsing" that I just don't have? I never browse the Google Play store for apps but more than 50% of users discover my apps this way. I never browse Netflix for recommendations. I almost never browse Youtube's recommendations unless I'm listening to a playlist and want to discover similar music (while doing something else).
In almost all of these contexts I discover content through word of mouth or browsing discussion forums and search for exactly what I'm looking for.
I put a couple of cumulative hours into it, purely to seed/discover the supposedly-fantastic recommendation algorithm. I was drowning in videos of cute couples doing inane things until I started doing the couple extra clicks to indicate Not Interested. After that it got a bit more diverse, but I somehow don't seem to have left seemingly-generic content behind, and at no point did I get any inkling of the "just one more video" flow that I've heard about.
From what you explain, you are clearly an outlier. If on one side of the bell curve there are the "whales", you are probably... a plancton?
I haven't tried TikTok, so I can't really comment, but I've heard the same in regards to their recommendations. YouTubes algorithm, is either fantastically broken, or really devious. Recommendation fall into two main categories, interspersed with a few good videos: Completely broken, as in presenting videos from 20 year old women making videos about how their boyfriend suck or complaining about things I can't relate to as a 40 years old dad. I mean the target audience is way off. The other category is an attempt to push evermore extreme toxic masculinity videos.
Intermixed with the two categories are a few videos, which in my case are two military analysts, which I do enjoy. The thing is, you get a video that makes you think: "This is pretty good", then you're hit with either something that actually pisses you off or go "why the hell am I seeing this?". I believe that in my case it's a question of the going back and forth between: Hey this is interesting and then "why are you showing me this crap" and trying to make it learn to not show me junk content. And Shorts is MOSTLY junk, the majority of the videos are absolute garbage. So for me, it's 50% emotional rollercoaster and 50% technically curiosity.
Liking and disliking videos does NOTHING for the recommended videos. It seems like the recommendation engine only understand genres or categories when doing recommendations, but not when you hit dislike on a bunch of videos of the same type. It works create for normal YouTube videos, but not on Shorts.
I've resorted to a Firefox plugin that just removes Shorts from the YouTube sidebar and then removing the panel... Though YouTube tells me it will be back in 30 days, at which point I'll have to remove it again.
Intermixed with the two categories are a few videos, which in my case are two military analysts, which I do enjoy. The thing is, you get a video that makes you think: "This is pretty good", then you're hit with either something that actually pisses you off or go "why the hell am I seeing this?". I believe that in my case it's a question of the going back and forth between: Hey this is interesting and then "why are you showing me this crap" and trying to make it learn to not show me junk content. And Shorts is MOSTLY junk, the majority of the videos are absolute garbage. So for me, it's 50% emotional rollercoaster and 50% technically curiosity.
Liking and disliking videos does NOTHING for the recommended videos. It seems like the recommendation engine only understand genres or categories when doing recommendations, but not when you hit dislike on a bunch of videos of the same type. It works create for normal YouTube videos, but not on Shorts.
I've resorted to a Firefox plugin that just removes Shorts from the YouTube sidebar and then removing the panel... Though YouTube tells me it will be back in 30 days, at which point I'll have to remove it again.
Yea, I too get a mix of the inane 20-year-old girl crap and the hypermacho MMA/hustler entrepreneur stuff. I figure this is just the prior distribution, the stuff that hits the broadest audience. That's why I'm surprised that I haven't been able to meaningfully escape that rut, despite trying to feed the algorithm my disinterest. It almost feels like they don't know what to show me: the only stuff I see are other forms of undifferentiated crap crap, like handsome doctors overacting to videos about medical issues.
I'm pretty confounded by the fact that it seemed so poor at exploring the space of possible videos
I'm pretty confounded by the fact that it seemed so poor at exploring the space of possible videos
It's also ripe for weaponization. We know, for example, that FB did experiments where they intentionally made people depressed by adjusting what was in their feeds. It would be trivially easy to target a country or group of end users and gently nudge them towards depression and likely other outcomes by adjusting their feeds. All the major social media companies have ties to their parent governments and often openly with the intelligence communities. This type of thing would fall under 5th generation warfare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generations_of_warfare#Fifth_g...
This is why algorithm control must be handed over to the users by providing them ways to set and customize the algorithm.
If you had control over the algorithm, how many votes do you think you could change?
Shorts algorithms are trash. All of the content is braindead mainstream hogwash, none of which I remotely enjoy or watch on YouTube. I imagine Tiktok would not have this problem based on what I’ve heard.
Isn't it tied into your viewing history? I get a bunch of cool engineering, physics, and chemistry demos. It's like a personal Bill Nye for me. Oh, and cat videos lol.
Absolutely not, there are two channels I’ve watched mixed in, but it also the two only Shorts creators I enjoy. The rest is just mind numbingly dumb or down right extremist.
Over a period of five years I’ve reported maybe three videos. Last week I reported ten Shorts. The reports range from misleading and copy right violation to encouring suicide, violence and endangerment.
YouTube simply does not care, Shorts are there to defend against TikTok, so it bypass any existing algorithmes.
Over a period of five years I’ve reported maybe three videos. Last week I reported ten Shorts. The reports range from misleading and copy right violation to encouring suicide, violence and endangerment.
YouTube simply does not care, Shorts are there to defend against TikTok, so it bypass any existing algorithmes.
Oh really? I believe you. I probably just haven't used it enough to see the bad shit yet. Only spent maybe an hour or two total on it before losing interest.
YouTube shorts is the biggest thing I wish I could disable on my modern internet experience. So I personally think it's a failure for me as a market
yep... also, why the hell can't you speed them up like you can do normal videos? (by using , and . in a browser)
Also they don't show the red progress bar in my subs feed, so I can't know which ones I've already watched. Just end up hiding them as they come, which is yet more busywork slowly driving me off the platform.
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It's calling "tying" in the economic theory of monopoly. A good/monopoly product/feature is "tied" to others, to "extend" the monopoly into other competitive domains.
Anti-competition laws find this harms competition, and courts have restricted it. This is why companies get pushed to allow independent repair services, etc. However, the analysis is a bit vague and difficult to enforce, since it's hard to distinguish from product bundling. The question is not whether the product is one or many, but whether there can be multiple markets, or whether the benefits of producer integration outweigh the competition benefits of consumer integration.
For attention-seeking apps, clearly a context-switch that breaks attention is to be avoided. I find it interesting that multiple small switches to new interesting (shiny) things not only is more sticky than longer formats, it also seems to reduce interest in making a mode shift, to something else entirely. There are different ways to model this neurologically, with no leading hypothesis AFAIK.
Anti-competition laws find this harms competition, and courts have restricted it. This is why companies get pushed to allow independent repair services, etc. However, the analysis is a bit vague and difficult to enforce, since it's hard to distinguish from product bundling. The question is not whether the product is one or many, but whether there can be multiple markets, or whether the benefits of producer integration outweigh the competition benefits of consumer integration.
For attention-seeking apps, clearly a context-switch that breaks attention is to be avoided. I find it interesting that multiple small switches to new interesting (shiny) things not only is more sticky than longer formats, it also seems to reduce interest in making a mode shift, to something else entirely. There are different ways to model this neurologically, with no leading hypothesis AFAIK.
But surely there is a point at which the feature bloat becomes too great? the app becomes so feature-dense that users are turned off by the complexity, and the trickle of adventurous users doesn't satisfy the costs of development and maintenance of a new feature. I've heard a lot of stories about chat-apps with built-in payment functionality. I've heard of few successes.
I would like to think that WeChat is successful in the Chinese marketplace because that marketplace isn't actually very competitive. The government puts their thumb on the scale in favor of simplifying their mechanisms of control.
There is a phrase associated with unix: "Make each program do one thing well". Mobile operating systems lack the inter-process communication needed to make an ecosystem of simple, extensible programs.
I would like to think that WeChat is successful in the Chinese marketplace because that marketplace isn't actually very competitive. The government puts their thumb on the scale in favor of simplifying their mechanisms of control.
There is a phrase associated with unix: "Make each program do one thing well". Mobile operating systems lack the inter-process communication needed to make an ecosystem of simple, extensible programs.
You are mistaken chinese market place is actually more competitive than the US. Instead of 1 amazon they have 3 instead of 1 Apple they have 3. Chinese companies have some restrictions and lines that are not supposed to be crossed but they are the same for most of them. And Chinese government is uncomfortable with 1 private app/service controlling the whole market as they want that control so they promote smaller players which results in more competitive market.
One interesting part of the WeChat ecosystem in my opinion is the max size given to mini programs. The packaged app must be 10mb or less.
Of course video and images can be hosted externally, but it still forces companies who develop these mini programs to pay a minimum of attention to keeping their functionality relatively simple.
Of course video and images can be hosted externally, but it still forces companies who develop these mini programs to pay a minimum of attention to keeping their functionality relatively simple.
Hell no.
Tens of thousands of businesses worldwide purchase "the full Microsoft experience."
They integrate every single aspect of their digital enterprise with Microsoft's off the shelf option.
The same applies to Apps.
Many people want 1 thing that does it all.
Tens of thousands of businesses worldwide purchase "the full Microsoft experience."
They integrate every single aspect of their digital enterprise with Microsoft's off the shelf option.
The same applies to Apps.
Many people want 1 thing that does it all.
I don't think that's true that people want 1 thing that does it all. They certainly want one bill, that I'll grant, but that's not exactly the same thing.
People want an ecosystem that is easy to adapt to, and more specifically they want _the ecosystem they're familiar with_. In a past life with software support, when it came to large/enterprise customers, the biggest pushback/fights had nothing to do with features or price, but with a few stubborn IT Managers/Administrators who were used to another product and didn't want to change.
UI/UX should have a common 'language' for lack of better words between them with a spin on it that still makes it unique for the program. We already see this with desktop OSes and mobile; if I right-click on any common desktop OS, I know I get a contextual menu on an object, if I swipe or tap on mobile likely something will happen, etc. Users mostly get this except for a small subset and can use a lot of apps; the app ecosystem on mobile more or less demonstrates this.
What Meta is doing with WhatsApp isn't about the one app for all, it's just they have a huge user base that isn't bringing in money and likely they see this as a cardinal sin _not to monetize_ WhatsApp somehow. They likely look at WeChat and go "wait you can make money like that?" and are desperately trying to figure out how to get themselves there. I have not been in the US for a long time so I don't know how people there will adopt to Meta-Money or whatever Meta ends up calling it. For the EU countries I've lived in, I'm not as confident people will want to be doing that with Meta at least when Apple/Google Pay exist and work pretty alright and banking apps already handling fast direct payments without needing an SV intermediary.
People want an ecosystem that is easy to adapt to, and more specifically they want _the ecosystem they're familiar with_. In a past life with software support, when it came to large/enterprise customers, the biggest pushback/fights had nothing to do with features or price, but with a few stubborn IT Managers/Administrators who were used to another product and didn't want to change.
UI/UX should have a common 'language' for lack of better words between them with a spin on it that still makes it unique for the program. We already see this with desktop OSes and mobile; if I right-click on any common desktop OS, I know I get a contextual menu on an object, if I swipe or tap on mobile likely something will happen, etc. Users mostly get this except for a small subset and can use a lot of apps; the app ecosystem on mobile more or less demonstrates this.
What Meta is doing with WhatsApp isn't about the one app for all, it's just they have a huge user base that isn't bringing in money and likely they see this as a cardinal sin _not to monetize_ WhatsApp somehow. They likely look at WeChat and go "wait you can make money like that?" and are desperately trying to figure out how to get themselves there. I have not been in the US for a long time so I don't know how people there will adopt to Meta-Money or whatever Meta ends up calling it. For the EU countries I've lived in, I'm not as confident people will want to be doing that with Meta at least when Apple/Google Pay exist and work pretty alright and banking apps already handling fast direct payments without needing an SV intermediary.
> People want an ecosystem that is easy to adapt to
People don't know what an 'ecosystem' is. They just want to click twice, and have things work. They don't have neither time nor energy to take away from daily hustle and dedicate it to maintaining an open web.
People don't know what an 'ecosystem' is. They just want to click twice, and have things work. They don't have neither time nor energy to take away from daily hustle and dedicate it to maintaining an open web.
Facebook has already tried payments before through Messenger, and no one really used it. I don’t really see WhatsApp doing much better.
WhatsApp might succeed because it's less of a kitchen sink. WhatsApp is mainly about private communication. It's an app you feel like you control, where you're not being bombarded by advertising. Somehow payments feel psychologically safer in that context than a social network.
I mean, none of the US messaging-based payment transfer things have really worked. iMessage has no ads and no one uses the payments feature there either
I think we've pretty much saying the same thing.
I say application, you say ecosystem
To people who don't care about software, the difference can be... marginal.
They want a that is easy to use without training. Works perfectly, for their use case, the first time.
There are no other relevant details.
I say application, you say ecosystem
To people who don't care about software, the difference can be... marginal.
They want a that is easy to use without training. Works perfectly, for their use case, the first time.
There are no other relevant details.
I don't necessarily think people want an MS-like offering that does everything. I think an enterprise package like MS offers is successful, because it makes life easy for people who handle procurement and IT management at large firms. It's just one relationship to negotiate, they structure their offerings to make them sticky, and it's less work for an admin to take care of.
I think the consensus among users is that no single component of MS's offering is best-in-class, except maybe Excel.
I think the consensus among users is that no single component of MS's offering is best-in-class, except maybe Excel.
I think it is more about convenience. If you are already lured into a certain cosmos, given a certain context, some additional features can make sense and later on give an app a shift in meaning. Think about Google Maps and certain recommendations.
"The goal for most apps, especially social media, is to sustain user retention for as long as possible" That's it. And that's why I chose Kindle to be my go to app. No FB nor TikTok installed.
"The goal for most apps, especially social media, is to sustain user retention for as long as possible" That's it. And that's why I chose Kindle to be my go to app. No FB nor TikTok installed.
For unix, chaining programs is a way of working. Exchanging data between apps or websites is a hassle...
That's intentional. There's no reason you couldn't have apps be more interoperable through open standards, but vendors want to keep you locked in their ecosystem.
I just wish they'd let users disable these extra attention grabbing features.
In WhatsApp for example, I just want to use it as a messaging app but I find myself getting drawn to statuses and wasting my time and attention there. I try to combat it by muting each individual status but it's not an effective strategy. It would be great to have the option to either disable it or only allow certain person.
In WhatsApp for example, I just want to use it as a messaging app but I find myself getting drawn to statuses and wasting my time and attention there. I try to combat it by muting each individual status but it's not an effective strategy. It would be great to have the option to either disable it or only allow certain person.
My entire whatsapp is muted. I just check if i have new messages now and then. Experiment with turning off all notifications on your device.
I found out tgat WhatsApp is auto muted under engery saving mode in CalyxOS. Now I just have to remember to check every once in a while. The list of apps I use is pretty short anyway.
> Youtube shorts affected countless Youtubers who made their careers on the platform. They stole the target audience of regular-length videos which lead to a decrease in the watch time for longer videos. Youtube neglected its core audience in favor of increasing user retention based on a current trend. Established Youtubers like Marques Brownlee and Mrwhosetheboss had to create a secondary shorts channel to keep up with their audience.
I disagree with this. Things change, the world goes on, and you need to keep up with it. It’s not YouTube taking away their audience, it’s them not keeping up with the times (if they don’t make shorts)
I disagree with this. Things change, the world goes on, and you need to keep up with it. It’s not YouTube taking away their audience, it’s them not keeping up with the times (if they don’t make shorts)
It is youtube. When they signed up they expected to not be treated like hot garbage just a few years down.
Youtube is currently pushing shorts hard. It is incentivizing users to download clips from tiktok (legally or not) and reupload them to youtube, where they get free prioritized air time. There are many (hundreds?) of such channels with milllions of subscribers from simply copy-pasting tiktok to youtube. This is how youtube wants to grow its shorts. This is the company's immoral behavior, not the creators.
Youtube is currently pushing shorts hard. It is incentivizing users to download clips from tiktok (legally or not) and reupload them to youtube, where they get free prioritized air time. There are many (hundreds?) of such channels with milllions of subscribers from simply copy-pasting tiktok to youtube. This is how youtube wants to grow its shorts. This is the company's immoral behavior, not the creators.
Apps like these usually have a limited shelf life before they expire and die out. The reason being is that their popularity is driven by younger demographic that ages and the replacement population doesn't want to use what "old" folk use. So Tik Tok or whatever the latest buzz generating app will be doomed to die slowly in the end. The fad of short videos of people doing inane things is just the latest fad until they come up with something else on another platform. When your mom uses Tik Tok then it's time to get off the platform.
> Youtube shorts affected countless Youtubers who made their careers on the platform. They stole the target audience of regular-length videos which lead to a decrease in the watch time for longer videos. Youtube neglected its core audience in favor of increasing user retention based on a current trend. Established Youtubers like Marques Brownlee and Mrwhosetheboss had to create a secondary shorts channel to keep up with their audience.
I think this part is the most remarkable of the article.
Yes, at this point, we all know about surveillance capitalism, the attention economy, amusing ourselves to death and all that jazz.
However, here is a concrete example where a platform operator actively forces its content creators to make their content more addictive. That's not the invisible hand of the market driving youtubers to do a particular thing, it's the quite visible hand of youtube.
I think this part is the most remarkable of the article.
Yes, at this point, we all know about surveillance capitalism, the attention economy, amusing ourselves to death and all that jazz.
However, here is a concrete example where a platform operator actively forces its content creators to make their content more addictive. That's not the invisible hand of the market driving youtubers to do a particular thing, it's the quite visible hand of youtube.
> platform operator actively forces its content creators to make their content more addictive
Its all fun and games until large regulators like the Eu comes cracking down...
Its all fun and games until large regulators like the Eu comes cracking down...
There are programmers and there are apps that people are using in large numbers so work will graduate to wherever it has a chance of getting eyeballed. Whether or not this is desirable is immaterial. We work to get paid and we have to find things to do.
So in the end all hyper commercial software will turn into crap.
So in the end all hyper commercial software will turn into crap.
One advantage of the smorgasbord style app is the your personal information is only being held by one player. I like my privacy, however it is hard to estimate how your private data will be abused when your privacy is smeared across multiple corporates.
Does anyone else just read this crap and yawn?
If a person really has a choice, it should be possible to use the internet in general such that it does not generate profit for the parent company. Another way to phrase it: if content a person sees is being steered and controlled so much that a particular company always profits, then the model of providing a service to the user has conceptually been abandoned.
The era of the open internet where people could freely visit different pages with a single browser is slowly coming to a close. Even trivial things like viewing tweets and other plaintext are incrementally being locked down behind apps that surveil users. For example the Reddit website has been borderline unusable for many years, especially on mobile, and that fact is well known to the relevant developers. The reason it isn't improved is obvious as the pop-ups nag: "reddit is better in the app!"