Gmail really wants me to say yes(abe-winter.github.io)
abe-winter.github.io
Gmail really wants me to say yes
https://abe-winter.github.io/2019/05/21/yes-gmail-yes.html
132 comments
I don’t really understand why the author is being annoyed about a model that takes time to figure things out based on what it learns from the user. I use these buttons all the time, and they’ve grown to be more useful/accurate as things go on–it’s definitely something I would be sad to lose.
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> You can taste the dank PM sweat dripping from the prompt that instead of saying ‘Yes’, ‘Later’, ‘Never ask me again’, says ‘Yes forever’, ‘Maybe later’. Sooner or later I’m going to slip and tap yes by accident and then some app will get microphone access on my phone.
This is exactly how 'enhanced' location access worked on android for years. It would actually grey out "no" option if you told it to save the choice!
But on the subject, there was actually a publication on the effort it took to get this system to not just return minor variations of the same answer.
This is exactly how 'enhanced' location access worked on android for years. It would actually grey out "no" option if you told it to save the choice!
But on the subject, there was actually a publication on the effort it took to get this system to not just return minor variations of the same answer.
does anyone remember this little gem? http://www.linehollis.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/capture...
Sounds good! Thanks.
> The day that 20% of consumers put a price tag on privacy, freemium is over and privacy is back.
It's ironic coming from person with @gmail.com email. Fastmail's service is $5/month, but they chose the free one which harvests their data instead.
If even the privacy advocates are not using their own advice, I doubt freemium is going to be over anytime soon.
It's ironic coming from person with @gmail.com email. Fastmail's service is $5/month, but they chose the free one which harvests their data instead.
If even the privacy advocates are not using their own advice, I doubt freemium is going to be over anytime soon.
I use gmail and I value privacy, I pay for g-suite though.
I tried all of them, fastmail, protonmail, tutanota, Runbox and a few others, and none of them came close to using gmail. So I figured, what the hell, g-suite is around the same price and it gets me 30gb of cloud storage as well.
I wish google was a little more clear on where the privacy starts and ends though. Like if you want to use google home with a g-suite, you have to enable a bunch of tracking. I know this has to do with the fact that google wants to separate business from personal use, but really, I don’t want two e-mails.
I tried all of them, fastmail, protonmail, tutanota, Runbox and a few others, and none of them came close to using gmail. So I figured, what the hell, g-suite is around the same price and it gets me 30gb of cloud storage as well.
I wish google was a little more clear on where the privacy starts and ends though. Like if you want to use google home with a g-suite, you have to enable a bunch of tracking. I know this has to do with the fact that google wants to separate business from personal use, but really, I don’t want two e-mails.
Just out of interest, what do you prefer with gmail over fastmail? I find using FM to be a much better experience.
Two things I like about Gmail over Fastmail:
- I can have multiple inboxes displayed in Gmail at the same time, such as is:unread or is:starred
- I can compose an email while reading another in the same window/tab
That being said, there are a lot of things I like about Fastmail over Gmail, notably that its way faster. As an admin (our business uses both Fastmail and Gsuite), I also like how much simpler and more standards compliant Fastmail is as well.
- I can have multiple inboxes displayed in Gmail at the same time, such as is:unread or is:starred
- I can compose an email while reading another in the same window/tab
That being said, there are a lot of things I like about Fastmail over Gmail, notably that its way faster. As an admin (our business uses both Fastmail and Gsuite), I also like how much simpler and more standards compliant Fastmail is as well.
Spam, I got a lot of it on fastmail and even though I kept flagging it as spam, it kept coming.
The mobile client, I really like the gmail iOS client. I think fastmail was better than the native iOS mail client, but I just really like the gmail one.
Google docs, photos and drive are nice additions, but it’s mainly the first two.
The mobile client, I really like the gmail iOS client. I think fastmail was better than the native iOS mail client, but I just really like the gmail one.
Google docs, photos and drive are nice additions, but it’s mainly the first two.
I keep reading about the spam problem. Can't confirm that for me. I extremely rarely get spam in my inbox while on gmail I got about the same amounts but also quite a few false positives.
The mobile client: I don't know the iOS client but urgh. The Android FM client is pretty lame :D Luckily, I rarely use it.
I use next cloud for all docs, images, etc. and neither has an integration so that's a toss-up for me ;)
The mobile client: I don't know the iOS client but urgh. The Android FM client is pretty lame :D Luckily, I rarely use it.
I use next cloud for all docs, images, etc. and neither has an integration so that's a toss-up for me ;)
It's the false positives that make me worry the most about Gmail :\ I sometimes get personal emails from family shoved in the spam folder - they're in my contact book, they're starred, they're relatively frequent emailers in both directions... but still, in to spam you go.
The false-positives are usually so absurd, that I have to assume they have no boundaries for their ML-whatever. If it says spam because it has decided that contact books are only worth 90% positive signal, then into spam it goes. ML > any hard-coded rational decisions.
The false-positives are usually so absurd, that I have to assume they have no boundaries for their ML-whatever. If it says spam because it has decided that contact books are only worth 90% positive signal, then into spam it goes. ML > any hard-coded rational decisions.
When you say gmail, do you mean gmail or g-suite? Because my gmail gets a lot of spam, but my g-suite doesn’t.
I meant gmail. I didn't even know there were differences like that between them. I think when I switched to FM, G-Suite was business only.
I think it’s mostly still business, but a lot of the things I do business wise correlate with a lot of things I do personally, so it blends together rather nice.
Now I prefer the mix, I can certainly understand people who prefer the separation.
Now I prefer the mix, I can certainly understand people who prefer the separation.
Postini was great. Google bought them out, but it seems it’s not as good as it used to be in filtering out spoofed SPAM. Corp Gmail is more targeted for S.P.AM. due it it being a business account.
I’ve never seen a spam message in Gmail, and can’t say the same for the latter.
I've noticed the GMail spam filter seems to be really poor over the last six months or so. I'm getting obviously spam emails claiming to be from mispelled versions of ADT and insurance companies, with mystery-meat reply-to addresses, that look like they were composed by a drunken six year-old, landing in my inbox almost daily.
I mark and report them spam, and yet gmail won't even pick up on them if the same mail comes through again later from the same sender.
I mark and report them spam, and yet gmail won't even pick up on them if the same mail comes through again later from the same sender.
I used to use gauite (and still do at work) but switched to fastmail for my private stuff, and it feels faster and better in every possible way, with the exception of not having google docs or equiv
fastmail is a lot nicer on macOS/iOS at least because apple and fastmail partnered to allow push email notifications. http://blog.fastmail.com/2015/07/17/push-email-now-available...
> Fastmail's service is $5/month
Fastmail also based out of Australia. There are dimensions to hypocrisy, not all of which are relevant from every perspective. Product choice is complexly multi-dimensional. A better response might involve asking why such a proclaimed privacy-conscious consumer remains with Gmail.
Fastmail also based out of Australia. There are dimensions to hypocrisy, not all of which are relevant from every perspective. Product choice is complexly multi-dimensional. A better response might involve asking why such a proclaimed privacy-conscious consumer remains with Gmail.
I suppose you are talking about "Assistance and Access Bill"? I don't see how this relates to this discussion, which is about your email provider using your email text for commercial profits.
That said, if you prefer US government to Australian government, I am sure there are also privacy-preserving email providers in US as well. And there is also Swiss Protonmail, outside of both US and UK jurisdictionm, but it is more expensive.
That said, if you prefer US government to Australian government, I am sure there are also privacy-preserving email providers in US as well. And there is also Swiss Protonmail, outside of both US and UK jurisdictionm, but it is more expensive.
They could be paying for Gmail (through GSuite). Afair the ToS for GSuite claims they won't harvest your data.
Anecdotally, I have my private mail at Fastmail and my work mail at GMail and I've never seen an ad related to work emails (or private emails ofc, but that was to be expected)
Anecdotally, I have my private mail at Fastmail and my work mail at GMail and I've never seen an ad related to work emails (or private emails ofc, but that was to be expected)
Not to mention always asking me for more information for "recovery..." Get out of my life. I want you for email (for the moment anyhow) and nothing more, that's exactly how I want it, just back off. Even as I say this...I think I really do need to switch to an email provider that understands boundaries, paid or otherwise.
I think this is a little over the top. They're pushy about this because they want people to have an account recovery method so people can recover their account if necessary. It really is important to them for that reason. This is probably any online services' single biggest source of customer service headaches: people forgetting/losing their credentials and needing the account unlocked. This is a really problematic thing for companies to deal with because any "human" customer service solution is both expensive but more importantly, very vulnerable to social engineering attacks.
This feature is great. Lots of pearl clutching going on. Just type 'No thanks' or whatever if you don't want to go, dude. Seriously.
I have this pet theory that the West has achieved safety and peace of such a degree that people have to box shadows to get that little bit of thrill in their lives. No, there's no scary dystopia coming. You've just got to chill.
This is like me panicking that Jetbrains wants me to print out secrets to stdout because I typed out sout<tab> while writing something handling a secret. My god! They must be moving us to a scary dystopia where everyone's plaintext password is in logs somewhere where Jetbrains can steal it!
I have this pet theory that the West has achieved safety and peace of such a degree that people have to box shadows to get that little bit of thrill in their lives. No, there's no scary dystopia coming. You've just got to chill.
This is like me panicking that Jetbrains wants me to print out secrets to stdout because I typed out sout<tab> while writing something handling a secret. My god! They must be moving us to a scary dystopia where everyone's plaintext password is in logs somewhere where Jetbrains can steal it!
> No, there's no scary dystopia coming.
The reason it's not coming may be because there are people actively watching out. It's hard to tell what would happen if we didn't have them. Society gets better because of people willing to tackle hard questions. They are often inconvenient in how they ask you to reconsider life choices.
> You've just got to chill.
Until you get overlooked by the trained heuristics because they see how exposure to your thoughts cause lower click-through on ads. Then you scream and nobody hears you. And the metrics are all green.
The reason it's not coming may be because there are people actively watching out. It's hard to tell what would happen if we didn't have them. Society gets better because of people willing to tackle hard questions. They are often inconvenient in how they ask you to reconsider life choices.
> You've just got to chill.
Until you get overlooked by the trained heuristics because they see how exposure to your thoughts cause lower click-through on ads. Then you scream and nobody hears you. And the metrics are all green.
This strikes me as misguided in the opposite direction of OP. Keeping an eye on how we relate to the tech we use every day (and vice versa) is wise, especially as we integrate it into our lives more and more. Maintaining an attitude of "everything is fine now and will always be fine" is a great way to be taken advantage of, particularly when it comes to companies that have such a penetrating reach.
Your comment is a long-winded equivalent of "who cares".
And it should be at the top of this discussion thread.
Haha, you're absolutely right! I'll do that next time.
What a ludicrous post. I can't believe anyone is even taking it seriously.
What a ludicrous post. I can't believe anyone is even taking it seriously.
> Why am I not more pissed about this? I think because ‘maybe yes forever later’ isn’t a sign of G’s dominance or power over my life, it’s a sign that they’re afraid of losing it all and are employing dark patterns to hold on to me. And like most strategies conceived in desperation, it has a 50/50 chance of backfiring and driving people away.
This is too optimistic. Google has got a grip on consumers and they will certainly not be driven away by dark patterned prompts. Anyway it's definitely not 50/50.
This is too optimistic. Google has got a grip on consumers and they will certainly not be driven away by dark patterned prompts. Anyway it's definitely not 50/50.
My life is locked into one gmail account. All my notifications, passwords, bank statements, invoices, to and fro emails from exes, etc. etc. come to this gmail account. I have to rewind too much of my time to go to every place that uses my gmail account and change it. I can't do it. I'm locked in for life.
And now think what would happen to you if your Gmail account was locked. No recourse, no response except form mails saying "your account is banned because it's banned." No way to recover any other account using it as recovery mail. No way to access your records or email history. Maybe locked out of your phone too. You're boned.
That's what made me extract myself from Gmail. I created my new email address and forwarded my Gmail account to it, and then for every email coming to the Gmail address I updated the sender with my new address. It took me about six months before all my important mail was using my new address, but it actually wasn't that hard and I feel hugely less vulnerable to Google's whims.
Edit: At the same time I also started using a proper password manager, making me again much less vulnerable to losing an email account because I no longer rely on resetting passwords to get into my multifarious online accounts.
That's what made me extract myself from Gmail. I created my new email address and forwarded my Gmail account to it, and then for every email coming to the Gmail address I updated the sender with my new address. It took me about six months before all my important mail was using my new address, but it actually wasn't that hard and I feel hugely less vulnerable to Google's whims.
Edit: At the same time I also started using a proper password manager, making me again much less vulnerable to losing an email account because I no longer rely on resetting passwords to get into my multifarious online accounts.
If your account is banned do your auto reply(canned responses) stop working? Coz that would be a proper stop gap to tell important people(job offers/contact requests for eg) to your website/email you actually use etc.
If your account is banned how would you even set up an auto-reply to tell people about your new email?
Presumably it would be set up before-hand? If you preferred the other email, you might deprecate the gmail account and set up an auto-reply for all traffic to update contact information. It would require giving up gmail early. The question would be if auto-reply keeps working after being banned
Your solution is (was?) to use your own email address (with your own domain) with email forwarding to your gmail address. This way you do not make your gmail address public, and can move frontends easily.
This does not solve the fact that your email archive is in gmail though.
This does not solve the fact that your email archive is in gmail though.
I would assume that your archived emails would be available for download via IMAP. Is that not the case?
Not if your account is locked. You need to back them up periodically manually while you still can.
The program to do this is called offlineimap.
The program to do this is called offlineimap.
It's really not that hard. I'd used gmail since early 2000s and it took me one long afternoon a couple years ago to switch basically everything to fastmail. Probably helped that everything I cared about was already a record in keepass though.
Don't put all your eggs in the same basket.
I have my bank statements in an email account by a provider that is unlikely to ban people for questionable and unrelated offenses.
(You can totally get banned from Google's entire platform if you do something wrong on the Play store after e.g. being pressured to do so by your employer.)
Most of my private email communication (which has dwindled to a tiny number of messages per month) is on GMail.
I've also got a couple other addresses in addition to that. I also have email addresses on my own domain, but I don't know if I'm going to keep that domain forever, as it costs a lot of money.
I have my bank statements in an email account by a provider that is unlikely to ban people for questionable and unrelated offenses.
(You can totally get banned from Google's entire platform if you do something wrong on the Play store after e.g. being pressured to do so by your employer.)
Most of my private email communication (which has dwindled to a tiny number of messages per month) is on GMail.
I've also got a couple other addresses in addition to that. I also have email addresses on my own domain, but I don't know if I'm going to keep that domain forever, as it costs a lot of money.
> You can totally get banned from Google's entire platform if you do something wrong on the Play store after e.g. being pressured to do so by your employer.
Devil's advocate: that possibility strengthens your position when your employer tries to pressure you to do something neither you nor Google find acceptable.
Devil's advocate: that possibility strengthens your position when your employer tries to pressure you to do something neither you nor Google find acceptable.
I was just as entrenched but am about a year into a gradual transition. Signed up with another email provider with an address @ a domain I own, transferred my entire mail history, forwarded all incoming gmail emails to new provider, updated all public facing contact @s to new address, switched mostly to open source email clients, all new accounts are made @ the new address, old ones stay @ the old one. It's not perfect and it's not trivial but it's 100% worth it.
For once. Get a domain and a paid mail account with fast mail/Zoho/gsuite. Slowly transition to the new inbox by moving over the emails. It will take sometime, possibly months, and you might never be able to close the gmail inbox but it will be fine. You’ll never need to do such a transition in life again.
I have a cochlear implant, I'm probably locked into Med-El for life! :-) But as far as I know, they're not yet spying on people via my cyborg ear.
I did it and it was worth it. I still dip into the gmail occasionally to see if I missed anything but it is essentially a spam email at this point.
It took me 3 years and a few annoying lock outs and it was years ago. 2019 is probably even harder.
I’m a little... confused, is this blog post informed by one data point and then extrapolates a set of conclusions / reasons / motives? I can understand the sentiments of the article and poster, but I am not convinced of the premises that Gmail always prepares affirmative responses, and I’d love to see more data on that point specifically.
I'm also not convinced. I frequently see Gmail suggestions that I would not consider positive, for instance: I'm not interested. What is this about? Who are you?
I was the PM on this feature (and these are my views not Googles, as per normal). The truth is actually much more banal. Most people are just really positive over email.
The model is trained to offer reply suggestions that have the highest chance of being accepted, from a large whitelist of the most common short replies. The whitelist contains many negative options. We're optimizing for click through rate. That's it. There's no editorial judgement, definitely not "‘no’ struck someone as too negative and they had to take it out."
We actually experimented with intentionally inserting more negative options to increase diversity. Doing this reliably causes a hit to our metrics.
Discovering this made me pretty happy about the world. Most people are generally pretty friendly to one another (at least over email!).
The model is trained to offer reply suggestions that have the highest chance of being accepted, from a large whitelist of the most common short replies. The whitelist contains many negative options. We're optimizing for click through rate. That's it. There's no editorial judgement, definitely not "‘no’ struck someone as too negative and they had to take it out."
We actually experimented with intentionally inserting more negative options to increase diversity. Doing this reliably causes a hit to our metrics.
Discovering this made me pretty happy about the world. Most people are generally pretty friendly to one another (at least over email!).
> We're optimizing for click through rate. That's it. There's no editorial judgement...
I think Google in general needs to start taking seriously the idea that this is an editorial judgement.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with optimising for click-through rate, but doing that will skew the options you offer to your viewers in specific ways. Those outcomes are still Google’s responsibility, even if they are the result of choices which are not under Google’s direct control, because Google has made the editorial choice to use click-through rate as their primary metric of choice.
(It’s relatively innocuous in this particular case, but when Google uses click-through to choose between content offered up by other people, Google is setting up feedback loops between consumers, content producers and the algorithm that mediates between the two which can trap the system as a whole in pernicious local attractors in the phase space of possible choices that may be impossible to escape.)
I think Google in general needs to start taking seriously the idea that this is an editorial judgement.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with optimising for click-through rate, but doing that will skew the options you offer to your viewers in specific ways. Those outcomes are still Google’s responsibility, even if they are the result of choices which are not under Google’s direct control, because Google has made the editorial choice to use click-through rate as their primary metric of choice.
(It’s relatively innocuous in this particular case, but when Google uses click-through to choose between content offered up by other people, Google is setting up feedback loops between consumers, content producers and the algorithm that mediates between the two which can trap the system as a whole in pernicious local attractors in the phase space of possible choices that may be impossible to escape.)
Precisely. Worth noting that the same phenomenon of "pernicious local attractors" is responsible for a whole slew of discriminatory behaviors. Blacks are more likely to go to prison! Therefore we'd better frisk this black guy extra thoroughly...
The truth may be banal, but the impact is not. That's the problem with technology. So often, there's no ill intent in the design decisions, but at scale, the effects can be harmful, even massively harmful.
> We're optimizing for click through rate. That's it. There's no editorial judgement...
Something that all of us as technologists need to learn is that this IS an editorial judgement. We do not get to disclaim responsibility just because we delegated that responsibility to an algorithm. It is we who delegated it, we who chose the algorithm and the metrics, and we who are responsible.
"We're optimizing for click through rate" is how we got the proliferation of misinformation on Facebook. It's how we got https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1037831503101579264. It's how we got Pizzagate.
"We're optimizing for click through rate" is simply not good enough in 2019.
We could claim to be naive in 2000, perhaps even 2010. But today? We all know we're playing with fire now, and it doesn't much matter that of course we didn't MEAN to burn the house down. What matters is that we don't give lit matches to children and we know how to not set the house on fire.
> We're optimizing for click through rate. That's it. There's no editorial judgement...
Something that all of us as technologists need to learn is that this IS an editorial judgement. We do not get to disclaim responsibility just because we delegated that responsibility to an algorithm. It is we who delegated it, we who chose the algorithm and the metrics, and we who are responsible.
"We're optimizing for click through rate" is how we got the proliferation of misinformation on Facebook. It's how we got https://twitter.com/chrislhayes/status/1037831503101579264. It's how we got Pizzagate.
"We're optimizing for click through rate" is simply not good enough in 2019.
We could claim to be naive in 2000, perhaps even 2010. But today? We all know we're playing with fire now, and it doesn't much matter that of course we didn't MEAN to burn the house down. What matters is that we don't give lit matches to children and we know how to not set the house on fire.
I agree and good point on the broader meaning of editorial judgement. If we had seen any negative impact such as the FB/YouTube examples we would absolutely take that into account. I haven't seen anything remotely like yet with regard to smart reply but would want to be the first to see it if it exists.
How would you know? And what would your threshold be?
For example, suppose you did a controlled study and found that the new autocomplete UI was presenting users with only "yes" options, X% of the time. Is there a threshold beyond which you would unlaunch or adjust the feature?
What if the new UI was actually changing user behaviour, causing them to answer "yes" more often than they otherwise would have? Is there a delta (positive or negative) beyond which you would unlaunch or adjust the feature? If you had to adjust it, how would you know you were adjusting it correctly?
What sort of telemetry would you need to put in the product so that you really would know if this was happening?
I'm curious if your team thought about these questions before launching, and what ideas came up.
For example, suppose you did a controlled study and found that the new autocomplete UI was presenting users with only "yes" options, X% of the time. Is there a threshold beyond which you would unlaunch or adjust the feature?
What if the new UI was actually changing user behaviour, causing them to answer "yes" more often than they otherwise would have? Is there a delta (positive or negative) beyond which you would unlaunch or adjust the feature? If you had to adjust it, how would you know you were adjusting it correctly?
What sort of telemetry would you need to put in the product so that you really would know if this was happening?
I'm curious if your team thought about these questions before launching, and what ideas came up.
Your willingness to use "we're optimizing for click through rate" as a defense is quite frightening to me, though.
Someone who thinks "We're optimizing for click through rate" is morally neutral is not qualified to be making these decisions, just as someone who thinks giving lit matches to children is morally neutral is not qualified to be a fire marshal.
Would you agree?
Someone who thinks "We're optimizing for click through rate" is morally neutral is not qualified to be making these decisions, just as someone who thinks giving lit matches to children is morally neutral is not qualified to be a fire marshal.
Would you agree?
It's a pretty long journey from 'our algorithm chooses which auto-replies to offer you based on which have the highest probability of being selected' to giving lit matches to children.
I'm afraid to ask your opinion of SwiftKey's autocomplete.
I'm afraid to ask your opinion of SwiftKey's autocomplete.
That's not quite what I'm saying, though. My concern is not with stating the fact that the algorithm uses this metric. My concern is with presenting the decision to use this metric as morally neutral.
If you think that giving lit matches to children is morally neutral, you probably either don't understand how dangerous fire is or don't understand how unpredictable children can be. That's the point of the analogy.
If you think that giving lit matches to children is morally neutral, you probably either don't understand how dangerous fire is or don't understand how unpredictable children can be. That's the point of the analogy.
I don't know what could be more morally neutral than 'we offer the suggestions that you've shown us you're most likely to want to use.' Anything else would be trying to put _their_ words in people's mouths.
And let's not lose sight of the fact that this is a tool that offers an automatic one to three-word email response for when you're too lazy to actually reply. The stakes are about as low as they come.
And let's not lose sight of the fact that this is a tool that offers an automatic one to three-word email response for when you're too lazy to actually reply. The stakes are about as low as they come.
Pretty much the entire history of progressivism is a long, slow dawning realization that it's not harmless to treat individuals on the basis of group statistics, for one group category after another. Part of the problem is feedback loops - you can inadvertently amplify subtle perturbations by feeding them back to people. For example, it might seem harmless to subtly nudge a woman away from a career in STEM, on the basis that women are rare in STEM and therefore they probably won't enjoy it. But this action, repeated across millions of people, creates the pattern that you are reacting to. I think the principle probably generalizes to "everyone", not just "women" and "black people".
In the case of autocomplete suggestions, they can still cause harm even when they're statistically likely. What do you think Google would autosuggest for "Blacks are...", if it were around in 1950? What would the statistics on the completion of that sentence look like? And would the effect of someone seeing that list be 100% neutral - or would it subtly nudge them?
There's nothing obviously harmful with the specifics of GMail's auto-suggestions now. But the principle of 'we offer the suggestions that you've shown us you're most likely to want to use' is not morally neutral.
In the case of autocomplete suggestions, they can still cause harm even when they're statistically likely. What do you think Google would autosuggest for "Blacks are...", if it were around in 1950? What would the statistics on the completion of that sentence look like? And would the effect of someone seeing that list be 100% neutral - or would it subtly nudge them?
There's nothing obviously harmful with the specifics of GMail's auto-suggestions now. But the principle of 'we offer the suggestions that you've shown us you're most likely to want to use' is not morally neutral.
We're talking about auto suggestions along the lines of 'Yes, I have', 'no, I haven't', 'sounds good!', 'yum!'.
I'm not arguing against your principles necessarily, but deploying the argument where it's really not warranted is a form of crying wolf and turns people against it.
And as an aside, at my university the only time I ever saw any recruiting material for STEM, it was along the lines of 'Scholarships for women in STEM'.
I'm not arguing against your principles necessarily, but deploying the argument where it's really not warranted is a form of crying wolf and turns people against it.
And as an aside, at my university the only time I ever saw any recruiting material for STEM, it was along the lines of 'Scholarships for women in STEM'.
It's not a given that it's not warranted:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19978313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19978300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19978171
But the point is, whether this particular case is a problem or not, the general attitude that led to its development is a problem, and we're using this opportunity to discuss that (even though the original article is not very coherent).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19978313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19978300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19978171
But the point is, whether this particular case is a problem or not, the general attitude that led to its development is a problem, and we're using this opportunity to discuss that (even though the original article is not very coherent).
I think the general attitude of being willfully blind to fundamental distinctions between things that are only superficially similar and shoehorning issue debates in where they don't belong is ultimately unhelpful for the debate over what is, elsewhere, an important issue.
"As low as they come"? You might be forgetting that Gmail has about a billion monthly active users. Scale matters.
I'm sure you can think of many products that have fewer users, and features in those products that are less central to them than e-mail composition is to a mail client.
I'm sure you can think of many products that have fewer users, and features in those products that are less central to them than e-mail composition is to a mail client.
> Your willingness to use "we're optimizing for click through rate" as a defense is quite frightening to me, though.
I would suggest that if you are frightened by what is essentially an auto-completing on-screen keyboard being optimized for usefulness over making some random person on Hacker News feel it was more nuanced than just trying to be useful... there's probably no way to implement a feature like this, and make it useful, which wouldn't have you shaking in your boots.
Don't be frightened by what is essentially a riff on T9.
I would suggest that if you are frightened by what is essentially an auto-completing on-screen keyboard being optimized for usefulness over making some random person on Hacker News feel it was more nuanced than just trying to be useful... there's probably no way to implement a feature like this, and make it useful, which wouldn't have you shaking in your boots.
Don't be frightened by what is essentially a riff on T9.
Not everything is a moral travesty; it is in fact okay that people tend to find positive response suggestions more worth selecting.
Veritasium very recently spoke about algorithm optimizing for click through rate in the context of the bad.
https://youtu.be/fHsa9DqmId8?t=783
It seems okay in this case though.
It seems okay in this case though.
> If we had seen any negative impact such as the FB/YouTube examples we would absolutely take that into account.
Maybe? Maybe not? There’s visible and tangible negative impact from Youtube algorithms (owned, incidentally by the same conpany). And Youtube (or Google? Or Alphabet?) rarely if ever acknowledges and fixes those problems because their algorithms are also optimised for click-through.
Maybe? Maybe not? There’s visible and tangible negative impact from Youtube algorithms (owned, incidentally by the same conpany). And Youtube (or Google? Or Alphabet?) rarely if ever acknowledges and fixes those problems because their algorithms are also optimised for click-through.
In this case click through rate does seem to be the right measure. The feature is most useful when it is suggesting the most likely replies.
I read GP as saying they watched the system's behavior and decided that going by click rates gave the best results. I'd say that is the editorial judgment, in the sense that you're talking about.
If they just set things up to go by click rates and assumed that whatever results occurred must necessarily be preferable, then that would be disclaiming responsibility in the way you describe, but GP's version doesn't sound like that.
If they just set things up to go by click rates and assumed that whatever results occurred must necessarily be preferable, then that would be disclaiming responsibility in the way you describe, but GP's version doesn't sound like that.
It's not editorial it's meta-editorial (metatorial?). They're picking the method that picks the content, not the content itself.
(But this isn't blind -- they're picking the method while watching the output, so it may be a fancy way of picking the exact content you want plus other similar content plus adversarial noise).
(But this isn't blind -- they're picking the method while watching the output, so it may be a fancy way of picking the exact content you want plus other similar content plus adversarial noise).
So what does good mean in this case, then?
It's easy to say that something isn't good enough if you don't elaborate on what the axis good-bad is.
It's easy to say that something isn't good enough if you don't elaborate on what the axis good-bad is.
Totally agreed. My take on it is that all this work on optimising for business metrics is optimising away humanity, and diversity.
It almost sounds like human nature gets in the way of revenue, so it has to be manipulated into something more business friendly.
We won’t consciously make that choice but it often seems to be the consequence.
It almost sounds like human nature gets in the way of revenue, so it has to be manipulated into something more business friendly.
We won’t consciously make that choice but it often seems to be the consequence.
I think this is exactly right, though it sounds pithy. The same process produces food that is unsubtle, fatty, and highly sugared. It sells really well! But in the long run, it's terrible for us, and also boring - all fast food tastes more or less the same, because the more adventurous it is, the worse it sells. The term frequently used in discourse is "lowest common denominator".
It's a question of capitalism optimizing for local optima versus global optima. What were seeing with the internet is, what happens when we apply this process not just to food, but culture itself?
It's a question of capitalism optimizing for local optima versus global optima. What were seeing with the internet is, what happens when we apply this process not just to food, but culture itself?
It is good enough, 2019 doesn't mean we don't reflect user behavior.
Not every recommender is a moral agent. Auto-suggest and conspiracy videos aren't the same thing.
And technically, yes, there's not such thing as a non-editorialized recommender, but this feels like a pointless nit since there's a world of difference between trying to be a reflection vs intentionally not reflecting based on a human-made moral judgement.
What even is the moral editorialization in auto-suggest? It's obvious we don't want conspiracy videos pushed front and center of educational topics, but how on earth do you balance the number of "yes" vs "no"? That's clearly going to be a completely made up number. If you don't have a clear problem to fight, it's probably best to not editorialize just to say you did.
Not every recommender is a moral agent. Auto-suggest and conspiracy videos aren't the same thing.
And technically, yes, there's not such thing as a non-editorialized recommender, but this feels like a pointless nit since there's a world of difference between trying to be a reflection vs intentionally not reflecting based on a human-made moral judgement.
What even is the moral editorialization in auto-suggest? It's obvious we don't want conspiracy videos pushed front and center of educational topics, but how on earth do you balance the number of "yes" vs "no"? That's clearly going to be a completely made up number. If you don't have a clear problem to fight, it's probably best to not editorialize just to say you did.
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Pretty sure Gmail is a product not a life giving service, they still do tend to optimise for people continuing to use their service. The societal effects of X technology seems to be the new scare tactic buzzword. It's an automated email response used for emails that don't merit an actual response, the slippery slope fallacy doesn't apply here.
I'd apply that instead to their language autocomplete feature(the grayed out text that appears when you start typing and that you can just press tab to insert into your email) which is scary in the way it tries to shepherd your language
I'd apply that instead to their language autocomplete feature(the grayed out text that appears when you start typing and that you can just press tab to insert into your email) which is scary in the way it tries to shepherd your language
A lot of outrage and grandiose claims about misuses of technology, but you didn't really tackle the issue at hand.
What dangers do you see in this specific example. People will be too lazy to type no, if they don't agree?
What dangers do you see in this specific example. People will be too lazy to type no, if they don't agree?
From my personal experience I think the metrics produced the correct outcome here. I'm not going to click one of those things unless it gets the tone right. So, if you present one 'yes', one 'no', and one 'maybe' (for example) then you only have one chance to nail the tone (because obviously the only candidate is the one that is giving the answer I want to give) and the odds are pretty low. If on the other hand 95% of all replies are a yes, giving three 'yes' options gives you three chances to right the right tone, 95% of the time.
Or you could take this as an opportunity to present first choice of content, then choice of tone. That's two clicks, but it would be a lot more useful if I could pick between yes/no/maybe, and once chosen it would present me with a list of phrases for that choice.
One thing I can definitely understand is that most negative responses have to be carefully crafted, usually polite, and highly dependent on the relationship you have with the other person. One-liner positives are often considered polite since you're just accepting their request; one-liner negatives are almost never polite.
While it's exceedingly commonplace to fire off a one-line e-mail such as "Yes I can" or "Sure that works" it's very uncommon to respond with just "No I can't" or "No that doesn't work". More likely you'd respond "That doesn't work but how about ..." or "That doesn't work because ..."
While it's exceedingly commonplace to fire off a one-line e-mail such as "Yes I can" or "Sure that works" it's very uncommon to respond with just "No I can't" or "No that doesn't work". More likely you'd respond "That doesn't work but how about ..." or "That doesn't work because ..."
> Discovering this made me pretty happy about the world. Most people are generally pretty friendly to one another (at least over email!).
Another possibility is that modern wage laborers are forced to wear a mask of positivity and say "yes, absolutely!" or "awesome!" to everything, because they are terrified of losing their jobs and not being able to keep their necks above water, in a world where fewer and fewer people own most of everything.
Perhaps you yourself are wearing this mask of positivity, when you come here and say that this makes you "pretty happy about the world".
The road to hell is paved with good intentions (and blindly following simplistic metrics).
It's healthy to say no sometimes.
Another possibility is that modern wage laborers are forced to wear a mask of positivity and say "yes, absolutely!" or "awesome!" to everything, because they are terrified of losing their jobs and not being able to keep their necks above water, in a world where fewer and fewer people own most of everything.
Perhaps you yourself are wearing this mask of positivity, when you come here and say that this makes you "pretty happy about the world".
The road to hell is paved with good intentions (and blindly following simplistic metrics).
It's healthy to say no sometimes.
> wage laborers are forced to wear a mask of positivity
RSA Animate made a short animation about how a culture of forced positivity in white color jobs, and how it contributed to the late-2000s financial meltdown.
"Smile or Die" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo
RSA Animate made a short animation about how a culture of forced positivity in white color jobs, and how it contributed to the late-2000s financial meltdown.
"Smile or Die" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo
I can't even figure out what author thinks is wrong with the feature.
The post is mainly about services that push users into accepting things (like data sharing or microphone access), but the only example raised is your "suggested replies" feature, which has no apparent connection to what the post criticizes.
The post is mainly about services that push users into accepting things (like data sharing or microphone access), but the only example raised is your "suggested replies" feature, which has no apparent connection to what the post criticizes.
I'm sure you considered whether optimizing for click-through rate at the expense of diversity of response "moods" (or whatever) was the right tradeoff. Why did you ultimately decide it was?
We also take qualitative metrics pretty seriously and found that this experience was well received on a more subjective level, high csat in particular. It surpassed the success criteria we set out for the feature and I'm happy about where it landed. Of course it's not going to be ideal for everyone, so we have a setting to disable.
To be clearer on our metrics: In addition to qual there's also a precision/recall tradeoff, so saying ctr alone was an oversimplification. We have coverage targets, but that doesn't really impact the positivity of the suggestions.
To be clearer on our metrics: In addition to qual there's also a precision/recall tradeoff, so saying ctr alone was an oversimplification. We have coverage targets, but that doesn't really impact the positivity of the suggestions.
I make absolutely no claim of accuracy to your particular situation here, but the unique speaking style you use (unique to a layman, but quite common I suspect among people who find success in SV) made me immediately recall a Noam Chomsky interview I watched quite some time ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLcpcytUnWU
The key line being: "I'm sure you believe everything you're saying, but what I'm saying is, if you believed something different you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLcpcytUnWU
The key line being: "I'm sure you believe everything you're saying, but what I'm saying is, if you believed something different you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting."
As someone who tends to write overly verbose emails, I find this feature to be useful, in that it reminds me how often "Will do." is an entirely appropriate, succinct response.
Is your model trained globally, or does it learn individual users' styles?
I could imagine that globally the most common replies are three forms of "yes" but for any individual user the most common replies are two forms of "yes" and one "no", simply because there's less diversity in one user's replies than in the entire population.
I could imagine that globally the most common replies are three forms of "yes" but for any individual user the most common replies are two forms of "yes" and one "no", simply because there's less diversity in one user's replies than in the entire population.
There is important variation. Some of us looked around and found how to turn it off, immediately. We are the ones who get a different experience from the rest.
That this the only other choice available is also significant, particularly in reference to other cases where they have chosen to make turning something off impossible.
Taking away the extremely popular "classic layout" is an example. It wasn't costing them anything, but getting people used to accepting arbitrary changes forced on them has worked out very well for Apple, and Google has to want some of that. Each passive acquiescence makes the next easier, until it becomes automatic.
That this the only other choice available is also significant, particularly in reference to other cases where they have chosen to make turning something off impossible.
Taking away the extremely popular "classic layout" is an example. It wasn't costing them anything, but getting people used to accepting arbitrary changes forced on them has worked out very well for Apple, and Google has to want some of that. Each passive acquiescence makes the next easier, until it becomes automatic.
Not disagreeing with the rest of what you said. But keeping an entire alternative interface around is a huge maintenance burden.
It's global
Facebook deemphasizing clickbait content reliably hurts their metrics. YouTube deemphasizing extremist videos reliably hurts their metrics. This metrics-driven product development was totally understandable (and I even tried to do it) up until a few years ago when we simply got too good at it and it ripped the world apart precisely along the seams where the human brain has bugs that cause these things to increase metrics.
Email prefill replies are a silly and relatively harmless example to make this case, but the point is every last button on every product we use is caked in this and we're realizing too late that metrics identifying what humans want often does not coincide with what humans want being good.
People may not say no as often, but one no can be very powerful. It's harder to say no. Billions of people nudged towards saying yes is not nothing.
Email prefill replies are a silly and relatively harmless example to make this case, but the point is every last button on every product we use is caked in this and we're realizing too late that metrics identifying what humans want often does not coincide with what humans want being good.
People may not say no as often, but one no can be very powerful. It's harder to say no. Billions of people nudged towards saying yes is not nothing.
Please please stop optimising everything for click-through rate.
I know it's always the first measurement that springs to mind but I can assure you there are others.
This way you can get other desired behaviours without negatively affecting your metrics.
To put it another way:
The choice of metric is also a design decision.
I know it's always the first measurement that springs to mind but I can assure you there are others.
This way you can get other desired behaviours without negatively affecting your metrics.
To put it another way:
The choice of metric is also a design decision.
> We're optimizing for click through rate.
> Doing this reliably causes a hit to our metrics.
I take this as one more piece of evidence that thinking in terms of rates and metrics make you blind to the user experience.
> Doing this reliably causes a hit to our metrics.
I take this as one more piece of evidence that thinking in terms of rates and metrics make you blind to the user experience.
This whole feature is fucking terrible. I hate it. Please provide a way to turn it off.
For that matter, everything about the Gmail redesign is terrible. It has gimmicky crap like this I don’t want, nothing new I do want, is slow as molasses, and is extremely buggy and unreliable. It is constantly making me wait (sometimes minutes on a slow connection) to do actions which used to be fast, constantly misinterpreting my inputs and weirdly scrolling my page around, it takes unreasonable amounts of CPU/memory, and I have lost text I was typing several times. I frequently end up wanting to punch my computer when using the current Gmail, something which never used to happen.
Sometimes I get fed up enough to use the plain html version. But that is not really satisfactory either.
Bringing back the Gmail of circa 10 years ago would be a huge improvement.
Edit: apparently the suggested responses feature can be disabled in settings. That’s something at least.
For that matter, everything about the Gmail redesign is terrible. It has gimmicky crap like this I don’t want, nothing new I do want, is slow as molasses, and is extremely buggy and unreliable. It is constantly making me wait (sometimes minutes on a slow connection) to do actions which used to be fast, constantly misinterpreting my inputs and weirdly scrolling my page around, it takes unreasonable amounts of CPU/memory, and I have lost text I was typing several times. I frequently end up wanting to punch my computer when using the current Gmail, something which never used to happen.
Sometimes I get fed up enough to use the plain html version. But that is not really satisfactory either.
Bringing back the Gmail of circa 10 years ago would be a huge improvement.
Edit: apparently the suggested responses feature can be disabled in settings. That’s something at least.
This model could exploit known or unknown bugs in the human psyche, optimizing for click through rate today, or something else tomorrow, while bypassing a conscious human decision, like "yes" and "no".
Imagine a light switch in your house that doesn't go ON an OFF but has a bunch of different options every day depending on what the model is trained to do or who the PM for this "feature" is.
It's ultimately manipulation, a loss of control, an unwinable fight against a learning machine that gets what it wants.
Imagine a light switch in your house that doesn't go ON an OFF but has a bunch of different options every day depending on what the model is trained to do or who the PM for this "feature" is.
It's ultimately manipulation, a loss of control, an unwinable fight against a learning machine that gets what it wants.
For me anyway, most of my gmail emails are sent to people I am very familiar with (my wife, friends etc.) So the language I use will often contain personal jokes or colloquialisms unique to us or our community. This feature would be so much more useful if it was trained on my own email. The click through rate would be much higher then, at least for me.
> [...] experimented with [...] negative options [...] causes a hit to our metrics.
I have very bad opinion on this feature overall, but now i am curious; how did you measure people wanting to say No and not finding a quick reply? And then how did you measure the quality of the No available on the test set?
I have very bad opinion on this feature overall, but now i am curious; how did you measure people wanting to say No and not finding a quick reply? And then how did you measure the quality of the No available on the test set?
There is no 'No', there is only 'Yes' and 'un-Yes'.
(I'd guess they looked at peoples' manually typed responses too though?)
(I'd guess they looked at peoples' manually typed responses too though?)
As one of those relentlessly positive email users, thank you for this feature. It’s easily ignored and very useful at times.
I don’t believe you are contributing to the downfall of civilization.
I don’t believe you are contributing to the downfall of civilization.
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Friendly, yes, but noncommittal.
- "Let's meet sometime!"
- "Good idea, we really should meet in person!"
and then nothing happens.
- "Let's meet sometime!"
- "Good idea, we really should meet in person!"
and then nothing happens.
Let me Godwin it up
>We're optimizing for click through rate.
and so was Hitler in ~1923. Optimizing something that affects how other people act (same happens on YT Veritasium:My Video Went Viral https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8) leads to bad outcomes (radicalization, race to the bottom, catering to lowest denominator etc).
>We're optimizing for click through rate.
and so was Hitler in ~1923. Optimizing something that affects how other people act (same happens on YT Veritasium:My Video Went Viral https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHsa9DqmId8) leads to bad outcomes (radicalization, race to the bottom, catering to lowest denominator etc).
This comment explains everything that is wrong about the redesign of Gmail and Google as a whole.
Another explanation: "no" responses require more information.
If you are saying yes, then that's basically all you need to say. If you're saying no, you usually also provide a reason, so you probably wouldn't use any of the short, generic "no" responses Gmail would come up with.
If you are saying yes, then that's basically all you need to say. If you're saying no, you usually also provide a reason, so you probably wouldn't use any of the short, generic "no" responses Gmail would come up with.
This was my initial reaction. Every time I use the suggested replies feature it is in the affirmative, because that is an easy response. No takes some wordsmithing I'd rather do myself.
Agreed, there are dozens of ways to say no, and choosing the right one for a particular email is a much more important choice than what phrase you use to say yes.
This is the new superstition of the digital age: instead of saying "huh, that's funny" when some autocomplete suggestions strike you as odd, invent a myth about your personal relationship to the gods of computing (the big tech firms) to explain it.
There are a lot of things about the computers we use that we simply don't understand unless someone tells us (because we weren't involved and don't have access to the code) and yet I guess many people want to pretend that they know what's going on?
There are a lot of things about the computers we use that we simply don't understand unless someone tells us (because we weren't involved and don't have access to the code) and yet I guess many people want to pretend that they know what's going on?
I use those prompts more and more. In business communications almost exclusively. I had to return a contract to my termite guy. Gmail guessed right twice.
>A lot of ML still comes down to feature engineering i.e. it’s art as much as science.
Is it though? Or has this just become the polite way of saying "you don't know what you're doing but I - abe the artistic - do?"
Is it though? Or has this just become the polite way of saying "you don't know what you're doing but I - abe the artistic - do?"
OP touches on a slightly tangential topic:
For example, on my kobo e-reader, I'm positive I've disabled auto-update. And yet, one day few weeks ago it auto-updated and the new version stopped displaying side-loaded .epub files (from project Guttenberg). No rollback, no appeal. Seller's 2-year warranty has recently expired. Now essentially I have a modestly expensive semi-brick that will only let me read two titles purchased via kobo store, and nothing else
This is kind of meta because I’ve turned this
autocomplete feature off, I’m sure of it.
Did I just do it on my phone? Did my wifi
blip so the AJAX didn’t work? I certainly
didn’t turn it on.
For example, on my kobo e-reader, I'm positive I've disabled auto-update. And yet, one day few weeks ago it auto-updated and the new version stopped displaying side-loaded .epub files (from project Guttenberg). No rollback, no appeal. Seller's 2-year warranty has recently expired. Now essentially I have a modestly expensive semi-brick that will only let me read two titles purchased via kobo store, and nothing else
I have an issue with something similar. I often get emails from email lists where I'm pretty sure I have previously unsubscribed. But I can never be sure if I actually did and they're ignoring it, or if I unsubscribed from something else.
> Works for me. | I'm down. | Absolutely.
As a non-native English speaker these sentences are very confusing to me. I'm not used to English in an informal setting, and they seem overly informal answers with implied meanings.
As a non-native English speaker these sentences are very confusing to me. I'm not used to English in an informal setting, and they seem overly informal answers with implied meanings.
They're relatively informal, but they all generally mean "yes" and I would not be against using a response like this when replying to a friend or close acquaintance.
Wait, does "I'm down" mean "yes" ? I thought it means "I'm a bit depressed".
Yes, although as a Brit I see this as an Americanism, it's certainly not common usage here. I believe it's generally used when being invited to an event for example -
"Do you want to come bowling with us on Friday?"
"I'm down"
However, it's not always interchangeable with "yes" - for example:
"Did you get the server migration finished over the weekend?"
"I'm down"
... Would be completely wrong.
"Do you want to come bowling with us on Friday?"
"I'm down"
However, it's not always interchangeable with "yes" - for example:
"Did you get the server migration finished over the weekend?"
"I'm down"
... Would be completely wrong.
“I’m feeling down” usually means you’re depressed; “I’m down” is expressing agreement/inclination (as in “I’m down to go eat”).
I stopped using gmail because of this feature.
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Now I think black mirror a little, but occam’s razor still prefers incompetence to malice.
Hanlon's razor.
Hanlon's razor.