tradewinds

3 lata temudiscuss

This article is mainly about ads popping up, but I think their whole UI is also worth shitting on. Really as an organization, Google doesn't seem to have any good-looking UIs. They're all ugly, awkward and inefficient. Clicking on a pin on Google Maps takes up an enormous portion of the screen for no reason. My Gmail page uses the top half to list pages of emails and the bottom half for absolutely nothing, and there is a huge space at the top outlined by an ugly 1-pixel rounded border that says something I won't ever care to read. The Google Search results page looks like it was just what they used for testing and then never created the actual UI.

tradewinds

3 lata temudiscuss

You can get ad blockers on Safari iOS. I think I have AdBlocker and Wipr. They don't work quite as well as a legitimate adblocker extension IMO, but I'm pretty sure they block a big number of ads and other garbage.

tradewinds

3 lata temudiscuss

You've listed a few anti-user changes here - some of them incorrect (nobody is forced to pay for anything) - and then asked how the anti-user changes are pro-user. Certainly not the most logical of questions. There are of course many other changes. A better question would be, despite the claims you're making (those of which are valid), has the user experience gotten better or worse? Aside from the third-party apps and temporary rate-limits, you haven't mentioned anything else. So add those negatives to the changes that are pro-user positives and I think you have your answer.

By the way - what is a pro-Musk activist? Someone who corrects false statements on the internet?

tradewinds

3 lata temudiscuss

This comment thread started with someone explaining why they won't use Twitter, and now you're arguing from the standpoint of someone who essentially doesn't use it anyway.

tradewinds

3 lata temudiscuss

That's exactly how I feel. If you look at the responses to my original comment, it's mostly unclear rambling or extremely mild exceptions. "Bad incentives", "weird decisions", "needing an account". My experience has been perfectly fine. I haven't seen anything I'd consider far-right or extremist, I don't pay a cent, I haven't hit a 1000-post daily limit because I have no use for 1000 Tweets in one day, and I've found a few new interesting groups of accounts to follow (mostly AI). When I hear some of these apparent negatives, I really don't understand what they mean or how that impacts anyone's actual user experience.

tradewinds

3 lata temudiscuss

I am really still trying to figure out what the problem is with Twitter...

tradewinds

3 lata temudiscuss

You don't have to pay and the rate limits are temporary, this was stated at the point they started. It's a big deal to the anti-Musk activists but from a user standpoint it's generally negligible.

tradewinds

3 lata temudiscuss

So isn't that in favour of what this bill is attempting to accomplish?

tradewinds

3 lata temudiscuss

Yep true, it's a game of chicken really. This is probably what will happen in Canada anyway

tradewinds

3 lata temudiscuss

It's certainly not the greatest analogy - it's just meant to claim that you can't advertise something that someone's already looking for, including when you only know they're looking for it because they came to you asking for it. Google isn't doing any promotion, they're simply forwarding on the most accurate indexed page according to your query. Promotion and advertising would be generating demand that otherwise wouldn't exist, which is not the case in this scenario. You can argue Google is promoting one page over another, but for every page that's at the top, there's a page that's at the bottom, and so it's not generally promoting the collective news media in any way.

tradewinds

3 lata temudiscuss

I do on YouTube before videos from CBC News. I actually don't on Google search results, but the search data you generate in the process of connecting with news sites can be used for a multitude of profitable uses-cases, including selling targeted ads elsewhere on the internet.

tradewinds

3 lata temudiscuss

Even within the search results, there will be ads. If you search "what happened in Canada today", Google will link some news and there will likely be a sponsored link or some form of income-generating item for Google. Then there's the data you're generating as you use Google to navigate to the content you want, which can also be sold. Google connects you to content, every dollar they make is dependent on a non-Google creator, with the exception of maybe some Maps/Earth use-cases.

tradewinds

3 lata temudiscuss

News outlets have to compete within Google's search results. Google is, at least currently, the de facto search engine and their competition over providing all results is minimal. So Google is benefitting from the overall relationship far more than the outlets are. Not saying Google owes them, but there is a clear difference in competition between the two sides.

tradewinds

3 lata temudiscuss

Well, the leverage is that some profit is better than no profit, in theory.

tradewinds

3 lata temudiscuss

It's not really advertising when the user is specifically searching for news content. That's like saying the halibut fisherman is getting free advertising when you go to a restaurant and ask to see the menu.

tradewinds

3 lata temudiscuss

Not to argue in favour of the bill, but I think the idea is Google's whole business model relies on others for content, so a slice of that revenue should go to the content creators (even though the content creators gain from Google, and can generate their own ad revenues).

The Liberal party is also trying to protect Canadian content (again, not to defend or advocate for this policy), and I'm sure this is part of it, even though it may ironically backfire and end up hurting Canadian news outlets.

tradewinds

4 lata temudiscuss

If a stock in your portfolio tanks, do you start making all kinds of panicked moves? The answer should be no, because you had the risk assessment built into your investment strategy to begin with.

tradewinds

4 lata temudiscuss

For sure, I shouldn’t have called them advanced, they’re by definition broad enough to be industry agnostic and are typically taught in lower years. But if it were common sense it wouldn’t take a degree or years of experience to acquire that knowledge.

tradewinds

4 lata temudiscuss

I think you're looking for a business/economics hybrid field called "unit economics". Its all about churn, customer acquisition cost, etc. There's a guy who works for Microsoft named Tren Griffin who tweets case studies of this stuff - might find it interesting.

tradewinds

4 lata temudiscuss

Accounting (for example the poster in the link states marketing does not make up COGS, which to someone who studied accounting is obvious). Simple economics (poster reveals "secret" that Price*Quantity can equal higher total revenue when price/quantity change disproportionately). Consumer behaviour (Dr. Dre can lead people to believe crap from pile A is better than crap from pile B). This is apparent insider-knowledge from someone who spent several years in industry - or you can go to school for the first 1.5 years of a business undergrad program and learn it that way across many more industries. In the final years of business school once you've chosen a specialization, you may learn advanced corporate finance (stocks, bonds, weighted cost of capital, different types of break-even measurement like economic break-even vs accounting break-even). Or you may specialize in accounting, operations, marketing, yada yada. Then an MBA is apparently much of what is taught in a good business undergrad but perhaps faster-paced and you get a shit ton of networking value.

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