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There was already a campaign - humanetech.com started by no suprise a former Googler a while back. Through internal studies, they already knew quite a few year

There was already a campaign - humanetech.com started by no suprise a former Googler a while back. Through internal studies, they already knew quite a few years ago that Google engineers where as likely as to get addicted and waste time on cat videos, the kardashians and whatever else as much as the people the platforms end up hooking. Those results produced some internal 'what about my kids' outrage. What they then discovered is deaddicting ppl is much more complicated and takes a whole lot longer than getting them to turn into screen touching addicts. It was so complicated not to mention the opposite of what generated rev that it got quietly shelved and ppl left No big diff between Google and Big Tobacco in this regard. What you are seeing today is them dusting off the cobwebs on that project as the unintended social and psychological consequences are finally taking a serious unignorable toll. I don't see Google or Facebook contributing to the solution. They will play the same game Exxon Shell Philip Morris et al play. And that game remains empire defense. It's up to you to keep your kids safe.

aylmao 8y ago
Exactly. The PR game is tough, so they have to make moves like these, but it gleams unauthentic when you consider there's teams at Google dedicated to increasing watch-time on Youtube, for example. If they were really focusing on digital well-being this wouldn’t be a notification; they would just stop auto-playing the next video. They would hide the "related videos" list after your time is up, etc. They don’t have to be drastic; there’s "small" changes that aren’t far-fetched that they could make if this really was a "focus" for them. "Reminding" you you’re bingeing while you’re bingeing is the kind of stuff a team comes up with when they know doing something to keep people from bingeing is the right thing to do, but they also don’t want to have those crucial-yet-awkard meetings with the Growth team downstairs or argue with the Playback Time team in the next building.

aylmao 8y ago

Exactly. The PR game is tough, so they have to make moves like these, but it gleams unauthentic when you consider there's teams at Google dedicated to increasing watch-time on Youtube, for example. If they were really focusing on digital well-being this wouldn’t be a notification; they would just stop auto-playing the next video. They would hide the "related videos" list after your time is up, etc. They don’t have to be drastic; there’s "small" changes that aren’t far-fetched that they could make if this really was a "focus" for them. "Reminding" you you’re bingeing while you’re bingeing is the kind of stuff a team comes up with when they know doing something to keep people from bingeing is the right thing to do, but they also don’t want to have those crucial-yet-awkard meetings with the Growth team downstairs or argue with the Playback Time team in the next building.