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'Improving user experience' is a dead giveaway of shady untenable behavior. They want your data, but they don't want to be transparent about it. Why do highly

by throw2016 8y ago

'Improving user experience' is a dead giveaway of shady untenable behavior. They want your data, but they don't want to be transparent about it. Why do highly paid highly educated people get a free pass to behave unethically? If you think users are 'idiots' why go to such lengths to deceive them. You can just imagine the tyrant calmly responding to accusations of tyranny that it's to 'improve the citizens experience'.

ape4 8y ago
Agreed, for example Windows 10 could work fine if it didn't do telemetry to "improve user experience".
- yuhong 8y ago
  Telemetry is a special case I think. An example of some of the problems is Vivaldi, where information like the "screen resolution" actually can help to improve the user experience and data on the number of users can also be useful but none of that makes it necessarily a good idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17564877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17564877
wereHamster 8y ago
Just last week I spent a day implementing a small new feature (I'm a web developer). Now that the feature has been published, I'd love to track how many users actually use it. To see if it was worth spending the time, whether we should make that feature available in more places etc. But I can't because we're forbidden to collect any sorts of data. If I was allowed to collect data, as what should I frame it, if not "improving user experience"?
- ape4 8y ago
  You could say: we're going to count how many users use this page to see if it's popular enough to continue development
- throw2016 8y ago
  This is an issue of transparency. If you plan to do anything else with that data beyond how many users use it then who is going to communicate that to the user? Is it ok to just keep quiet about it? This is what the issue is here, people are not being told in clear terms what the data is being used for, and that where things become decidedly shady. It's about using the catchall 'improve user experience' to lull users into complacency to conceal what 'else' you are doing with the data. And I suspect that's not what you are trying to defend.
- ABCLAW 8y ago
  "User experiences" can also be "improved" by selling the usage data to advertisers for tracking. How's about "Our site collects usage data to inform us about how our site is used. We use only this data to inform our feature development priorities and we do not share your data with anyone else. Thanks for coming to visit"
  - yuhong 8y ago
    This reminds me that I like to mention that doing targeted ads that is actually good require a system specifically designed to do so.

ape4 8y ago

Agreed, for example Windows 10 could work fine if it didn't do telemetry to "improve user experience".

yuhong 8y ago
Telemetry is a special case I think. An example of some of the problems is Vivaldi, where information like the "screen resolution" actually can help to improve the user experience and data on the number of users can also be useful but none of that makes it necessarily a good idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17564877 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17564877

wereHamster 8y ago

Just last week I spent a day implementing a small new feature (I'm a web developer). Now that the feature has been published, I'd love to track how many users actually use it. To see if it was worth spending the time, whether we should make that feature available in more places etc. But I can't because we're forbidden to collect any sorts of data. If I was allowed to collect data, as what should I frame it, if not "improving user experience"?

ape4 8y ago
You could say: we're going to count how many users use this page to see if it's popular enough to continue development
throw2016 8y ago
This is an issue of transparency. If you plan to do anything else with that data beyond how many users use it then who is going to communicate that to the user? Is it ok to just keep quiet about it? This is what the issue is here, people are not being told in clear terms what the data is being used for, and that where things become decidedly shady. It's about using the catchall 'improve user experience' to lull users into complacency to conceal what 'else' you are doing with the data. And I suspect that's not what you are trying to defend.
ABCLAW 8y ago
"User experiences" can also be "improved" by selling the usage data to advertisers for tracking. How's about "Our site collects usage data to inform us about how our site is used. We use only this data to inform our feature development priorities and we do not share your data with anyone else. Thanks for coming to visit"
- yuhong 8y ago
  This reminds me that I like to mention that doing targeted ads that is actually good require a system specifically designed to do so.