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I mean one way to do it properly is to actually listen to your users. So many corporations claim to have that as a priority and when you look at real, actual fe

I mean one way to do it properly is to actually listen to your users. So many corporations claim to have that as a priority and when you look at real, actual feedback, they really don't. How hard is it to look at the masses of complaints about autoplay or notification spam or... any numbers of dark patterns you could name and decide that you shouldn't do that?

jazzyjackson 8y ago
Yes I remember this, every time, as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram made it more and more difficult to keep your feed in chronological order. It is nakedly a psychological trick to give you a mixture of things you've seen before and new content to make you feel like you should try again more often - the slot machine strategy. No one asked for it. Of course it helps that ads are easier to integrate into a feed when you don't even know what to expect in your feed in the first place. So now, not only do these platforms not give a feed of pages and people I subscribe to, they litter my feed with ads and 'popular content' that I never subscribed to! otherwise how could they charge money to increase your organic reach? what a crock! It was a marketers' dream to have their latest news and coupons delivered to your inbox and have you actually look at them, but if you subscribe to businesses you want to follow, how can the ad network make money? So they turned everyone into a customer of their ad platform, and held your content hostage until you paid up. This has effected numerous friends that are small content producers that maxxed out facebook's 5,000 friend limit and all they wanted was to invite all of their fans to their next event. /rant
- yoble 8y ago
  Other POV: I only check FB a few minutes everyday or so and that algo, maybe ironically, is what allows me to do so. You have 1000 friends each interacting once per day with FB in a news feed worthy way (posting, joining an event, commenting etc). Are you supposed to look at 500 daily news feed posts to get a 50% chance of knowing what that friend you really like is up to? (pushing the trait but you get the idea) Instead having to seep through endless activities I don't care about I can scan 10-15 posts per day and they are the relevant ones from the groups and friends I want to interact with. -- I'm fully with you on the point you make about business/content creator you volontarily subscribed to having to pay extra for you to see their stuff.
  - annadane 8y ago
    It would also be less volume of stuff if Facebook only POSTED THE THINGS WE WANT PEOPLE TO SEE. No "likes" or such. Give people a clear idea what they're actually sharing/posting.
- josh_frome 8y ago
  FYI-- I have many of the same complaints and found that the browser extension https://www.fbpurity.com/ https://www.fbpurity.com/ is able to clean up a lot of the cruft as well as put the timeline back in chronological order.
  - mcny 8y ago
    I just unfollow everyone on Facebook. Now, my feed is mostly me. If people want me to know something, they can message me or at least tag me.
avip 8y ago
I'd assume #num_customer_complaints is not part of the A/B metrics. If people complain but don't follow through with actions A/B probably should ignore it.
- annadane 8y ago
  Yeah but the thing is A/B testing shouldn't be "rely exclusively on it and then completely ignore feedback after it's been rolled out"
- rhizome 8y ago
  I'm not an MBA, but I imagine there's something where if you wait until you know for a fact that customers are leaving for specific and known reasons, you're waiting too long to fix it.
- cortesoft 8y ago
  What if they follow through with it 6 months or a year later? Your a/b metrics won't catch long term effects. Maybe a change gets people more engaged short term, but drives them away long term.
ekianjo 8y ago
> properly is to actually listen to your users Its a phrase that is often used but it is usually not as simple as that. Imagine that your existing users have a very different set of needs and priorities as new users coming onto your platform, or not yet users you want to attract. This means making hard decisions that will not please everyone. Or, as you mention, your shareholders may require you to generate revenue faster and then you are left with a lot of bad decisions to make and your only choice is to pick the least damaging one.
- dfischer 8y ago
  True - Users don’t always know what they want.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  > your existing users have a very different set of needs and priorities as new users coming onto your platform, or not yet users you want to attract In this case you should side with your existing users who 1) you already convinced to sign up and engage with your product 2) helped you build your product in the first place. I’d take an established power-user any day over a potential new user that has yet to prove themselves (they might quit the platform as quickly as they joined). Of course, some idiots don’t understand this, and “Twitter” is the result.
  - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
    Maybe not - if they don't constitute an economic force. Pivoting is a revered tradition in startup world
  - ekianjo 8y ago
    > In this case you should side with your existing users who 1) you already convinced to sign up and engage with your product 2) helped you build your product in the first place. sometimes you don't have that luxury, because "you need to grow".
makewavesnotwar 8y ago
Netflix seems like its just a dishonest company. I had been a customer of theirs for years, starting with the DVD rental. After a while they started adding the streaming content which was cool, but then they eventually separated the two services and switched my plan from DVD rentals to exclusively streaming content. All without any action on my part or any consent from me. Eventually, I quit Netflix because between Prime Video and Hulu, I was covered for my streaming needs and with the exception of a few shows, was unimpressed with Netflix's original content so it was a waste of money for me. Fast forward to a week ago, I decided to give Netflix another shot. What amazed me is the dark patterns you speak of. Like downloading content for offline viewing. I was without access to my normal ISP and had to use cellular data so I opted to download a show. 1 episode was 100 MB and I'm on Google Fi so it was basically $1 of data usage which I understood. But then when the episode was over, I stepped away from my phone to go to the bathroom and when I came back, I found that the episode had been deleted from my phone, and that the next episode had automatically downloaded without any action on my part incurring another $0.90 of data (not to mention deleting the episode I had intentionally downloaded making the first $1 a waste) I saw at the top of the download section that there was something called "Smart Download" enabled that claims to do exactly that - delete the last episode and download the next, but it's only supposed to happen on wi-fi which wasn't the case for me. I turned off the feature as it was obviously broken and tried contacting customer service. The CSR I talked to then told me that the app cannot delete or download material without me clicking a button - which contradicted their description of "Smart Download" that I had just read, and he explained there was no way for them to process a refund or credit to my account because they don't have any way to do that. This seems like a pretty major problem. Even when confronted with a direct customer complaint, their response was just to deny, deny, deny rather than taking even minor steps to rectify the issue. This seems mind boggling from a customer service perspective when companies like Amazon will bend over backwards to keep their customers happy. Even Hulu will credit you a free month of service when they goof - they even do it if you try to cancel the service because you can't find anything good to watch. Netflix's service isn't good enough to justify this type of behavior and general apathy. Customer-last seems like a crummy business model.
- yomly 8y ago
  I can feel your frustration with the service but I'm unconvinced that "download the next ep" is a dark pattern and more that you're a niche that their UX currently isn't catering towards. I do a lot of cellular/tethering and know some of the pain points but can recognize that the needs are quite different to the regular user who may consume stuff at home then want to take stuff with them on the go. Normally I see that UX often caters to the lowest common denominator which leaves power users and niche users sidelined. My personal bug bear on this subject is that YouTube no longer buffers entire videos and holds them there - presumably this saves them lots in traffic costs and additionally allows them to up sell YouTube premium
gronne 8y ago
You don’t ask the cattle if it wants to be slaughtered.
baxtr 8y ago
Apple doesn’t listen to users either. Think headphone jack. I believe it comes down to a core set of values that guide you daily through tough decisions. Like: we believe we should not trade privacy of our customers for profits (just made this up on the fly). This will rule out a lot of stuff.
door5 8y ago
Corporations have no priority except to make money. If making money is at odds with positive user experience (which is almost always is), making money wins.
- chewz 8y ago
  True. But users can be fooled in short term. In the long term consumers are collectively smarter then any corporation. So in the long term being decent is really good for business but also costly in short term. Optimizing for the short-term is what many killing companies and good products.
  - annadane 8y ago
    And then trying to placate everybody with the promise to listen to feedback when the feedback directly goes against what the company is trying to do
- tivert 8y ago
  >> I mean one way to do it properly is to actually listen to your users. So many corporations claim to have that as a priority and when you look at real, actual feedback, they really don't. How hard is it to look at the masses of complaints about autoplay or notification spam or... any numbers of dark patterns you could name and decide that you shouldn't do that? > Corporations have no priority except to make money. If making money is at odds with positive user experience (which is almost always is), making money wins. That attitude has a similar problem: socialism has been gaining in popularity, and I'd say that's a direct result of corporations over-prioritizing their money-making over both customer priorities and other social priorities (like paying reasonable amount of tax).
  - deleted 8y ago
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deleted 8y ago
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jazzyjackson 8y ago

Yes I remember this, every time, as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram made it more and more difficult to keep your feed in chronological order. It is nakedly a psychological trick to give you a mixture of things you've seen before and new content to make you feel like you should try again more often - the slot machine strategy. No one asked for it. Of course it helps that ads are easier to integrate into a feed when you don't even know what to expect in your feed in the first place. So now, not only do these platforms not give a feed of pages and people I subscribe to, they litter my feed with ads and 'popular content' that I never subscribed to! otherwise how could they charge money to increase your organic reach? what a crock! It was a marketers' dream to have their latest news and coupons delivered to your inbox and have you actually look at them, but if you subscribe to businesses you want to follow, how can the ad network make money? So they turned everyone into a customer of their ad platform, and held your content hostage until you paid up. This has effected numerous friends that are small content producers that maxxed out facebook's 5,000 friend limit and all they wanted was to invite all of their fans to their next event. /rant

yoble 8y ago
Other POV: I only check FB a few minutes everyday or so and that algo, maybe ironically, is what allows me to do so. You have 1000 friends each interacting once per day with FB in a news feed worthy way (posting, joining an event, commenting etc). Are you supposed to look at 500 daily news feed posts to get a 50% chance of knowing what that friend you really like is up to? (pushing the trait but you get the idea) Instead having to seep through endless activities I don't care about I can scan 10-15 posts per day and they are the relevant ones from the groups and friends I want to interact with. -- I'm fully with you on the point you make about business/content creator you volontarily subscribed to having to pay extra for you to see their stuff.
- annadane 8y ago
  It would also be less volume of stuff if Facebook only POSTED THE THINGS WE WANT PEOPLE TO SEE. No "likes" or such. Give people a clear idea what they're actually sharing/posting.
josh_frome 8y ago
FYI-- I have many of the same complaints and found that the browser extension https://www.fbpurity.com/ https://www.fbpurity.com/ is able to clean up a lot of the cruft as well as put the timeline back in chronological order.
- mcny 8y ago
  I just unfollow everyone on Facebook. Now, my feed is mostly me. If people want me to know something, they can message me or at least tag me.

avip 8y ago

I'd assume #num_customer_complaints is not part of the A/B metrics. If people complain but don't follow through with actions A/B probably should ignore it.

annadane 8y ago
Yeah but the thing is A/B testing shouldn't be "rely exclusively on it and then completely ignore feedback after it's been rolled out"
rhizome 8y ago
I'm not an MBA, but I imagine there's something where if you wait until you know for a fact that customers are leaving for specific and known reasons, you're waiting too long to fix it.
cortesoft 8y ago
What if they follow through with it 6 months or a year later? Your a/b metrics won't catch long term effects. Maybe a change gets people more engaged short term, but drives them away long term.

ekianjo 8y ago

> properly is to actually listen to your users Its a phrase that is often used but it is usually not as simple as that. Imagine that your existing users have a very different set of needs and priorities as new users coming onto your platform, or not yet users you want to attract. This means making hard decisions that will not please everyone. Or, as you mention, your shareholders may require you to generate revenue faster and then you are left with a lot of bad decisions to make and your only choice is to pick the least damaging one.

dfischer 8y ago
True - Users don’t always know what they want.
Rjevski 8y ago
> your existing users have a very different set of needs and priorities as new users coming onto your platform, or not yet users you want to attract In this case you should side with your existing users who 1) you already convinced to sign up and engage with your product 2) helped you build your product in the first place. I’d take an established power-user any day over a potential new user that has yet to prove themselves (they might quit the platform as quickly as they joined). Of course, some idiots don’t understand this, and “Twitter” is the result.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  Maybe not - if they don't constitute an economic force. Pivoting is a revered tradition in startup world
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > In this case you should side with your existing users who 1) you already convinced to sign up and engage with your product 2) helped you build your product in the first place. sometimes you don't have that luxury, because "you need to grow".

makewavesnotwar 8y ago

Netflix seems like its just a dishonest company. I had been a customer of theirs for years, starting with the DVD rental. After a while they started adding the streaming content which was cool, but then they eventually separated the two services and switched my plan from DVD rentals to exclusively streaming content. All without any action on my part or any consent from me. Eventually, I quit Netflix because between Prime Video and Hulu, I was covered for my streaming needs and with the exception of a few shows, was unimpressed with Netflix's original content so it was a waste of money for me. Fast forward to a week ago, I decided to give Netflix another shot. What amazed me is the dark patterns you speak of. Like downloading content for offline viewing. I was without access to my normal ISP and had to use cellular data so I opted to download a show. 1 episode was 100 MB and I'm on Google Fi so it was basically $1 of data usage which I understood. But then when the episode was over, I stepped away from my phone to go to the bathroom and when I came back, I found that the episode had been deleted from my phone, and that the next episode had automatically downloaded without any action on my part incurring another $0.90 of data (not to mention deleting the episode I had intentionally downloaded making the first $1 a waste) I saw at the top of the download section that there was something called "Smart Download" enabled that claims to do exactly that - delete the last episode and download the next, but it's only supposed to happen on wi-fi which wasn't the case for me. I turned off the feature as it was obviously broken and tried contacting customer service. The CSR I talked to then told me that the app cannot delete or download material without me clicking a button - which contradicted their description of "Smart Download" that I had just read, and he explained there was no way for them to process a refund or credit to my account because they don't have any way to do that. This seems like a pretty major problem. Even when confronted with a direct customer complaint, their response was just to deny, deny, deny rather than taking even minor steps to rectify the issue. This seems mind boggling from a customer service perspective when companies like Amazon will bend over backwards to keep their customers happy. Even Hulu will credit you a free month of service when they goof - they even do it if you try to cancel the service because you can't find anything good to watch. Netflix's service isn't good enough to justify this type of behavior and general apathy. Customer-last seems like a crummy business model.

yomly 8y ago
I can feel your frustration with the service but I'm unconvinced that "download the next ep" is a dark pattern and more that you're a niche that their UX currently isn't catering towards. I do a lot of cellular/tethering and know some of the pain points but can recognize that the needs are quite different to the regular user who may consume stuff at home then want to take stuff with them on the go. Normally I see that UX often caters to the lowest common denominator which leaves power users and niche users sidelined. My personal bug bear on this subject is that YouTube no longer buffers entire videos and holds them there - presumably this saves them lots in traffic costs and additionally allows them to up sell YouTube premium

gronne 8y ago

You don’t ask the cattle if it wants to be slaughtered.

baxtr 8y ago

Apple doesn’t listen to users either. Think headphone jack. I believe it comes down to a core set of values that guide you daily through tough decisions. Like: we believe we should not trade privacy of our customers for profits (just made this up on the fly). This will rule out a lot of stuff.

door5 8y ago

Corporations have no priority except to make money. If making money is at odds with positive user experience (which is almost always is), making money wins.

chewz 8y ago
True. But users can be fooled in short term. In the long term consumers are collectively smarter then any corporation. So in the long term being decent is really good for business but also costly in short term. Optimizing for the short-term is what many killing companies and good products.
- annadane 8y ago
  And then trying to placate everybody with the promise to listen to feedback when the feedback directly goes against what the company is trying to do
tivert 8y ago
>> I mean one way to do it properly is to actually listen to your users. So many corporations claim to have that as a priority and when you look at real, actual feedback, they really don't. How hard is it to look at the masses of complaints about autoplay or notification spam or... any numbers of dark patterns you could name and decide that you shouldn't do that? > Corporations have no priority except to make money. If making money is at odds with positive user experience (which is almost always is), making money wins. That attitude has a similar problem: socialism has been gaining in popularity, and I'd say that's a direct result of corporations over-prioritizing their money-making over both customer priorities and other social priorities (like paying reasonable amount of tax).
- deleted 8y ago
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