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> The bill would bar companies from choosing groups of people for behavioral experiments unless the companies get informed consent. Wait, does this refer to A/

> The bill would bar companies from choosing groups of people for behavioral experiments unless the companies get informed consent. Wait, does this refer to A/B testing?

syntheticcdo 8y ago
I think it's more about this: http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/06/28/as_flies_to_wanton_boys http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/06/28/as_flies_to_wanto...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
flukus 8y ago
> Wait, does this refer to A/B testing? I hope so. Experimenting on your customers is about as user hostile as you can get.
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
  Are you even serious? We're not talking about A/B testing prescription drugs with placebos. We're talking about testing different images. Different colors for buttons. Settle down.
  - ixtli 8y ago
    Saying that A/B testing is just different colors for buttons is intentionally ignoring the past 10 years of facebooks development process. Every single aspect of the platform is AB tested and that platform has a big effect on peoples lives.
    - hackinthebochs 8y ago
      I'm still confused about why I'm supposed to be upset that Facebook A/B tests their features on their users. It seems to me that if they're allowed to do either A or B, they're allowed to measure the influence of A vs B. I don't see where the outrage is.
      - steve76 8y ago
        Open access to the default phonebook, and everyone's can be made to look different. If it is in the Senate, someone is doing it. They hear about active intelligence. Target the psycho demographic, and get them to drive by your house. Get striking workers madder. Dump a few thousand in vice ads, and destroy a city to get one person. It's used to go after threats they know, not to trip up good people.
      - ixtli 8y ago
        As I said in another comment this is about consent. It's not that the testing the conversion rates of button a versus button b is in and of itself immoral, it's that experimenting on people without their informed consent, under any circumstances, is. I'm intimately familiar with FBs platform as a developer and a user and its my intuition that 9/10 people aren't aware of the degree to which they are being experimented on via multivariate testing and I think a reasonable person would say they have a right to be informed of this. Another note is that after years of using the platform I can tell that when non-technical people DO become aware of the fact that their experience using the application is sometimes fundamentally different from others because they're in a non-control bucket they generally react pretty negatively to the notion. Sure, some of this is the standard "users always hate every UI change no matter what it is" syndrome but I've noted a lot of "this is creepy and i wonder how much it's been happening before" which is, imo, a super legitimate response, and shouldn't be disregarded because its inconvenient for fb to get consent.
        sdenton4 8y ago
        Feature experiments are also a thing that exists. I want to deploy a new widget, and need to check that it works, and hasn't done something unexpected that drives users away. Experiments are how you do it. How about these: Are corner stores allowed to experiment with pricing? Are restaurants allowed to experiment with new menus? These are experiments involving humans. Are you just asking for poorly designed experiments? What you're asking for is companies to launch once and never know if it worked. And indeed, software used to be like that, and it sucked...
    - baroffoos 8y ago
      These mega websites should probably be held to a different standard to the rest. No ones life is changing when I try out different colors but some of the stuff facebook is testing is very unethical.
      - ken 8y ago
        I think the standard shouldn't be size, but type of software. Facebook is a platform. People expect (reasonably or not) some element of stability in a platform. I don't want even a small platform doing tests on me and my data. But if it's a game, or a blog? Knock yourself out, no matter how big it is.
        ixtli 8y ago
        I agree with you but personally I dont see how its so onerous for blizzard or rockstar to tell me in plain language what it intends to do with its behavior tracking (or really that its tracking my behavior at all.) For me this is about consent, and I'm willing to consent to things that I'm made aware of. I mean, I'm a software developer too, I know there are legitimate use-cases here.
  - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
    This: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinkers-with-users-emotions-in-news-feed-experiment-stirring-outcry.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinke... Which is to say, some tech companies think that A/B experiments that might lead someone to commit suicide is okay.
    - hackinthebochs 8y ago
      If their feature A is OK to do in isolation, and could conceivably lead someone to commit suicide, then I don't see the problem with measuring that impact vs some feature B.
    - malandrew 8y ago
      The alternative is to not know at all that this is possible and accidentally design something that makes people more negative. Knowing this is possible and how to measure the effect, lets them detect when they accidentally do it and reverse course. Making it illegal to figure out the negative impacts of your decisions will make it harder to avoid them. It would be much better to require disclosure when these negative impacts are detected and require that this information can only ever be used in the best interest of the user.
      - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
        Please find me one real scientist who would argue it's ethical to encourage some people to commit suicide to find out how to avoid encouraging people to commit suicide. Just because the outcome of the research is potentially valuable doesn't mean it's ethical to conduct it on people, especially without their consent.
        hackinthebochs 8y ago
        More accurately, expose people in a controlled setting to what they're already being exposed to, to find out its impact. But this sounds pretty neutral.
  - vuln 8y ago
    Very serious. Where does it stop? "It has published details of a vast experiment in which it manipulated information posted on 689,000 users' home pages and found it could make people feel more positive or negative through a process of "emotional contagion". https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-...
    - gotocake 8y ago
      That’s not A/B testing, or at least not just A/B testing, that’s a full blown psych experiment.
      - rapind 8y ago
        But it's really not a one-off. This has become modern day marketing tactics. Guarantee someone gave a presentation today to a bunch of execs about how to manipulate a percentage of your users to achieve [x] goal by lightly "nudging" them.
- ztratar 8y ago
  Absolutely everything in business is an experiment. Experimenting with customers if what gives you the information to make a better product. It's the least user hostile thing you can get.
  - ixtli 8y ago
    This seems to be ignoring consent. I'd bet you if I went around asking people whether or not they realized their FB app experience was being consistently multivariate tested i'd be on the street a while before someone said yes. This is FAR different from product testing, say in the hardware world, where you tell people you want them to come test a product, or in the design world where you show them various things and quiz them on their feelings. In these situations they all know they're being tested on. So no, this isn't "the least" user hostile thing you can do. Doing things without content is basically the prerequisite for hostility here.
    - phailhaus 8y ago
      > Doing things without content is basically the prerequisite for hostility here. Do you understand how often websites change without asking the user? Websites are constantly being updated, algorithms tweaked, features being added and taken away. You seem to be taking offense to the fact that they're providing a different experience to different subsets of the userbase? Is that what you're trying to ban? What could that possibly accomplish? If you don't have A/B testing, then websites are just going to do it the old fashioned way: collect data, make the feature change, compare the data. What does this solve?
      - ixtli 8y ago
        Look this clearly is not in the spirit of the argument I'm making. Why would I advocate for rules that restrict a websites ability to change? Again, im talking about consent when it comes to how your behavior is going to be used. Further I would say that the parent post isn't even about this. It's about protecting the consumer and yes, I would go so far as to say that if the "change" that the websites want to do has violates the rights of the user then yeah they should be restricted in their ability to do so!
- sodosopa 8y ago
  The goal is to improve their experience, that's the complete opposite of hostility. Edit. My response was about website a/b testing.
  - gruez 8y ago
    >The goal is to improve their experience And how is that measured by most social media companies? "engagement".
  - flukus 8y ago
    Changing random stuff all the time is not improving my experience, giving me a consistent interface is. And the goal is rarely to "improve my experience", it's to more efficiently manipulate me into spending more money, directly or indirectly.
  - gcp123 8y ago
    For these companies "improve their experience" = optimizing for maximum time spent with the product even when it's not in the best interest of the people using the product. i.e. Netflix autoplay, algorithmic newsfeed that tends to show more outrage-inducing content, and artificial notifications that aren't from people you know, but are engineered to get you back into the product unnecessarily. They just want to capture as much of your attention as possible because it increases the number of ads they can show/sell. That's not improving user experience, that's hijacking attention to maximize profit. Considering attention is the primary instrument nature has given us for crafting our lives, that's a pretty user-hostile thing to do.
- kadendogthing 8y ago
  I hope everyone down voting this realizes that A/B testing has an "infinite" resolution. Most people when they hear A/B testing think of something like switching the color of a button, or what have you. But when you start A/B testing a complex series of permutations of components in aggregate, specifically designed to target certain psychological profiles, you can actually start to learn a lot about the group you're testing. To pretend that A/B testing is some simple "what image do you like more?" game is entirely disingenuous and is so characteristic of the attitude people in tech have when dealing with people or any kind of social side effects of systems they build. We absolutely do need to be very careful with this. Careful with how we test people, careful with how the information is recorded, and careful with what we do with the data. I'm going to start calling A/B testing "psychological side channel attacks" and maybe then places like HN will appreciate what's happening more.
  - Zak 8y ago
    I think people on HN generally have a good understanding of what A/B testing is: "if I change X, will users do more of Y?" Of course Y is usually something that makes the site owner money. Sometimes A, B, both, or the entire business model of the site is unethical. In such cases, they would still be unethical if a comparison test was not run. In cases where none of them are unethical, I have trouble imagining a realistic scenario in which the act of running a comparison test makes it unethical.
    - kadendogthing 8y ago
      >I think people on HN generally have a good understanding of what A/B testing is Not only do I not believe this, as most people on HN tend to have a very superficial understanding of whatever tech is being discussed, there is always a dismissal of any social consequences that may happen as a result of using any kind of technology. >I have trouble imagining a realistic scenario in which the act of running a comparison test makes it unethical. I can't tell if you're being serious or not. You don't need any kind of testing framework for a few famous examples to satisfy your "realistic" qualification. I see a lot of bland contrarian stuff on HN, but I'm kind of speechless right now.
- JulianMorrison 8y ago
  Basically it depends on the experiment. Does the homepage work better? Good experiment. Can we manipulate people into feeling depressed or happy? Bad experiment.
  - flukus 8y ago
    > Does the homepage work better? Good experiment. "Better" for who? The website owners interests are rarely in alignment with my interests. They want increased sales, higher user engagement, etc. I want less engagement and the ability to make informed choices on products. Let's say there's a product listing with it's list of features and this list has been extensively tweaked to maximize sales. As a result of that tweaking they took away a line item, that would have caused me to not buy it, say an annoying LED status indicator. This is good for the website owner but bad for me because I've lost the ability to make an informed decision. It's asymmetric manipulation and I'd regard it as immoral.
Despegar 8y ago
If they kill A/B testing then probably a generation of startups that modeled themselves after Google and their diaspora won't know how to design products anymore.
- btmiller 8y ago
  Good riddance! It’s high time companies stop gravitating to the local maxima for every decision. As a user, I want thoughtfully developed experiences; not everything has to be a news feed.
  - Despegar 8y ago
    I think it's good policy and will also be really funny, which is why I think it should become law. It'll force Silicon Valley to learn empathy overnight.
    - Mirioron 8y ago
      It'll also lead to even shittier UI because you can't test your actual users for it.
  - radium3d 8y ago
    A/B testing is an important super basic step to improving the user experience. Without it how would you know what users are looking for? It's important to test the right factors though. I can see it being done wrong and winding up detrimental to the user experience, but not doing it all is definitely not a solution.
    - rapind 8y ago
      How essential is it though really? How did we ever manage before it became a thing? Obviously a good number of A/B tests are pretty innocent, but if it's non-trivial to differentiate between them and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory then I'm 100% for completely ditching A/B tests.
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
Thanks to sbov for posting the text of the doc here, https://www.scribd.com/document/405606873/Detour-Act-Final https://www.scribd.com/document/405606873/Detour-Act-Final, and my take on this is (and IANAL), well, yes, most definitely it would apply to A/B testing in certain circumstances. Many types of A/B tests are designed to increase conversion - to get a user to buy something, or signup, etc. I have personally (and I'm sure lots of folks on this site) been involved in A/B tests that specifically test what many would consider "dark patterns" to increase conversion. Just take a look at Booking.com, which is famous for their A/B testing. Right now I get a popup banner when I hit that which says "Welcome back! It's always a pleasure to see you! Sign in to see deals of up to 50% off." I guarantee the text in that banner has been A/B tested 9 ways to Sunday. I'd even bet they tested the percentage amount (i.e. whether it was 50%, 30% etc.) Of course "up to 50%" could mean 0%, which it probably is in most cases. And the whole purpose of that banner is to get you to authenticate and sign in, so they can track you better. So yes, it most definitely will apply to certain forms of A/B testing. That also appears to be the point.
- ipad23 8y ago
  so, users would much rather get ads they aren't interested in? the point of a/b testing is to show you something you want to see and might be interested in purchasing. This is a good thing
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    the point of a/b testing is to show you something you want to see Not always. A/B testing is the reason that we now have weapons-grade clickbait headlines, and those terrible little grids of ads at the bottom of blog posts. Neither of those are good things.
    - Mirioron 8y ago
      And you think we couldn't get to that point without A/B testing? Yellow journalism has been around for much longer than websites.
luma 8y ago
How would this even work? Say I decided to buy two billboards with different designs selling the same product, and put a different phone number at the bottom of each. Looking at my phone bill at the end of the month, I have a count of how many responses I received from each billboard. Have I just committed a crime?
isoskeles 8y ago
> BEHAVIORAL OR PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS OR RESEARCH— > The term "behavioral or psychological experiments or research" means the study, including through human experimentation, of overt or observable actions and mental phenomena inferred from behavior, including interactions between and among individuals and the activities of social groups. I'm guessing courts will decide.

> The bill would bar companies from choosing groups of people for behavioral experiments unless the companies get informed consent. Wait, does this refer to A/B testing?

syntheticcdo 8y ago

I think it's more about this: http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/06/28/as_flies_to_wanton_boys http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/06/28/as_flies_to_wanto...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

flukus 8y ago

> Wait, does this refer to A/B testing? I hope so. Experimenting on your customers is about as user hostile as you can get.

onlyrealcuzzo 8y ago
Are you even serious? We're not talking about A/B testing prescription drugs with placebos. We're talking about testing different images. Different colors for buttons. Settle down.
- ixtli 8y ago
  Saying that A/B testing is just different colors for buttons is intentionally ignoring the past 10 years of facebooks development process. Every single aspect of the platform is AB tested and that platform has a big effect on peoples lives.
  - hackinthebochs 8y ago
    I'm still confused about why I'm supposed to be upset that Facebook A/B tests their features on their users. It seems to me that if they're allowed to do either A or B, they're allowed to measure the influence of A vs B. I don't see where the outrage is.
    - steve76 8y ago
      Open access to the default phonebook, and everyone's can be made to look different. If it is in the Senate, someone is doing it. They hear about active intelligence. Target the psycho demographic, and get them to drive by your house. Get striking workers madder. Dump a few thousand in vice ads, and destroy a city to get one person. It's used to go after threats they know, not to trip up good people.
    - ixtli 8y ago
      As I said in another comment this is about consent. It's not that the testing the conversion rates of button a versus button b is in and of itself immoral, it's that experimenting on people without their informed consent, under any circumstances, is. I'm intimately familiar with FBs platform as a developer and a user and its my intuition that 9/10 people aren't aware of the degree to which they are being experimented on via multivariate testing and I think a reasonable person would say they have a right to be informed of this. Another note is that after years of using the platform I can tell that when non-technical people DO become aware of the fact that their experience using the application is sometimes fundamentally different from others because they're in a non-control bucket they generally react pretty negatively to the notion. Sure, some of this is the standard "users always hate every UI change no matter what it is" syndrome but I've noted a lot of "this is creepy and i wonder how much it's been happening before" which is, imo, a super legitimate response, and shouldn't be disregarded because its inconvenient for fb to get consent.
      - sdenton4 8y ago
        Feature experiments are also a thing that exists. I want to deploy a new widget, and need to check that it works, and hasn't done something unexpected that drives users away. Experiments are how you do it. How about these: Are corner stores allowed to experiment with pricing? Are restaurants allowed to experiment with new menus? These are experiments involving humans. Are you just asking for poorly designed experiments? What you're asking for is companies to launch once and never know if it worked. And indeed, software used to be like that, and it sucked...
  - baroffoos 8y ago
    These mega websites should probably be held to a different standard to the rest. No ones life is changing when I try out different colors but some of the stuff facebook is testing is very unethical.
    - ken 8y ago
      I think the standard shouldn't be size, but type of software. Facebook is a platform. People expect (reasonably or not) some element of stability in a platform. I don't want even a small platform doing tests on me and my data. But if it's a game, or a blog? Knock yourself out, no matter how big it is.
      - ixtli 8y ago
        I agree with you but personally I dont see how its so onerous for blizzard or rockstar to tell me in plain language what it intends to do with its behavior tracking (or really that its tracking my behavior at all.) For me this is about consent, and I'm willing to consent to things that I'm made aware of. I mean, I'm a software developer too, I know there are legitimate use-cases here.
- ocdtrekkie 8y ago
  This: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinkers-with-users-emotions-in-news-feed-experiment-stirring-outcry.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinke... Which is to say, some tech companies think that A/B experiments that might lead someone to commit suicide is okay.
  - hackinthebochs 8y ago
    If their feature A is OK to do in isolation, and could conceivably lead someone to commit suicide, then I don't see the problem with measuring that impact vs some feature B.
  - malandrew 8y ago
    The alternative is to not know at all that this is possible and accidentally design something that makes people more negative. Knowing this is possible and how to measure the effect, lets them detect when they accidentally do it and reverse course. Making it illegal to figure out the negative impacts of your decisions will make it harder to avoid them. It would be much better to require disclosure when these negative impacts are detected and require that this information can only ever be used in the best interest of the user.
    - ocdtrekkie 8y ago
      Please find me one real scientist who would argue it's ethical to encourage some people to commit suicide to find out how to avoid encouraging people to commit suicide. Just because the outcome of the research is potentially valuable doesn't mean it's ethical to conduct it on people, especially without their consent.
      - hackinthebochs 8y ago
        More accurately, expose people in a controlled setting to what they're already being exposed to, to find out its impact. But this sounds pretty neutral.
- vuln 8y ago
  Very serious. Where does it stop? "It has published details of a vast experiment in which it manipulated information posted on 689,000 users' home pages and found it could make people feel more positive or negative through a process of "emotional contagion". https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-users-emotions-news-feeds https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-...
  - gotocake 8y ago
    That’s not A/B testing, or at least not just A/B testing, that’s a full blown psych experiment.
    - rapind 8y ago
      But it's really not a one-off. This has become modern day marketing tactics. Guarantee someone gave a presentation today to a bunch of execs about how to manipulate a percentage of your users to achieve [x] goal by lightly "nudging" them.
ztratar 8y ago
Absolutely everything in business is an experiment. Experimenting with customers if what gives you the information to make a better product. It's the least user hostile thing you can get.
- ixtli 8y ago
  This seems to be ignoring consent. I'd bet you if I went around asking people whether or not they realized their FB app experience was being consistently multivariate tested i'd be on the street a while before someone said yes. This is FAR different from product testing, say in the hardware world, where you tell people you want them to come test a product, or in the design world where you show them various things and quiz them on their feelings. In these situations they all know they're being tested on. So no, this isn't "the least" user hostile thing you can do. Doing things without content is basically the prerequisite for hostility here.
  - phailhaus 8y ago
    > Doing things without content is basically the prerequisite for hostility here. Do you understand how often websites change without asking the user? Websites are constantly being updated, algorithms tweaked, features being added and taken away. You seem to be taking offense to the fact that they're providing a different experience to different subsets of the userbase? Is that what you're trying to ban? What could that possibly accomplish? If you don't have A/B testing, then websites are just going to do it the old fashioned way: collect data, make the feature change, compare the data. What does this solve?
    - ixtli 8y ago
      Look this clearly is not in the spirit of the argument I'm making. Why would I advocate for rules that restrict a websites ability to change? Again, im talking about consent when it comes to how your behavior is going to be used. Further I would say that the parent post isn't even about this. It's about protecting the consumer and yes, I would go so far as to say that if the "change" that the websites want to do has violates the rights of the user then yeah they should be restricted in their ability to do so!
sodosopa 8y ago
The goal is to improve their experience, that's the complete opposite of hostility. Edit. My response was about website a/b testing.
- gruez 8y ago
  >The goal is to improve their experience And how is that measured by most social media companies? "engagement".
- flukus 8y ago
  Changing random stuff all the time is not improving my experience, giving me a consistent interface is. And the goal is rarely to "improve my experience", it's to more efficiently manipulate me into spending more money, directly or indirectly.
- gcp123 8y ago
  For these companies "improve their experience" = optimizing for maximum time spent with the product even when it's not in the best interest of the people using the product. i.e. Netflix autoplay, algorithmic newsfeed that tends to show more outrage-inducing content, and artificial notifications that aren't from people you know, but are engineered to get you back into the product unnecessarily. They just want to capture as much of your attention as possible because it increases the number of ads they can show/sell. That's not improving user experience, that's hijacking attention to maximize profit. Considering attention is the primary instrument nature has given us for crafting our lives, that's a pretty user-hostile thing to do.
kadendogthing 8y ago
I hope everyone down voting this realizes that A/B testing has an "infinite" resolution. Most people when they hear A/B testing think of something like switching the color of a button, or what have you. But when you start A/B testing a complex series of permutations of components in aggregate, specifically designed to target certain psychological profiles, you can actually start to learn a lot about the group you're testing. To pretend that A/B testing is some simple "what image do you like more?" game is entirely disingenuous and is so characteristic of the attitude people in tech have when dealing with people or any kind of social side effects of systems they build. We absolutely do need to be very careful with this. Careful with how we test people, careful with how the information is recorded, and careful with what we do with the data. I'm going to start calling A/B testing "psychological side channel attacks" and maybe then places like HN will appreciate what's happening more.
- Zak 8y ago
  I think people on HN generally have a good understanding of what A/B testing is: "if I change X, will users do more of Y?" Of course Y is usually something that makes the site owner money. Sometimes A, B, both, or the entire business model of the site is unethical. In such cases, they would still be unethical if a comparison test was not run. In cases where none of them are unethical, I have trouble imagining a realistic scenario in which the act of running a comparison test makes it unethical.
  - kadendogthing 8y ago
    >I think people on HN generally have a good understanding of what A/B testing is Not only do I not believe this, as most people on HN tend to have a very superficial understanding of whatever tech is being discussed, there is always a dismissal of any social consequences that may happen as a result of using any kind of technology. >I have trouble imagining a realistic scenario in which the act of running a comparison test makes it unethical. I can't tell if you're being serious or not. You don't need any kind of testing framework for a few famous examples to satisfy your "realistic" qualification. I see a lot of bland contrarian stuff on HN, but I'm kind of speechless right now.
JulianMorrison 8y ago
Basically it depends on the experiment. Does the homepage work better? Good experiment. Can we manipulate people into feeling depressed or happy? Bad experiment.
- flukus 8y ago
  > Does the homepage work better? Good experiment. "Better" for who? The website owners interests are rarely in alignment with my interests. They want increased sales, higher user engagement, etc. I want less engagement and the ability to make informed choices on products. Let's say there's a product listing with it's list of features and this list has been extensively tweaked to maximize sales. As a result of that tweaking they took away a line item, that would have caused me to not buy it, say an annoying LED status indicator. This is good for the website owner but bad for me because I've lost the ability to make an informed decision. It's asymmetric manipulation and I'd regard it as immoral.

Despegar 8y ago

If they kill A/B testing then probably a generation of startups that modeled themselves after Google and their diaspora won't know how to design products anymore.

btmiller 8y ago
Good riddance! It’s high time companies stop gravitating to the local maxima for every decision. As a user, I want thoughtfully developed experiences; not everything has to be a news feed.
- Despegar 8y ago
  I think it's good policy and will also be really funny, which is why I think it should become law. It'll force Silicon Valley to learn empathy overnight.
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    It'll also lead to even shittier UI because you can't test your actual users for it.
- radium3d 8y ago
  A/B testing is an important super basic step to improving the user experience. Without it how would you know what users are looking for? It's important to test the right factors though. I can see it being done wrong and winding up detrimental to the user experience, but not doing it all is definitely not a solution.
  - rapind 8y ago
    How essential is it though really? How did we ever manage before it became a thing? Obviously a good number of A/B tests are pretty innocent, but if it's non-trivial to differentiate between them and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_theory then I'm 100% for completely ditching A/B tests.

hn_throwaway_99 8y ago

Thanks to sbov for posting the text of the doc here, https://www.scribd.com/document/405606873/Detour-Act-Final https://www.scribd.com/document/405606873/Detour-Act-Final, and my take on this is (and IANAL), well, yes, most definitely it would apply to A/B testing in certain circumstances. Many types of A/B tests are designed to increase conversion - to get a user to buy something, or signup, etc. I have personally (and I'm sure lots of folks on this site) been involved in A/B tests that specifically test what many would consider "dark patterns" to increase conversion. Just take a look at Booking.com, which is famous for their A/B testing. Right now I get a popup banner when I hit that which says "Welcome back! It's always a pleasure to see you! Sign in to see deals of up to 50% off." I guarantee the text in that banner has been A/B tested 9 ways to Sunday. I'd even bet they tested the percentage amount (i.e. whether it was 50%, 30% etc.) Of course "up to 50%" could mean 0%, which it probably is in most cases. And the whole purpose of that banner is to get you to authenticate and sign in, so they can track you better. So yes, it most definitely will apply to certain forms of A/B testing. That also appears to be the point.

ipad23 8y ago
so, users would much rather get ads they aren't interested in? the point of a/b testing is to show you something you want to see and might be interested in purchasing. This is a good thing
- reaperducer 8y ago
  the point of a/b testing is to show you something you want to see Not always. A/B testing is the reason that we now have weapons-grade clickbait headlines, and those terrible little grids of ads at the bottom of blog posts. Neither of those are good things.
  - Mirioron 8y ago
    And you think we couldn't get to that point without A/B testing? Yellow journalism has been around for much longer than websites.

luma 8y ago

How would this even work? Say I decided to buy two billboards with different designs selling the same product, and put a different phone number at the bottom of each. Looking at my phone bill at the end of the month, I have a count of how many responses I received from each billboard. Have I just committed a crime?

isoskeles 8y ago

> BEHAVIORAL OR PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS OR RESEARCH— > The term "behavioral or psychological experiments or research" means the study, including through human experimentation, of overt or observable actions and mental phenomena inferred from behavior, including interactions between and among individuals and the activities of social groups. I'm guessing courts will decide.