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I find link mangling to be a great test for when a service becomes too powerful relative to its users, able to add friction to its product that serves no purpos

I find link mangling to be a great test for when a service becomes too powerful relative to its users, able to add friction to its product that serves no purpose for its users[1]. Google started doing this around 2004[2]. Facebook didn't do it until a few years ago. Slack and Discord don't do it. Yet. [1] Example: a search result that's a pdf. How do I share this link? If I click on it it downloads to my disk. If I rightclick on it I can copy a crappy URL. [2] http://akkartik.name/firefox.html http://akkartik.name/firefox.html

TeMPOraL 5y ago
> able to add friction to its product that serves no purpose for its users A good moment to remind everyone: the goal of the attention economy is to make things as inefficient as possible, because money is made on the friction.
- munchler 5y ago
  How’s that? Reducing friction for many sites means that users will spend more time browsing on the site. E.g. video auto-play on YouTube. In this case, though, Google doesn’t mind frustrating users because there is no competitive alternative search engine.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    In general: attention of any person is limited. To monetize attention, it is necessary to steal it from things the user want to pay it to. > Reducing friction for many sites means that users will spend more time browsing on the site. The users usually want to spend as little time as possible on any given site. They're using it to accomplish some goal - like find a piece of information, or pick and buy an item, or be entertained. Even with YouTube: autoplay may be something the users want, and in this case it reduces friction, but money is made on the users being exposed to ads - ads before, after, during and surrounding the video. All these are friction, taking both time and attention away from watching the video itself. This is where YouTube makes money. Showing ads is an obvious case of introducing friction to monetize attention. There are subtler approaches too. They're insidious and so pervasive that some became examples of "good design" on the web. There's too many to list them all. For example, think of all the cases where you thought, "this UI is dumb" or "this design is inefficient". Chances are, it's because it ensures you have to stay on the page longer, click around more, possibly get confused. I'll give one specific family of examples: a UI/UX pattern in e-commerce, where each item is featured as a large tile or "media item" on a list. A big picture, a name, a price, perhaps one or two pieces of detail. Only 4-6 results fit on the screen at any single time - where a better design could make the site fit 20+ items instead[0]. You start clicking on them individually, and notice each item has a different set of details, possibly using different units - making it impossible to compare options. That's not accidental. That's designed to frustrate user's ability to compare items and make a good choice, in hopes they'll just stick to whatever the store surfaces at the top. -- [0] - I know because I did that. Last time I was assembling my PC, I spent an hour or two writing custom CSS rules for a major Polish electronics retailer, and was able to turn their 4-5 items/screen into some 30 items/screen. Without this, trying to pick among many similar options was too much cognitive burden for people to bother. As intended.
mikeiz404 5y ago
> …serves no purpose for its users It might be that one of the reasons they track link clicking is to determine “bounce rate” [0] to infer how useful the result is. That is something I would want to know if I were building a search engine and wanted to verify ranking accuracy. Though I would have thought there would be better ways of tracking this than url redirection if JS is enabled. 0: #5 on https://www.spyfu.com/blog/improve-google-rankings/ https://www.spyfu.com/blog/improve-google-rankings/ (I tried to find a more authoritative source but didn’t have much luck. If some one can find a better one, please share.)
- akkartik 5y ago
  Their search results used to be great before they started doing this. In fact, they've started to suck more in the past 10 years, though probably for unrelated reasons. As the Conchords say, "what are your overheads?"
  - quotemstr 5y ago
    > Their search results used to be great before they started doing this Google is in an arms race with SEO --- one Google is gradually losing. Removing relevance signals will make search results worse. That Google was able to deliver excellent results ten years ago is irrelevant today: the environment is different and if they went back to what they were doing then, results would be far worse now.
- mikeiz404 5y ago
  Following up (since I can no longer edit): - It’s not clear to me if google actually uses bounce rate to rank results aside from generic mention of identifying “signals that can help determine which pages demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness on a given topic.” [0] - google does track sites you visit and URL redirects may be a way to achieve this. > My Activity is a central place to view and manage activity such as searches you've done, websites you've visited, and videos you've watched. [1] 0: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/algorithms/ https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/algorithms/ 1: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7028918?visit_id=637684056879476339-475218174&p=my_activity&hl=en&rd=1 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7028918?visit_id=...
TechBro8615 5y ago
It's worse with Google, because they add the friction but then hide it in their own browser. There's no issue copy/pasting links from Chrome. This is a pattern of behavior. For example, when reading an AMP article hosted by google.com, an iPhone will correctly show `google.com` in its URL bar. Whereas an Android will conveniently rewrite `google.com` to show the URL of the article source, falsely implying the browser connected to a hostname that it did not. In any other context, it would be called phishing.
- lgats 5y ago
  This works via AMP Signed Exchange https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/optimize-and-measure/signed-exchange/ https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/optimize-...
  - noobgrammer 5y ago
    This works via Google blackmailing publishers with the threat of SEO downranking without Amp
    - marcusjt 5y ago
      "While AMP itself isn't a ranking factor, speed is a ranking factor for Google Search. Google Search applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page." https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/experience/about-amp https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/experienc...
      - noobgrammer 5y ago
        That only happened after it failed.
  - TechBro8615 5y ago
    This is a recent development, and a questionably positive one. They don't get to be morally exonerated by recruiting other MITM like Cloudflare into their cartel.
einpoklum 5y ago
Here, here. My alma mater switched its mail accounts to Outlook365. Now all links in email messages - including text emails - are mangled to go through microsoft's servers. And they're humongous-long too!
sciolizer 5y ago
Answer to #1: In the google search results, click the three vertical dots above the link and to the right of the domain. If using mobile, you'll need to switch to desktop mode to see the three dots. After clicking, an "About this result" pane will pop up to the right, probably[1]. In that pane you'll see the true link, and you can Right Click > Copy Link. [1]: On my computer, the "About this result" pane says "BETA", so not sure if everyone can use it. It works for me in a private window, though.

TeMPOraL 5y ago

> able to add friction to its product that serves no purpose for its users A good moment to remind everyone: the goal of the attention economy is to make things as inefficient as possible, because money is made on the friction.

munchler 5y ago
How’s that? Reducing friction for many sites means that users will spend more time browsing on the site. E.g. video auto-play on YouTube. In this case, though, Google doesn’t mind frustrating users because there is no competitive alternative search engine.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  In general: attention of any person is limited. To monetize attention, it is necessary to steal it from things the user want to pay it to. > Reducing friction for many sites means that users will spend more time browsing on the site. The users usually want to spend as little time as possible on any given site. They're using it to accomplish some goal - like find a piece of information, or pick and buy an item, or be entertained. Even with YouTube: autoplay may be something the users want, and in this case it reduces friction, but money is made on the users being exposed to ads - ads before, after, during and surrounding the video. All these are friction, taking both time and attention away from watching the video itself. This is where YouTube makes money. Showing ads is an obvious case of introducing friction to monetize attention. There are subtler approaches too. They're insidious and so pervasive that some became examples of "good design" on the web. There's too many to list them all. For example, think of all the cases where you thought, "this UI is dumb" or "this design is inefficient". Chances are, it's because it ensures you have to stay on the page longer, click around more, possibly get confused. I'll give one specific family of examples: a UI/UX pattern in e-commerce, where each item is featured as a large tile or "media item" on a list. A big picture, a name, a price, perhaps one or two pieces of detail. Only 4-6 results fit on the screen at any single time - where a better design could make the site fit 20+ items instead[0]. You start clicking on them individually, and notice each item has a different set of details, possibly using different units - making it impossible to compare options. That's not accidental. That's designed to frustrate user's ability to compare items and make a good choice, in hopes they'll just stick to whatever the store surfaces at the top. -- [0] - I know because I did that. Last time I was assembling my PC, I spent an hour or two writing custom CSS rules for a major Polish electronics retailer, and was able to turn their 4-5 items/screen into some 30 items/screen. Without this, trying to pick among many similar options was too much cognitive burden for people to bother. As intended.

mikeiz404 5y ago

> …serves no purpose for its users It might be that one of the reasons they track link clicking is to determine “bounce rate” [0] to infer how useful the result is. That is something I would want to know if I were building a search engine and wanted to verify ranking accuracy. Though I would have thought there would be better ways of tracking this than url redirection if JS is enabled. 0: #5 on https://www.spyfu.com/blog/improve-google-rankings/ https://www.spyfu.com/blog/improve-google-rankings/ (I tried to find a more authoritative source but didn’t have much luck. If some one can find a better one, please share.)

akkartik 5y ago
Their search results used to be great before they started doing this. In fact, they've started to suck more in the past 10 years, though probably for unrelated reasons. As the Conchords say, "what are your overheads?"
- quotemstr 5y ago
  > Their search results used to be great before they started doing this Google is in an arms race with SEO --- one Google is gradually losing. Removing relevance signals will make search results worse. That Google was able to deliver excellent results ten years ago is irrelevant today: the environment is different and if they went back to what they were doing then, results would be far worse now.
mikeiz404 5y ago
Following up (since I can no longer edit): - It’s not clear to me if google actually uses bounce rate to rank results aside from generic mention of identifying “signals that can help determine which pages demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness on a given topic.” [0] - google does track sites you visit and URL redirects may be a way to achieve this. > My Activity is a central place to view and manage activity such as searches you've done, websites you've visited, and videos you've watched. [1] 0: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/algorithms/ https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/algorithms/ 1: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7028918?visit_id=637684056879476339-475218174&p=my_activity&hl=en&rd=1 https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/7028918?visit_id=...

TechBro8615 5y ago

It's worse with Google, because they add the friction but then hide it in their own browser. There's no issue copy/pasting links from Chrome. This is a pattern of behavior. For example, when reading an AMP article hosted by google.com, an iPhone will correctly show `google.com` in its URL bar. Whereas an Android will conveniently rewrite `google.com` to show the URL of the article source, falsely implying the browser connected to a hostname that it did not. In any other context, it would be called phishing.

lgats 5y ago
This works via AMP Signed Exchange https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/optimize-and-measure/signed-exchange/ https://amp.dev/documentation/guides-and-tutorials/optimize-...
- noobgrammer 5y ago
  This works via Google blackmailing publishers with the threat of SEO downranking without Amp
  - marcusjt 5y ago
    "While AMP itself isn't a ranking factor, speed is a ranking factor for Google Search. Google Search applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page." https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/experience/about-amp https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/experienc...
    - noobgrammer 5y ago
      That only happened after it failed.
- TechBro8615 5y ago
  This is a recent development, and a questionably positive one. They don't get to be morally exonerated by recruiting other MITM like Cloudflare into their cartel.

einpoklum 5y ago

Here, here. My alma mater switched its mail accounts to Outlook365. Now all links in email messages - including text emails - are mangled to go through microsoft's servers. And they're humongous-long too!

sciolizer 5y ago

Answer to #1: In the google search results, click the three vertical dots above the link and to the right of the domain. If using mobile, you'll need to switch to desktop mode to see the three dots. After clicking, an "About this result" pane will pop up to the right, probably[1]. In that pane you'll see the true link, and you can Right Click > Copy Link. [1]: On my computer, the "About this result" pane says "BETA", so not sure if everyone can use it. It works for me in a private window, though.