3 ms·

This seems like a weirdly trivial thing to categorize as enshittification. It's just a vanity badge, not a core component of the app experience.

reichstein 3y ago
If you ignore human psychology, ... well, you're probably not making a great app. Why have vanity badges, or other kinds of gamification, to begin with? Because it gives users an added incentive, through an added reward, a goal, which helps them get through something that could otherwise be too tedious or un-fun for them to endure. And if everybody agrees that the added goal aligns with the user's actual goal, that's a great strategy. But you get what you reward, because people like to get rewards. The dopamine rush of knowing you'll reach the goal. If the rewards stop helping users towards their real goals, and you've trained them to work towards your goals already, you'll get people doing daily tasks to get daily rewards that they shouldn't really care about. But they do. Because you made them care. And you might have replaced their intrinsic motivation, wanting to learn a language, with an extrinsic goal, wanting to get a reward. And if they then stop caring about the extrinsic goal, they just might stop entirely. Messing with people's motivations is dangerous, and "driving engagement" is the absolutely most useless reason to do so.
amatecha 3y ago
The perceived significance of the reward is irrelevant and doesn't affect whether its degradation is "enshittification" or not. It's not excluded from that categorization because it's considered a "trivial" feature. In fact, I'd argue it's specifically a good example of enshittification because it's one of the very few things that's actually just "a nice thing" the developers added, that was previously a nice friendly thing to grant when someone gains 1000xp in a month. A cool badge. Fun. They didn't have to have this nice little thing, but they did. That's cool, right? If you use the app regularly (as you "should" if you're learning a language), you will absolutely certainly get the badge. Well, that is, until recently, because some of the quests can be difficult to accomplish. No longer is it just a nice consistent monthly thumbs-up in the form of a fun little badge, it's now a source of uncertainty and perhaps even a source of anxiety for people who are driven by "collecting" (e.g. "achievement hunters"). Sure sounds like enshittification to me, regardless of how big a deal it is.
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  > The perceived significance of the reward is irrelevant Completely false. A vanity badge that's based on some effort, has a value equal to the effort required. Unlike increasing requirements for core functionality where you have increased effort for the same reward, increasing requirements for an effort-based vanity item increases its value in exact proportion to the effort.
  - amatecha 3y ago
    I think it's completely reasonable to describe the user-perceived degradation of a feature, regardless of its importance, for the purpose of benefit to the business and its profits, as "enshittification". Your opinion differs, but my opinion is not "false". I mean, believe what you want, but you're trying to invalidate my opinion by simply sharing your own, which I'm not sure has much purpose at all in a conversation.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      > I mean, believe what you want, but you're trying to invalidate my opinion by simply sharing your own, which I'm not sure has much purpose at all in a conversation. If they have a different opinion that's fine too. Discussion shouldn't have a first mover advantage.
  - sophacles 3y ago
    > A vanity badge that's based on some effort, has a value equal to the effort required. Completely false Effort has no direct relationship to value in anything. See job wages for a few billion examples. There are high paying jobs that require little cumulative effort and little on-going effort. There are low paying jobs that require high cumulative effort and high on-going effort.

reichstein 3y ago

If you ignore human psychology, ... well, you're probably not making a great app. Why have vanity badges, or other kinds of gamification, to begin with? Because it gives users an added incentive, through an added reward, a goal, which helps them get through something that could otherwise be too tedious or un-fun for them to endure. And if everybody agrees that the added goal aligns with the user's actual goal, that's a great strategy. But you get what you reward, because people like to get rewards. The dopamine rush of knowing you'll reach the goal. If the rewards stop helping users towards their real goals, and you've trained them to work towards your goals already, you'll get people doing daily tasks to get daily rewards that they shouldn't really care about. But they do. Because you made them care. And you might have replaced their intrinsic motivation, wanting to learn a language, with an extrinsic goal, wanting to get a reward. And if they then stop caring about the extrinsic goal, they just might stop entirely. Messing with people's motivations is dangerous, and "driving engagement" is the absolutely most useless reason to do so.

amatecha 3y ago

The perceived significance of the reward is irrelevant and doesn't affect whether its degradation is "enshittification" or not. It's not excluded from that categorization because it's considered a "trivial" feature. In fact, I'd argue it's specifically a good example of enshittification because it's one of the very few things that's actually just "a nice thing" the developers added, that was previously a nice friendly thing to grant when someone gains 1000xp in a month. A cool badge. Fun. They didn't have to have this nice little thing, but they did. That's cool, right? If you use the app regularly (as you "should" if you're learning a language), you will absolutely certainly get the badge. Well, that is, until recently, because some of the quests can be difficult to accomplish. No longer is it just a nice consistent monthly thumbs-up in the form of a fun little badge, it's now a source of uncertainty and perhaps even a source of anxiety for people who are driven by "collecting" (e.g. "achievement hunters"). Sure sounds like enshittification to me, regardless of how big a deal it is.

TulliusCicero 3y ago
> The perceived significance of the reward is irrelevant Completely false. A vanity badge that's based on some effort, has a value equal to the effort required. Unlike increasing requirements for core functionality where you have increased effort for the same reward, increasing requirements for an effort-based vanity item increases its value in exact proportion to the effort.
- amatecha 3y ago
  I think it's completely reasonable to describe the user-perceived degradation of a feature, regardless of its importance, for the purpose of benefit to the business and its profits, as "enshittification". Your opinion differs, but my opinion is not "false". I mean, believe what you want, but you're trying to invalidate my opinion by simply sharing your own, which I'm not sure has much purpose at all in a conversation.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > I mean, believe what you want, but you're trying to invalidate my opinion by simply sharing your own, which I'm not sure has much purpose at all in a conversation. If they have a different opinion that's fine too. Discussion shouldn't have a first mover advantage.
- sophacles 3y ago
  > A vanity badge that's based on some effort, has a value equal to the effort required. Completely false Effort has no direct relationship to value in anything. See job wages for a few billion examples. There are high paying jobs that require little cumulative effort and little on-going effort. There are low paying jobs that require high cumulative effort and high on-going effort.