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I also suspect one of the driving reasons is to inflate reports. Sony is doing a similar thing by requiring PSN accounts on PC games - its to show their share h

I also suspect one of the driving reasons is to inflate reports. Sony is doing a similar thing by requiring PSN accounts on PC games - its to show their share holders that MAU number go up.

short_sells_poo 2y ago
Absolutely. It's just maximizing some sort of metric that ultimately translates into P&L for the PMs. Everything else is largely irrelevant. If the users bitch and moan, but the PM is getting paid more, they'll be incentivised to keep doing what they are doing. The product may end up dead in 10 years time as the userbase is driven away, but by then everyone responsible is long gone. We can all pontificate about acting differently in their shoes, but I'm honest enough to admit that I wouldn't :D
- Kim_Bruning 2y ago
  Basically you're saying the incentives are misaligned with what's best for the user. This -however- may yet be a fixable problem wrt corporate governance. (And here some people thought misaligned GAI was the biggest threat to human society. But more mundane misalignment problems can crop up anywhere I guess)
  - short_sells_poo 2y ago
    Yeah. I guess you could say that the focus shifted from Windows the OS being the product to the user also becoming the product. Of course, the users never signed up for this. I'm not sure how to prevent these kind of shenanigans, but it simply comes back to sweet adtech dollars I think. The industry is so huge and pervasive now, that regulating it back into submission is going to be very difficult. 10 years ago, regulation could've been passed that simply prevented adtech from ever becoming as normalized and intrusive as it is these days. Doing it now will cause a massive hit to the valuation of the industry, and these kind of moves tend to be unpopular. Who is going to pull off a campaign that erases hundreds of billions of dollars from the US stock market (and thus people's pensions)?

I also suspect one of the driving reasons is to inflate reports. Sony is doing a similar thing by requiring PSN accounts on PC games - its to show their share holders that MAU number go up.

short_sells_poo 2y ago

Absolutely. It's just maximizing some sort of metric that ultimately translates into P&L for the PMs. Everything else is largely irrelevant. If the users bitch and moan, but the PM is getting paid more, they'll be incentivised to keep doing what they are doing. The product may end up dead in 10 years time as the userbase is driven away, but by then everyone responsible is long gone. We can all pontificate about acting differently in their shoes, but I'm honest enough to admit that I wouldn't :D

Kim_Bruning 2y ago
Basically you're saying the incentives are misaligned with what's best for the user. This -however- may yet be a fixable problem wrt corporate governance. (And here some people thought misaligned GAI was the biggest threat to human society. But more mundane misalignment problems can crop up anywhere I guess)
- short_sells_poo 2y ago
  Yeah. I guess you could say that the focus shifted from Windows the OS being the product to the user also becoming the product. Of course, the users never signed up for this. I'm not sure how to prevent these kind of shenanigans, but it simply comes back to sweet adtech dollars I think. The industry is so huge and pervasive now, that regulating it back into submission is going to be very difficult. 10 years ago, regulation could've been passed that simply prevented adtech from ever becoming as normalized and intrusive as it is these days. Doing it now will cause a massive hit to the valuation of the industry, and these kind of moves tend to be unpopular. Who is going to pull off a campaign that erases hundreds of billions of dollars from the US stock market (and thus people's pensions)?