6 ms·

Something that makes me lean anti-Google and anti-Meta is how they make it impossible to disable the addicting features like shorts and reels. This is inarguabl

Something that makes me lean anti-Google and anti-Meta is how they make it impossible to disable the addicting features like shorts and reels. This is inarguably an anti-user move because the only people who want to use such an option are those who recognize they have a problem wasting time on those features. In my own small sphere this is the most visible "evil" thing that these companies do.

Gigacore 1y ago
Capitalism does not care about 'anti-user moves'. They will do anything and everything to get users spend as much time as possible on their platforms.
- ziofill 1y ago
  This. When will the discourse finally become about Capitalism being the evil algorithm?
  - nurettin 1y ago
    Okay how about we take off the blinders, stop patting each other on the back and call it "an" evil algorithm since exploitation is economic-system-agnostic?
  - dmichulke 1y ago
    Do you think greed would stop if we had communism?
    - rpgbr 1y ago
      Uh, yes?
      - appreciatorBus 1y ago
        How do you get rid of a human emotion? You can get rid of money and have communism if you want and guarantee that all have what they need. But somewhere beyond need there is want, and the line is awfully fuzzy. You can have a barter society if you want, where people trade pineapples for shoes, but you are always going to have people who want more shoes or more pineapples than what others have.
    - bccdee 1y ago
      No. Greed is inherent to humans. No social order can eliminate greed. They can, however, mitigate the harmful effects of greed on society. In a democracy, elected leaders are not as empowered to satisfy their greed as monarchs are in monarchies. Socialism extends this logic to businesses: An elected business leader would not be able to satisfy their greed to the same extent that a capitalist business owner can.
    - nurettin 1y ago
      Is it even greed? Let's say you are a cart pusher in a free market. After ten years of cart pushing, you land on a trading opportunity and capitalize on it. Then you hire more cart pushers. Now you have a responsibility. Either keep the business going, or everyone loses their job. Then others smell profit and eat up your market share. Now you have to stay afloat and the workers suffer. As the emergent properties build up, we end up with a modern free market society with all the romanticized "class wars" worker abuse and peeing in a bottle drama all because the job market exists. It is like an ouroboros ironically nibbling on its tail while winking.
  - pas 1y ago
    Which part of it is evil? Are all parts equally evil? How is this measured? How would you fix it or improve it?
    - ziofill 1y ago
      Mostly the part that brings groups of humans to optimize for wealth, even if this directly makes the life of other humans shittier. It turns humans into automata who blindly want to make the number go up, and not worry about the consequences. A potential mitigation could be for governments to make the bad consequences more illegal. And in order to do so they need not be influenced by the algorithm, but unfortunately they are.
    - bccdee 1y ago
      Good question. Wouldn't it be convenient if this were one of the most written-about political subjects of the last 150 years? In short: The problem with capitalism is class striation. Society is divided into a capital-owning class and a labouring class. Capitalists, as they control the productive capital in our economy, portion out economic profits as they see fit, paying labourers as little as is necessary while retaining for themselves the maximum possible amount. Labourers, owning negligible amounts of capital themselves, are dependent on capitalists for work and have little recourse. Hence, power consolidates in the hands of capitalists. They have leverage over politicians through lobbyists, over the public through media, and over their employees through the threat of job loss. The labouring class are second-class citizens. Healthcare is inaccessible to many them. They're frequently mired in debt. If they become disabled, they could easily lose their homes and wind up on the street. In one sense, the solution is obvious: Dissolve the boundary between these classes so that none of these class inequalities exist anymore. Now, how is that done? Who knows. The traditional answer is, "the tensions in the existing system will exacerbate until the workers all organize and force a new status quo upon society," but that doesn't seem to be happening. Then again, if we had a solution, the problem wouldn't exist anymore, would it.
      - p3rls 1y ago
        on HN you can either be a moldbugian reactionary or a utopian socialist, but the important thing is that your ideology remains unimplementable and thus unfalsifiable and safe forever from the dangerous forces of empirical results
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
    It comes up all the time. But the power of capitalism is that even this idea will itself be monetized by people selling books, giving ted talks, appearing on podcasts, asking for donations for cause, etc. etc.
andrewchilds 1y ago
Totally agree. There should be a digital consumer bill of rights, that includes the right to disable autoplaying videos. Even the NYTimes home page is plastered with them these days, it’s awful. Another one is control over sort order, having the option of “most recent first”, vs. “most likely to keep you here”.
- kaonwarb 1y ago
  I also detest autoplay. But: you already have the right. Don't visit those sites.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
    > Don't visit those sites. This is not a non-argument used keep things the same (and bad).
    - nickthegreek 1y ago
      It's also an argument to protect the rights of the actual owner of the site. I'll put whatever I want on my website, and you can come to or not. I don't need a bill of rights that limits my freedom of expression. I will present my voice in any fashion I see fit on my website. Use a browser that allows you to modify the content in a way that presents the content you want. That's the boundary you have to play with. My computer gives the information I want to your computer. Your computer does what it wants with that information. If your OS doesn't allow you to use a browser of your choice, then that is the restriction you attack. Not mine.
      - andrewchilds 1y ago
        You are free to do whatever you want with your website. This is about the limited number of platforms where communities exist online these days, and how those platforms knowingly using addictive and harmful UX patterns to keep people hooked. I think you and I deserve some level of consumer protection from that.
  - 1y ago
fellowniusmonk 1y ago
You know what makes me anti Google. They have completely destroyed my ability to have a custom MMS app on my own phone. They buy out jibe and completely lock down RCS on their own platform, they have been the instrument of preventing FOSS mobile texting.
buccal 1y ago
If you disable watch history in Youtube it conveniently disables all front page suggestions and you can also disable autoplay: https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/8/23824672/youtube-blank-homepage-watch-history https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/8/23824672/youtube-blank-hom...
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- nicbou 1y ago
  Unhooked is an extension that lets you disable many other features on YouTube.
  - esperent 1y ago
    I'm sure that the majority of people watch YouTube on a phone where that extension doesn't work, so it's not that useful. My pattern of YouTube watching: 1. On my laptop, 99% searching for specific videos like tutorials/reviews of something. Almost never looking for entertainment. 2. On my phone, 80% looking for entertainment + a few reviews
    - username135 1y ago
      i just use newpipe. seems to work grand
    - nicbou 1y ago
      I use YouTube in the browser on my phone. On Android I could use unhooked. I haven't looked for a replacement for iOS.
    - nbittich 1y ago
      I'd suggest you to use firefox on your phone. you can install many extensions there. then you could use an android debloater app to remove chrome completely from your phone
- kibibu 1y ago
Waterluvian 1y ago
I feel embarrassment for the designers and engineers who did the work for YouTube Shorts -> Hide -> “Okay we’ll hide them for a week!” I just cannot imagine having to be party to that kind of hot garbage. I get that companies are designed to soullessly seek optimization of revenue. But there are humans who work at them and those humans do have free will to be party to it or not.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
  > companies are designed to soullessly seek optimization of revenue. But there are humans who work Exactly, every single manipulative, exploitive, and outright evil act attributed to a 'company' was thought of, planned, executed, and overseen by actual people.
Semaphor 1y ago
> the addicting features like shorts and reels Is it a common millennial thing, or is it just me where those have the opposite effect? Shorts etc. annoy me heavily, and the more they get pushed on me, the less I use something. It’s like those people on WhatsApp sending you a voice message because instead of typing.
- pas 1y ago
  Likely yes, after all it works marvellously on billions of people.
- fho 1y ago
  Honestly, I think you probably just haven't been hit with the "right" kind of shorts. For me it was a quick way down from "these are annoying" to "oh, just another short that aligns with my interests".
totetsu 1y ago
Until I have time to get more precise, I settled on just blocking the whole sites at dns level with nextdns, for most of the day. It's not ideal, as using vpn breaks it.. and I would prefer just to target short form video.. and i would prefer to use pihole.. but its working.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
rikschennink 1y ago
This. They do this with Threads as well. If you’re not on there long enough, they’ll pretend there are notifications waiting for you, but it’s just “Posts that might be of interest to you”. They’ll even show this fake data on Instagram to get you to open Threads.
- thunfischtoast 1y ago
  Modern Reddit does this as well. All kinds of useless notifications like "Your comment go 10 upvotes, congratulations!". Its not as bad on the old.reddit.com version
  - beAbU 1y ago
    I've managed to wean myself off reddit almost completely. When I use it, I use the 'old.reddit.com' ui. When they eventually get rid of that, I reckon I'll stop using reddit completely.
    - Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
      I browse the main page and one or two subreddits without an account and this helps for me. No account means no way to comment or interact and this greatly reduces time spent on the site. I just check for anything interesting, and then leave.
android521 1y ago
you forget to add tiktok which is probably 10x bigger than google and meta combined (in terms of total hours wasted from users)
Abishek_Muthian 1y ago
This is where user-scripts rock! and why websites are only frontier for defense. [1] YouTube Anti Shorts - https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/441709-youtube-anti-shorts/feedback https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/441709-youtube-anti-shorts... [2] Hide Instagram Feed, Stories, Reels, and Explore Page - https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/474087-hide-instagram-feed-stories-reels-and-explore-page https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/474087-hide-instagram-feed... [3] Bypass Instagram Login Redirects - https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/420604-bypass-instagram-login-redirects/feedback https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/420604-bypass-instagram-lo... Note: I use[1] regularly, Since I don't have an instagram account I don't have a need to use[2] instead I use[3].

Gigacore 1y ago

Capitalism does not care about 'anti-user moves'. They will do anything and everything to get users spend as much time as possible on their platforms.

ziofill 1y ago
This. When will the discourse finally become about Capitalism being the evil algorithm?
- nurettin 1y ago
  Okay how about we take off the blinders, stop patting each other on the back and call it "an" evil algorithm since exploitation is economic-system-agnostic?
- dmichulke 1y ago
  Do you think greed would stop if we had communism?
  - rpgbr 1y ago
    Uh, yes?
    - appreciatorBus 1y ago
      How do you get rid of a human emotion? You can get rid of money and have communism if you want and guarantee that all have what they need. But somewhere beyond need there is want, and the line is awfully fuzzy. You can have a barter society if you want, where people trade pineapples for shoes, but you are always going to have people who want more shoes or more pineapples than what others have.
  - bccdee 1y ago
    No. Greed is inherent to humans. No social order can eliminate greed. They can, however, mitigate the harmful effects of greed on society. In a democracy, elected leaders are not as empowered to satisfy their greed as monarchs are in monarchies. Socialism extends this logic to businesses: An elected business leader would not be able to satisfy their greed to the same extent that a capitalist business owner can.
  - nurettin 1y ago
    Is it even greed? Let's say you are a cart pusher in a free market. After ten years of cart pushing, you land on a trading opportunity and capitalize on it. Then you hire more cart pushers. Now you have a responsibility. Either keep the business going, or everyone loses their job. Then others smell profit and eat up your market share. Now you have to stay afloat and the workers suffer. As the emergent properties build up, we end up with a modern free market society with all the romanticized "class wars" worker abuse and peeing in a bottle drama all because the job market exists. It is like an ouroboros ironically nibbling on its tail while winking.
- pas 1y ago
  Which part of it is evil? Are all parts equally evil? How is this measured? How would you fix it or improve it?
  - ziofill 1y ago
    Mostly the part that brings groups of humans to optimize for wealth, even if this directly makes the life of other humans shittier. It turns humans into automata who blindly want to make the number go up, and not worry about the consequences. A potential mitigation could be for governments to make the bad consequences more illegal. And in order to do so they need not be influenced by the algorithm, but unfortunately they are.
  - bccdee 1y ago
    Good question. Wouldn't it be convenient if this were one of the most written-about political subjects of the last 150 years? In short: The problem with capitalism is class striation. Society is divided into a capital-owning class and a labouring class. Capitalists, as they control the productive capital in our economy, portion out economic profits as they see fit, paying labourers as little as is necessary while retaining for themselves the maximum possible amount. Labourers, owning negligible amounts of capital themselves, are dependent on capitalists for work and have little recourse. Hence, power consolidates in the hands of capitalists. They have leverage over politicians through lobbyists, over the public through media, and over their employees through the threat of job loss. The labouring class are second-class citizens. Healthcare is inaccessible to many them. They're frequently mired in debt. If they become disabled, they could easily lose their homes and wind up on the street. In one sense, the solution is obvious: Dissolve the boundary between these classes so that none of these class inequalities exist anymore. Now, how is that done? Who knows. The traditional answer is, "the tensions in the existing system will exacerbate until the workers all organize and force a new status quo upon society," but that doesn't seem to be happening. Then again, if we had a solution, the problem wouldn't exist anymore, would it.
    - p3rls 1y ago
      on HN you can either be a moldbugian reactionary or a utopian socialist, but the important thing is that your ideology remains unimplementable and thus unfalsifiable and safe forever from the dangerous forces of empirical results
- Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
  It comes up all the time. But the power of capitalism is that even this idea will itself be monetized by people selling books, giving ted talks, appearing on podcasts, asking for donations for cause, etc. etc.

andrewchilds 1y ago

Totally agree. There should be a digital consumer bill of rights, that includes the right to disable autoplaying videos. Even the NYTimes home page is plastered with them these days, it’s awful. Another one is control over sort order, having the option of “most recent first”, vs. “most likely to keep you here”.

kaonwarb 1y ago
I also detest autoplay. But: you already have the right. Don't visit those sites.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
  > Don't visit those sites. This is not a non-argument used keep things the same (and bad).
  - nickthegreek 1y ago
    It's also an argument to protect the rights of the actual owner of the site. I'll put whatever I want on my website, and you can come to or not. I don't need a bill of rights that limits my freedom of expression. I will present my voice in any fashion I see fit on my website. Use a browser that allows you to modify the content in a way that presents the content you want. That's the boundary you have to play with. My computer gives the information I want to your computer. Your computer does what it wants with that information. If your OS doesn't allow you to use a browser of your choice, then that is the restriction you attack. Not mine.
    - andrewchilds 1y ago
      You are free to do whatever you want with your website. This is about the limited number of platforms where communities exist online these days, and how those platforms knowingly using addictive and harmful UX patterns to keep people hooked. I think you and I deserve some level of consumer protection from that.
- 1y ago

fellowniusmonk 1y ago

You know what makes me anti Google. They have completely destroyed my ability to have a custom MMS app on my own phone. They buy out jibe and completely lock down RCS on their own platform, they have been the instrument of preventing FOSS mobile texting.

buccal 1y ago

If you disable watch history in Youtube it conveniently disables all front page suggestions and you can also disable autoplay: https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/8/23824672/youtube-blank-homepage-watch-history https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/8/23824672/youtube-blank-hom...

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
nicbou 1y ago
Unhooked is an extension that lets you disable many other features on YouTube.
- esperent 1y ago
  I'm sure that the majority of people watch YouTube on a phone where that extension doesn't work, so it's not that useful. My pattern of YouTube watching: 1. On my laptop, 99% searching for specific videos like tutorials/reviews of something. Almost never looking for entertainment. 2. On my phone, 80% looking for entertainment + a few reviews
  - username135 1y ago
    i just use newpipe. seems to work grand
  - nicbou 1y ago
    I use YouTube in the browser on my phone. On Android I could use unhooked. I haven't looked for a replacement for iOS.
  - nbittich 1y ago
    I'd suggest you to use firefox on your phone. you can install many extensions there. then you could use an android debloater app to remove chrome completely from your phone
kibibu 1y ago

Waterluvian 1y ago

I feel embarrassment for the designers and engineers who did the work for YouTube Shorts -> Hide -> “Okay we’ll hide them for a week!” I just cannot imagine having to be party to that kind of hot garbage. I get that companies are designed to soullessly seek optimization of revenue. But there are humans who work at them and those humans do have free will to be party to it or not.

Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
> companies are designed to soullessly seek optimization of revenue. But there are humans who work Exactly, every single manipulative, exploitive, and outright evil act attributed to a 'company' was thought of, planned, executed, and overseen by actual people.

Semaphor 1y ago

> the addicting features like shorts and reels Is it a common millennial thing, or is it just me where those have the opposite effect? Shorts etc. annoy me heavily, and the more they get pushed on me, the less I use something. It’s like those people on WhatsApp sending you a voice message because instead of typing.

pas 1y ago
Likely yes, after all it works marvellously on billions of people.
fho 1y ago
Honestly, I think you probably just haven't been hit with the "right" kind of shorts. For me it was a quick way down from "these are annoying" to "oh, just another short that aligns with my interests".

totetsu 1y ago

Until I have time to get more precise, I settled on just blocking the whole sites at dns level with nextdns, for most of the day. It's not ideal, as using vpn breaks it.. and I would prefer just to target short form video.. and i would prefer to use pihole.. but its working.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

rikschennink 1y ago

This. They do this with Threads as well. If you’re not on there long enough, they’ll pretend there are notifications waiting for you, but it’s just “Posts that might be of interest to you”. They’ll even show this fake data on Instagram to get you to open Threads.

thunfischtoast 1y ago
Modern Reddit does this as well. All kinds of useless notifications like "Your comment go 10 upvotes, congratulations!". Its not as bad on the old.reddit.com version
- beAbU 1y ago
  I've managed to wean myself off reddit almost completely. When I use it, I use the 'old.reddit.com' ui. When they eventually get rid of that, I reckon I'll stop using reddit completely.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
    I browse the main page and one or two subreddits without an account and this helps for me. No account means no way to comment or interact and this greatly reduces time spent on the site. I just check for anything interesting, and then leave.

android521 1y ago

you forget to add tiktok which is probably 10x bigger than google and meta combined (in terms of total hours wasted from users)

Abishek_Muthian 1y ago

This is where user-scripts rock! and why websites are only frontier for defense. [1] YouTube Anti Shorts - https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/441709-youtube-anti-shorts/feedback https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/441709-youtube-anti-shorts... [2] Hide Instagram Feed, Stories, Reels, and Explore Page - https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/474087-hide-instagram-feed-stories-reels-and-explore-page https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/474087-hide-instagram-feed... [3] Bypass Instagram Login Redirects - https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/420604-bypass-instagram-login-redirects/feedback https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/420604-bypass-instagram-lo... Note: I use[1] regularly, Since I don't have an instagram account I don't have a need to use[2] instead I use[3].