Comment by egypturnash | Hacker News Reader

Comment by egypturnash | Hacker News Reader

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So

When the real product is eyeballs on ads

You start to optimize for that.

You get users to keep reloading. You get users to stick around. Because the more pages they load, the more money you make.

It doesn't matter why people keep reloading. Doesn't matter if they're being shown things they really need. Doesn't matter if they're being shown truth or lies. Doesn't matter if they're reloading a lot because they're in the middle of a flame war. Doesn't matter if they're left happier or stressed out by using your product.

It just matters that they saw a lot of ads.

This is why the much-loathed algorithmic timelines happen: here's something a lot of your circles spent time engaging with, maybe you'll like it too! Stick around. See more ads.

Not completely untrue. But if the model is a paid subscription the same pressures apply: doesn't matter why the user keeps paying their subscription, so long as they pay. Incentives are almost never perfectly aligned between information providers and information consumers. .

The incentives for "as long as you're happy with our services, you'll keep paying us" may not be 100% aligned with user interest (see: services difficult to unsubscribe and so on) but they seem much better than the alternatives.

But doesn't "as long as you're happy with our services, you'll be using our product and we get to show you ads and make money" work the same way?

At first, probably, yes. But then you start to optimize for different things, because the interests are not aligned : you want "engaged eyeballs" on your service, which may or may not be best for the user. Hence tactics like gamification, notifications, the whole Hooked model, and so on.

Of course we can debate on the definition of what is "best" for the user. Maybe users like and need clickbait headlines and fake news. But to me it's just a softer version of "Maybe users like gambling machines and being addicted to cigarettes"

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