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> As noted multiple times in the article, the unethical design we’re seeing in popular apps and services today is largely a result of the widespread use of advertising as a revenue model.

Advertisement as a revenue model exacerbates this problem, but I submit the problem stems from how we define success for mobile apps and websites. We directly designate "engagement" as success, rather than customer value provided or even asking our customers if they like the service.

We assume if they are there that they have made a clear-eyed assessment about the value proposition of our product compared to every other aspect of their lives and decided this is the best use of their time.

Because of that hidden assumption, our UX folks are encouraged to ruthlessly push by any means available to get more of that time. There is an assumption that the cutoff switch is somehow built into the user; that the user will say, "Enough is enough" if the engagement every reaches a toxic level in their lives.

And I think what many of the people in this article are trying to say is: That is a bad assumption. We're making our products so sticky that we're starting to surpass some our user's ability to say, "No."

Part of the reason Google's initial launch was so ballsy and great (which they've lost over the years) was a strong focus on getting the user off the search results page as fast as possible. It was a decision informed by their technical limits at the time, but it was a fantastic value to the user. Once they had the results they needed (very quickly) they were gone, off to do whatever it was they had asked Google for in the first place.

This contrasted starkly with the Alta Vistas, Yahoos, and AOLs of the day, which were all creating interlinked portal networks and trying to keep users within the company's own bubble of services to increase engagement.

Somewhere along the way, when we figured out how to use advertising revenue to "pay the bills" and turn on a profit on the cost of hosting... I think this was lost. Sometimes the user just needs the content they came for, and sometimes delivering that content to them in the leanest, most efficient manner possible is worth more than all the engagement tactics in the world.

> Part of the reason Google's initial launch was so ballsy and great (which they've lost over the years) was a strong focus on getting the user off the search results page as fast as possible.

That's an interesting example, because it contains also why Google changed. There is little business to be had in just being a place where users spend as little time as possible.

But the choice of "engagement" as the success metric directly stems from the advertising revenue model. That's why it is chosen as the definition of success. Because it triggers ad payments.

All the "customer value", "customer happiness" and all the rest is inward facing PR. Creative people need a better motivation to build these attention traps than "suck em in so they watch ads" so it has to be phrased differently to them.

I think it was chosen as definition of success because it is _easy to measure_.

From the beginning of the Web onwards, you had very little idea of what people actually did on your site, but the fact that they visited was an easily counted line in a plain text log file.

The moment something else was available (e.g. actual clicks on an ad, or conversion rate), that was used.

Even if a site gets micro-paid for each video viewed or article written, they still have an incentive to nudge viewers to keep viewing. If you think about it, even if they have a pure subscription model they will want people "engaged", i.e. addicted.

Yes, the tendency of focus on easy to measure metrics instead of what you actual care about is a whole other discussion of interesting craziness.

But isn't that orthogonal to this discussion? There are better metrics, but they still have the same large scale attention economy, filter bubble, junk food media effects as "engagement" does. "actual clicks on ads" is conversion rate x ad views and ad views is a function of engagement.

I don't see how more accurate measurements would positively affect the way content is written, presented and optimized. If anything wouldn't it just get worse?

I think you underestimate the power of intertia and groupthink in this industry. I also think there are lots of counterexamples who still do this even though they don't directly market ads.

Do you work in this industry? I used to work for a social games company and while 'engagement' of our free-to-play users was certainly a driver, I can tell you, the bosses cared much more about revenue. Engagement was certainly secondary to that.

Yes. I've been involved in 3 ventures and successfully exited on my own once.

If your model is explicitly ad revenue, then yes; you will find similar pressures.

I don't work in entertainment and I'm telling you we got the same guidance even from respected VC firms. We never once showed an ad and we had a similar model for a long time.

Success is defined as engagement because it leads to more ad revenue. If those applications had different business models, they would have different success definitions.

Lots of companies use engagement metrics as stronger signals than nps even if they're not showing ads.

That was the guidance KP gave Level, for sure.

It took us a long time to realize that was wrong. Too long.

Though I have my issues with it, I'd put Meetup[1] on there. Since it's relying on fees and not advertisements, it's more focused on using the internet to get people to meet in real life and not on getting people to avoid real life to spend more time on the site.

That's the type of stuff smartphones and the web should be used for - supplements that make us have a richer real life, not addictive junk food that competes with reality.

[1] https://www.meetup.com/

Cryptocurrency-mining in the browser (e.g. coin-hive.com) is one of the most interesting new models. Before you have an allergic reaction to this idea, let's first have a discussion of the best-case scenario.

Assuming that the publisher openly states they're mining instead of showing ads, and the user understands what's happening, browser-based mining is an attractive alternative to ads.

The first benefit is in privacy: you don't need to track your users personal preferences or identities. The second benefit is that there's no signup, no login, and no fraud.

It does not wholly solve the issue of attention-based revenue. That is, there is still some incentive for publishers to "manipulate" the user into long session times on the site. However, unlike ads, long session time doesn't have to mean long attention time in order for mining to happen.

Browser-based mining is sort of like micropayments: the user is paying the site in electricity. Many people don't want to pay subscriptions and they don't want to see ads. Browser-based mining is a viable alternative.

At least for bitcoin, software-based mining doesn't compete with ASICs, so doing more mining on clients is a net loss in terms of overall energy efficiency.

I'd rather a site wasted my electricity than my time.

It’s only valid if, coincidentally, the market value of hashing happens to be in the ballpark of the revenue the content producer needs.

That's true of advertisement as well.

Can you flesh out the analogy? I don't understand what you're saying

I'm also not seeing the analogy. Ad revenue is part of the market/ecosystem for ads and sites. Hash power just is what it is, and the value of it does not seem to be connected to the content.

Sorry, I mean that ad revenue is only valid if it has a sufficient payout per visitor. Both crypto currency and ad revenue tend to be a race to the bottom.

the big problem with this is so many people these days are using phones, tablets, laptops etc... no one wants to waste battery life mining (I certainly don't)

Wikipedia is not really ad-free, they advertise for themselves. I know that many people don't consider self-advertising and appeal to donation "true" ads, but I do. Here are my arguments.

- Appeal to donation banners are not content, they are a purposely made distraction with a money-making goal. Just like real ads.

- Most people agree that when Windows 10 gives you a popup to buy another Microsoft product, it's an ad. So the "self-advertising" rule is not absolute.

- Charities sometimes purchase advertising space on Google, Facebook, etc... They obviously count as ads, and are blocked by ad-blockers. So nonprofits can post ads too.

- When I looked at Wikipedia fundraising reports ( https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising_reports ), I found it striking how similar it feels to regular ad campaigns. They use A/B testing, talk about conversion rate and all the usual tricks to incite you to pay more.

So I think that while it is safe to call Wikipedia independent, I wouldn't call it ad-free. Whether these aggressive campaigns are justified is another debate.

I imagine that they are deciding to run ads for donations, because they need donations to keep running. Are you suggesting it’s because they like running ads?

This is the case for most other companies running ads, they do it for the revenue, not the love of ads.

There are a few services like https://digitaltipjar.com/faq

I'm looking for one that was a browser plugin - you click it every site you want to support (if that site opted in).

Then, your monthly spend eg. $5 is split between all of the sites you chose to support.

It let users commit to paying $N per month for their favorite sites, without having to calculate "should I give 1 or 10.." etc.

Anyone remember this? I saw it on a few webcomics

Flattr?

Whatsapp in their initial days before getting acquired by Facebook had a similar revenue model. They asked $1/year from a user. I am starting to wonder if $1/year was enough from a user to keep their service running. If it is the case why are we willing to risk our privacy for an evil revenue model while we can retain it with just $1?

The problem comes with the piece work approach to payment - payment for labour services output via unreliable charity.

That is not a system that aggregates or works with the nature of creativity.

What you need is payment for labour hours provided - consistent payment for effort not results.

The challenge is how do you determine effort without looking at results. How do you influence the transformation of labour hours into the right sort of labour services without payment.

I somewhat agree with your examples, except Wikipedia. It has no business being much more than a server farm and software tweaker. That's not something that needs large ongoing investment by many people.

http://wikipediocracy.com/2014/09/21/wikipedia-keeping-it-fr...

Sure, that's one point of view.

However, the "business" of the Wikimedia Foundation can be determined by its board of directors so long as it falls within the articles of incorporation and the IRS guidelines. It's not for us to decide.

So, when the Wikimedia Foundation decides to fund grants to help increase gender diversity in Wikipedia content, that's totally legitimate. It can decide what its business is.

From my perspective, Wikipedia is a global treasure and if they want to spend money to make sure it gets better, rather than just on servers and wiki tweaks, that's fine by me. No-one is forced to donate.

> It has no business being much more than a server farm and software tweaker

Isn’t that true for literally all Web-based businesses? Is Twitter "much more than a server farm and software tweaker"?

Twitter isn't a charity.

Wikipedia has Cancer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...

Servers are expensive.

In 2016, the Foundation got over $70M in revenue and spent $2M of that in Web hosting. Processing all those donations cost them more than hosting Wikipedia.

Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/4/43/Wikim...

No, actually most of Wikimedia's spending is largely unrelated to Wikipedia.

Look at the graphs in that article.

After 18 years as a (mainly contract) BA with some PM work on govt and big Corp business and/or software solution contracts, I'd had enough and did a diploma in enology and viticulture (wine making and growing). In one of my first assignments I referenced Wikipedia on malolactic fermentation and sent it in for marking.

The lecturer gave me a b+ and went on to berate me for using Wikipedia as a source that was not to be trusted. I was 42 (older than than the lecturer) at the time and had innumerable experiences of people questioning facts during my previous life because they didn't fit their narrative, and politely asked him to point me to where in the Wikipedia entry the political manipulation strayed from the science and process... He couldn't and after a phone call to confirm, my mark was bumped up.

Utter academic bs and cognitive bias clouded all judgement on his part. I was pretty pissed off he'd dismiss something before reading it, and the rest of the diploma was spent playing to what they would accept as sources.

Two years later my Pinot noir got 95/100, ironically marked (in part) by our other (more experienced and realistic) lecturer in a blind tasting.

Fuck academia and their fucking higher than thou bullshit based on nothing other than their own ego. And don't get me started on that other clusterfuck Turnitin.

/rant

Sorry but in “serious” writing you should never cite Wikipedia. Check and cite the original sources instead; every claim on Wikipedia should have a corresponding source per their no original research policy.

You may be right at this time, but the suggested fix feels a lot like plagiarizing the work of Wikipedia editors. It takes significant work to gather sources and turn them into an informative article. I believe that work should be recognized, even if it was published on a free access platform like Wikipedia. Is there some middle ground between using their work without acknowledging it and suffering a stain on credibility because of guilt by association?

Exactly. You wouldn't cite a different Encyclopedia either.

What you did would be fine for a commercial report, or an internal memo. In that case you are just looking for the best information you can find, and Wikipedia is as good a source as many so it can be part of the research.

But you're not understanding academia when you lump Wikipedia in with other sources. The purpose of publishing is not just to write down what you have reason to believe. The purpose is to build up a verifiable chain of trust. It's a lot like a block chain actually.

When you publish in Nature, and note that you are employed at Stanford, what is happening is you, Nature, and Stanford are all "signing" the paper. Then when someone cites you, they are building on your chain. That allows you to read a paper published somewhere and be able to rely on its truthfulness, to some degree, without manually verifying each source.

Part of what you learn in academia, what your professor was trying to get you to learn, is how to write a paper which could be published. If you cite a Wikipedia page, that can no longer be published because there aren't enough "signatures" on it to verify a chain of trust. Yes, you can verify it by hand, but that doesn't scale. The point of scholarship is to scale verifiable knowledge.

It's a little sad your instructor capitulated. It's possible they realized you were in a professional program and you weren't supposed to learn how to do scholarship... that your task was just to be able to write a professional research report, and for that Wikipedia is fine. It's also possible they assessed that they're not being paid enough to argue with indignant students and gave you the grade that would shut you up.

But regardless... you should know that what you did is not scholarship. That requires you to participate in the consensus algorithm and the verifiable chain of previous work.

> Fuck academia and their fucking higher than thou bullshit

Geez, you messed up your citations. Take the L and remember wikipedia is an aggregation that has to get citations too.

Going, "All academia is bad because I got a bad grade can't they see how right I was" is childish nonsense. You'll be better off if you just take the L.