I don't understand the commenters responding negativepy to these proposals; by all means be circumspect, but don't criticize a company for making a positive change just because you think it doesn't go far enough.
It's surely true that execs looked at this and made sure the ROI wasn't blatantly large and negative. And there's definitely another level of analysis where a lot of good behavior turns out to be useful to the organism, in the same sense that moms love kids because genes need new meat-robot bodies to run around in. But that complimentary to your frame of analysis, not contradictory to it.
Recommended videos are very good though, and always very accessible. There's always another great, tailored video auto-playing after the one we're in. A better effort IMO would be to simply stop auto-playing after XX number of minutes; or even just hide the "recommended videos" section behind a button.
Notifying you you're bingeing while you're bingeing and calling it an effort in digital well-being is the kind of stuff a team comes up with when they know doing something to keep people from bingeing is the right thing to do, but they also don’t want to have those crucial-yet-awkard meetings with the Growth team downstairs or argue with the Playback Time team in the next building.
They’ll also hold shareholder value above “product values” (as google users are their product). It encourages half measure and ineffective solutions.
The government has a moral obligation to make sure we aren’t spending too much time on our devices? People can’t think for themselves anymore.
It’s the same thing as the war on drugs. The government can provide medical assistance and services but otherwise it’s not their place.
[0] https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/997614-nintendo-3ds/747...
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/does-nintendos-oh-youve-been-...
No-no-no, do not try to spin it like that! Corporations are made of jobs. People have obligations working those jobs. Sure, they are people, but only in the sense that they have human rights as well.
What Google is trying to do is not "positive change", it is an effort to make the user responsible for their addictive behavior instead of being responsible selling addictive tech themselves.
Those same things that are addictive are also empowering and useful. Giving someone a way to handle it properly is a responsible way to do provide that service.