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Comment by thaumaturgy | Hacker News Reader

User: This service has a problem and it's not working well.

Programmer: There's nothing wrong with the service, you just have to use [magic incantation] to make it work right.

I've been hoping for 20 years that this kind of exchange would stop happening. Still hoping! :-)

And there's always this kind of response. They didn't say the service was fine, they just provided a simple workaround which doesn't require forcing a change to Google's algorithm. Hoping they don't help with this seems odd.

So, to counter, I'm glad that they did say this as it regularly annoys me too.

It's indeed a useful tip - and no offense to the GP - but this kind of reply always feels like the tech support equivalent of a mandatory arbitration clause: like an attempt to solve an issue individually with each person reporting it instead of giving a systemic solution that would benefit anyone. The blame is shifted from devs providing a good service to individual users not knowing the latest workaround.

Most probably the devs know how to do it but specs written by someone else told them to obfuscate useful functionality.

Google: we need your personal information so we can improve your experience

User: -pinterest

Google: we need your personal information so we can improve your experience

User: -pinterest!!

et cetera, ad infinitum ...

But no one said that there’s nothing wrong with the service. They merely offered a very simple workaround. I can’t imagine why you’d hope for that to stop happening.

Why? This is a quick fix. Maybe the problem will get fixed "officially" someday. But I have the problem now, I need a workaround now, not in 5 years.

User: your thing doesn't work the specific way I want. I haven't read the manual and refuse to learn now to use its features. You should make it magically work the way I imagine.

Multiply by 100 users with different opinions, all entitled, on how thing should work.

Services and users have different goals. Why is the helpful technologist the problem?

Your second statement is enabling bad behavior, your first statement is insane.

No. They're exactly right. The root problem here is incentive misalignment. Both Google and Pinterest sacrifice value they provide to extract more revenue from their users.

Care to elaborate on the insane part? I feel sane.

Real answer?

Because helpful technologists are the interface between less knowledgeable users and services like Google. We’re the power users and “mavens” who are both highly exposed to the product and have some understanding of what’s going wrong and how it might be made better. We also spend a lot more time talking to that product’s engineering staff than the typical user (see e.g. the fact that we’re here on HN.)

When helpful technologists opt out of the problematic aspects of a product by uttering some magic incantation, we essentially remove ourselves from having to be annoyed by the product’s rough edges. This means we’re less likely to help improve the service for everyone, and we’re probably more likely to incorporate similar carelessness into the things we make ourselves.

How could a technologist, who's not in charge of the $BigTech be able to fix the problem? They can't. So, they offer the user a work-around. Then, the user never complains to $BigCo because of the Help and still nothing gets done. And later, we complain that we're not fixing $BigCo and we're all mad at "the help".

How, really, could you improve the Google service for everyone?

Acausal decision theory, given the assumption that you have the same decision-making algorithm as the technologists in charge of $BigTech. (The assumption's completely invalid, so it doesn't actually work.)

How many Google Search* engineers saw this article on HN? I guarantee the number is greater than zero.

* Or people who talk to Search engineers regularly, etc.

I see your point. Working around abusive behaviour, and accepting that as a solution, just enables further abuse. I don't think we can influence said engineers here on HN. I know for a fact that I personally wouldn't be influenced, and I also think that if the product managers will want something, then it will get done, no matter what people write here.

"Programmer" here is wrong. Because we are all user of the product "google search".

But yes I see your point. I call it the "permanent workaround"

I think your premise is wrong. The service isn't broken. I'd assume Google has enough people and data to know that it's doing what most people want. They were even kind enough to put in a workaround for the minority for whom it doesn't work well (which appears to be OP).

Most people want to have a full result page of nothing but login walls when searching for any kind of image?

Most people who click on Pinterest links are already logged into Pinterest...

There’s no way that’s true. I’d be surprised if even 1% of the Google users paid attention to the source site underneath the image.

And you’d think people with a Pinterest account would opt to search on their website/app rather than going through Google (thus making it even more unlikely that the Google user has a Pinterest account).

Pinterest has a huge user base. They don't need to look at the source if they have an account; the link will work fine.

And, no, most people don't bother picking a site before searching. Why would they artificially limit their results? People don't even visit amazon before searching for Amazon products.

Pinterest’s user-base is surely minuscule compared to the amount of users using Google Image Search.

I’m not saying that 100% of all users with a Pinterest account use their website/app, but many of them will of course opt to use Pinterest’s website/app for their image searches, which means an even smaller percentage of the Google Image Search users will have a Pinterest account.

Not just Image Search - Pinterest often dominates Text Search, and people here are "Oh well, they figured out how to deliver what Google wants!"

But not most people doing a Google search. Anyone who is not on Pinterest has its result page spammed with useless links.

For the amount of people hired you would assume they had the best people.

But their hiring process is broken. They randomly hire a % of people who pass an algorithm test. It's so random that 70% of their workforce wouldn't be hired again if they had to go through that process.

The brand is so strong that people think anyone who makes it into google must be the best of the best. It's more like a random person who has studied leetcode.

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