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Comment by throwaway0asd | Hacker News Reader

Social media cannibalized itself to death in pursuit of ad revenue via increased engagement. The harder they pushed, with content assumption algorithms, the more toxic it became. The more toxic it becomes the more it appeals to extreme personalities while alienating everyone else, a poisonous viper eating itself.

It’s only market lag between the revenue source, media source agencies, and the realization that better markets for their business. When that occurs the death spiral hyper accelerates to rapid finality.

Like all death spirals this could have been avoided had they treated their users as a potential revenue source instead of a product. I was watching a history video yesterday about the Aztecs who completely alienated the tribes in their empire in their own death spiral. The empire was already dead before the Spanish arrived, but the Aztecs just didn’t see it yet.

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I genuinely believe that AB testing as practiced by every major tech company (and the incentives it creates) has caused much of this. AB testing is a really unsophisticated way of measuring extremely short-term incremental gains in isolation. That's how we've ended up with products which have gradually become so hostile to users. Because individually the changes seem like small wins, but taken together and over the long term they are deeply destructive to the core product. AB testing doesn't capture long-term changes to user behavior from the accumulation of disparate features. The incentive structures within these companies are all set up to be able to prove these small wins in dollar values to get a raise or promotion which has led to a race to the bottom as teams create features nobody wants to justify their existence.

Anecdotally I and many people I know have reached a kind of breaking point where these apps have become so demanding in terms of attention that we have to stop using them entirely. Whether it's YouTube's incessant advertisements, TikTok's infinite scroll or Facebook's insane jumble of a UI/feed these products are demonstrably inferior to their incarnations 5-7 years ago.

I was the A/B test engineer for one of the most well known dot com brands about a decade ago.

A/B testing media (advertising) is extremely misleading compared to testing against something transactional. The goal of a transactional sequence, called a conversion (payment in exchange for a product or defined service), is a supremely simple metric. Although the goal is simple to define and recognize the costs associated are wildly complex. Media is the inverse of this where the goals and consequences are not immediately clear or known but both the costs and revenue are immediately straight forward.

The reason the financials of conversion are complex is because you need to account for the expenses to third parties to pull a user in, the purchasing horizon in time, potential for cannibalism against other purchasing decisions, and various other factors that cost the business money.

The reason metrics associated with media are complex is because users HATE it. Increased advertising presence drives traffic away. Shifts in traffic occur over a wide duration due to a variety of factors so it is almost impossible to measure just how toxic advertising is to a given product oriented business in isolation in accordance with a variable time horizon. Its actually much worse than that for a variety of technical factors. In the past legitimate ad placements have been delivery vectors for content and logic of malicious criminal activity. Advertising logic is frequently poorly written. Many websites will isolate their advertisements into iframes in order to protect their website from accidental defacement of presentation and/or broken logic. Advertisements come into the page super slowly which completely pushes out the waterfall for what might have been a quick loading page.

When I did A/B testing I would describe the media side of the business in terms of illegal job deals. I did this because of so many parallels in the transactions and risks in those markets, not because they are both filthy evil things.

I can't say I understood everything you said (is all usage of word "media" == "advertising"? what are "illegal job deals"?) but just wanted to ask: is A/B testing ever not harmful to end users in the long run? Excluding some very minor UI testing like CTA button color which I presume doesn't really matter.

From a revenue perspective the words media and advertising are interchangeable. The word media is preferred because it speaks to a business segment as opposed to something like an agency.

A/B testing is great when you are helping eliminate confusion and dark patterns nobody can articulate more directly.

Illegal job deals was an autocorrection of my phone. I meant illegal drug deals and didn’t catch the change.

Thank you, I have been reading about dark patterns recently and how damaging they are so you really got my attention now.

I will try to do my own research on how it's done but if you can expand a bit on confusion and dark pattern elimination that would be very much appreciated. I feel like everything I ever stumbled upon regarding A/B testing was "sales funnel optimization" which seems to be the root of much evil.

The goal of any product oriented business is purchase through a point of sale. That is called a conversion. Dark patterns emerge when a seller attempts to influence the behavior of a purchaser beyond decisions most beneficial to the purchaser, which is not always intentional.

One example of dark pattern elimination occurs when steps in a purchase process are dramatically reduced. That reduction eliminates opportunities for messaging but increases the potential for transaction quantity.

Ok I have a clearer picture now but it's still something that would probably need case by case analysis to get a full grasp what is possible and how to use it for the customer and not against him. Thank you.

Ugh I do still remember the chronological feed where posts didn’t get ranked. I enjoyed that product. Feels like every efficiency improvement they did removed a few percentage of users until now when there’s just a few weirdos left posting

Chronological feeds is how they lure us in to the circus. Engagement algorithms is how they turn is into donkeys.

I don’t know if you remember or were ever exposed to the “Facebook is going to start charging for its services!” Panic posts that happened in the mid-2010s. It was always false, but when it comes to the internet, people have a strong sense of entitlement. They do not like the idea of paying for things.

Which is exactly where I would focus if I was making a product. I’m so sick to death of these awful “free” services. I can’t be the only one.

I am thinking about it now that I prepare for releasing a small B2C app. I thought about going freemium initially, then changed my thinking to maybe adding ads to the free version, but as I read more and more about dark patterns and sucking clients dry on every occasion (by big corps) I think of going paid only (monthly/yearly or one time) + 1 month free trial (no registration, no credit card). Simple, easy to understand, all cards on the table plus much less incentive for "finding creative revenue streams" (selling user data) in case ad revenue is low.

Perhaps it is a very bad decision which will never work, I don't know. I guess in this ecosystem the only way to at least not lose is not to play, otherwise we will all be eventually brought down to aggressive A/B testing, ad infested, tracking, no-privacy environment, to match other products... I don't want that kind of world.

Mine is a free app, that does nothing without a physical device. The DRM system is no login no account, the device is the key. No update costs. Everything calm. The device is even fungible for its purpose. A tool to do a thing and fucks off.

We’re leaving money on the table, for sure, but I really don’t care. I’m going to make something that is biased to the customer, and they’re going to appreciate it.

Looks like a good way to go, I hope you succeed and have fun in the process!

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