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Corporation's are made of people and people don't only have the direct interests of the company in mind.

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.




Agreed. Plenty of people struggle with the problem they're solving here. Especially at Google, where they a) think of themselves as a nice, mission-driven company, and b) they do a lot of user-focused stuff that doesn't immediately contribute to quarterly revenue, and c) they have a workforce that can easily switch jobs, there's plenty of reason to think that they're sincere here.

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.


Lets be real though. Youtube binge-watching is not a matter of "forgetting" to take a break. We have clocks— we’ve all been there bingeing and thinking "uh, when the clock hits XX:00 I’ll stop watching" or "I’ll stop after two more videos", etc.

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.


Sure. And that's an issue for the YouTube team, but not an issue for the Android team. It's perfectly possible to me that this happened not for cynical reasons, but mainly because the Android people were just doing something they thought good for the user, and nobody powerful was cynical enough to stop them just to juice short-term metrics for one product among many.


Yet the article is titled "Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive" and it was the Google CEO who announced this new effort.


Yup. CEOs generally announce things that other people think up and build.


I hate it, and my personal biggest gripe is we the people should be making the rules to protect ourselves through laws, cheeringng on a company for doing this is just encouraging and enabling “self regulation”.

They’ll also hold shareholder value above “product values” (as google users are their product). It encourages half measure and ineffective solutions.


> we the people should be making the rules to protect ourselves through laws

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.


The company, as a company, would not move forward with these measures if it didn't help their bottom line or hurt their competition in some way. They aren't doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. Sure, it may have started as a well meaning thing by a few workers, but it's pretty clear that it's to hurt their largest advertising rival, Facebook. If Google can make their advertising and data more valuable than their alternative they will grow. Does that mean that what they are doing is inherently bad, and won't benefit society if it's successful? Not at all.


I responded with apprehension and gave an example of a similar initiative that Nintendo has already shipped [0], which has been widely mocked, and I explained why these sorts of nagging notifications are a tricky balancing act (the product doesn't know the context of your use, but can only guess, and it is grating when it gets it wrong).

[0] https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/997614-nintendo-3ds/747...

https://www.neogaf.com/threads/does-nintendos-oh-youve-been-...


It wasn't widely mocked. I have met numerous people who played Nintendo games with this warning and seeing some neckbeards on the threads you linked I had never seen anyone complain about it. Most people just take a break or don't play for extended times to even see the warning.


Only 'neckbeards' had a problem with it? That's simply not true, and the links I provided are full of people explaining why Nintendo's execution was flawed.


So, you clearly don't understand the hypocrisy behind Google's efforts? How naive can you possibly be? People at Google are having a job which is essentially having only the interests of the company in mind!

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.


You make an accusation without support against Google and then use that as support for another accusation against the poster. This has the effect of leaving unbiased observers to wonder what the basis for your moral outrage is.

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.




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