Any good economist would point to the economic inefficiencies created on the whole market by the externalities of the human suffering this would cause.
I work at one of the large tech companies listed on the site. I've literally never heard of this project until I found it on HN today.
It's funny to me, because just yesterday I was a having a conversation with a colleague who asked me if we had a "corporate account" with another commons SaaS PM tool that he has been using with his team. I think he was in shock when I listed all of the project management and collaboration tools that that I've seen used in our organization. There are no "standard" project management, planning, organization, sharing, etc. tools at big companies. There might be "official" ones, but then managers and directors just buy whatever the hell SaaS they want on a credit card.
Shadow IT is a thing. No company avoids it. I'd assume most Global 2000 companies use just about every single popular tool you can imagine _somewhere_ within their organization.
I was just about to start an ask hn on this topic. I’m surprised big tech or anyone allows the use of logo and names in this manner but obviously it’s very common to do this. It seems highly unethical to use the name of a company and imply endorsement of that company when all that’s happened is someone from that domain has registered. As many of you have, I have been through the formal PR battles with big tech to do press releases — and even simple things like including their logo in a PowerPoint. I’d be surprised all of these logos agreed to a de facto endorsement with a company that doesn’t even have an about us on its website. So I guess the question is - what are the rules here? Do these companies actually endorse this product, did these developers actually get permission?
Ps - separate topic but I have a hard time signing up for anything without knowing who the underlying owners or the company are and who the company is - legal entity, investors, headquarters location... never mind I could use a throwaway email address and password to register, what’s the point of putting my working documents on a service that can’t establish basic trust. Talk about rogue IT... what does it say about the organizations on their website that individuals used their company email address and possibly the same credentials that they use to login to their IT department? Never mind placing of potentially confidential information on an unknown SaaS?
I can guess with almost certainty that this product does not have permission to use our logo. If they had permission, our brand team would have probably made sure they were using the correct one, instead of a version that was sunset almost a year ago.
Very much this! I have a small business and my product has a lot of "big name" users, but consistently it's pretty much impossible to get sign-off to use their name or logo.
I don't know what the legality of just putting them up there whether they want to or not is, but obviously the social proof of doing so is huge.
Really? I never know if it's AZH-uhr or az-YOOR. I just googled it and apparently it's the first for US pronunciation and the second for the UK. https://english.stackexchange.com/a/26645
Is the accent on the first or second syllable? Is the A pronounced "uh" or like in "apple"? I honestly don't know, having never experienced that word in verbal conversation, only books.
Though I don't think it's bad enough to be an example of OP's problem by any means.
I have (albeit not terribly). I've heard the "A" pronounced like in "appetite" and also like the "A" in "America" with the "zure" sounding like the "sure" in "closure".
Go to a microsoft conference and behold. I went to the LEAP conference this year and all the danes seemed to pronounce it as Az-your and I was the hillbilly pronouncing it Az-er
> Keep in mind that the journalist who did the research and wrote the article did not have a say in how the employer who enabled them to write this piece generates revenue.
In a way, she did. She is not an NYT employee, but rather, a professor at UNC Chapel Hill who could have published this piece elsewhere.
To be clear, I don't fault her for her choice at all. Just pointing out that we all "opt-in" to this system when we participate in it, and that's a part of the problem.
I do agree with you, though I think opting out of the practices of most websites is impractical. The utility of my usage of the Internet far outweighs some advertisers figuring out what I like to buy. We do need more robust advertising privacy laws, though.
By not being a NYT employee she has even less of a say in the matter. I'm sure she knows that nobody's going to read her article if it's published in The Daily Tar Heel.
If someone gave you the opportunity to publish an article in The New York Times would you say no?
I should also point out that the print edition of the NYT is still widely circulated, and it seems this article would have appeared in the Opinion section, tracker free :-)
> Just pointing out that we all "opt-in" to this system when we participate in it, and that's a part of the problem.
This really is a significant point.
All-visitor paywalls already crumbled, and a few of the worst excesses of tracking at least getting debated, so this is a place where users can get actual traction. It's the same sort of collective action problem as voting, true; writers and publishers have far more influence than any given reader. But it's also true that the space is far more open than voting.
There are a lot of news sites (e.g. The Boston Globe) which have shut out incognito access, filled their sites with trackers, and loaded up on dark patterns to push people towards misleadingly-priced subscriptions. And for almost everything they publish, there's minimal cost to just... not reading it. If it's a major story, it will be covered elsewhere. I know I'm not changing the world when I skip their links, but I'm protecting a bit of my own data, and putting a bit of pressure on them to do better.
+1 for taming the addictive nature of social media.
-1000 for trying to do this with age-based restrictions. Kids will get around it. Kids SHOULD get around it. Gating content based on age does. not. work. Source: every teenage kid ever.
Also, the notion that dark UI patterns are exploitative of teenagers but acceptable for adults is ridiculous. Plenty of adults are just as (if not more-so) vulnerable to these things than kids.
The same holds true for e.g. smoking. The idea is to prevent exposure to the still developing brain (psuedo-arbitrarily defined as under 18), and that exposure after this age is purely an informed descision by a consenting adult. Should legislation require that __all__ exploitative mechanisms be banned forever?
I don’t think that any business that makes money by taking advantage of people’s foolishness or stupidity has any particular moral right to be free from regulation. Caveat emptor and all that, but if you cause enough damage to enough people, it stops being an individual’s problem and starts being society’s problem. We’re 100% there with social media.
> I don’t think that any business that makes money by taking advantage of people’s foolishness or stupidity
I think this is a touch unfair to people at large. The common end user isn't keen enough to recognize dark patterns, that's true, but that's akin to saying that the average car buyer should be able to spot flaws in a vehicle that could cause them harm. We don't expect that from people; Car companies are mandated to only sell vehicles that meet safety requirements. And even then, it's generally accepted that when you're buying a used vehicle, you take it to a mechanic you trust to make sure it's well cared for and operational. Same as when you buy a home; you're expected to have it inspected.
It's also unfair, I think, to put people down as foolish or stupid for not immediately recognizing things that are psychological tricks companies use in marketing, to steer users towards the options they want the users to choose. I mean caveat emptor indeed, but to say that, for example fast food marketers holding PHD's in psychological studies, working day in and out to get people to be hungry anytime they see a McDonalds logo are on an even playing field with Joe Consumer is a laughable assertion on it's face.
In the days of yore, marketing was just trying to sell someone something but it's become much more insidious since those innocent times. Now companies use dark patterns in their applications, purposely bury privacy and security options under layers of confusing UI, use all manor of colors and fonts shown to steer people's attention to the goal they want, on and on. This is why I find it so unethical, it feels a hell of a lot less like marketing and lot more like "hacking" a person's brain to get into their wallet.
tl:dr; Joe Consumer is playing checkers, and marketing scientists are playing 3D chess. He doesn't stand a chance and everyone just keeps acting like that's okay.
Not a parent poster, but I think main point still holds. Maybe I would state it differently.
Even if you say 'taking advantage of limited cognitive ability of people' which is true, because everyone is busy, having life problems and is bombarded with all that crap. It makes people stupid, and that is not something to say about particular person.
So second part is about making damage while taking advantage of that created stupidity, which is the same as thieves taking advantage of someone after 12 hour trip. People get tired and do stupid things like not watching their luggage. That is the same as taking advantage of online tiredness, it is also foolishness.
Marketing with McDonalds does not make people hungry, that is of course not the way it works. But when people are hungry and see McDonalds logo, they don't think about alternatives but just go for that option. I fell for that multiple times, when I am tired, I am not going to search for some small restaurant that can have better food. It can turn out that there is one, but food is total crap, so I am not taking chances but going for McD. Getting me tired and hungry to pay them money is taking advantage of my temporary stupidity and foolishness. They have scale and are everywhere so it might look innocent.
> Even if you say 'taking advantage of limited cognitive ability of people' which is true, because everyone is busy, having life problems and is bombarded with all that crap. It makes people stupid, and that is not something to say about particular person.
That I'd agree with, that it makes people stupid. That's better.
> Marketing with McDonalds does not make people hungry
But it does. The color red has been linked many times to feelings of hunger, most likely because our brains link it to both the color of fresh berries and the color of slaughtered meat. That's why nearly every fast food chain uses a significant amount of red in their packaging: McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Topper's Pizza, Wendy's, Hardees, Carls' Jr., the list is nearly infinite. It's not a coincidence.
And that's the relatively low-tech tactics, not even going into how the engineer the taste of the food to be just right, how the burgers in the ads look absolutely nothing like the product you receive, all the way up to the fact that fast food is laden with sugar unnecessarily to make it literally addictive, since the brain responds to sugar in a very similar way to cocaine.
Again, this stuff exists on a very large spectrum from stuff that's innocuous but very effective, all the way to the stuff that was cooked up in laboratories by extremely smart people to manipulate the general populace into buying their products.
That's not a fair comparison because some people want to smoke. No one wants to be the victim of dark UI patterns. No one wants "share all my data by default please." No one wants to click on a deceptive ad that looks like the download button.
They want to smoke, but most do not want cancer, emphysema or to have there house burn down because there adulterated cigarette has been manufactured knowingly in a way that increases those risks.
Many users "want" the "streak" features as a way to signalling their commitment to their social relationship with another individual, which is the feature this article is about.
Guess HN needs to banned then. Their news feed is designed to exploit my need for novelty and it works. I'm here far more than I should be. I guess I should expect the government to regulate HN to save me from it's exploitative patterns
I don't see it to be honest. The website is plain and simple, downvotes are capped, the scores are not visible. I spent significantly less time here than on other forms of social media, and I never feel glued to the website.
What part of the HN design appears to you exploitative? It's much more like an old school web forum than a gamified social website.
This will only be a temporary issue which will disappear with the generation which will resist the most. Most behavioural changes and changes to the norm just need to wait until the first generation dies out and to all subsequent generations this will be the only norm they ever knew. A great example is smoking in public places in Europe. The people who think this restricts their freedom is slowly disappearing. Most young people and new generations find it normal that smoking in public places is prohibited and they would resist if someone was to try to change that now.
It definitely sounds odd to my younger colleagues when I explain what it was like when people smoked in pubs by default.
There may be a difference here in that lots of people disliked smoking/smokers/their clothes smelling after going to a pub, perhaps more than there are who dislike the concept of facebook likes manipulating their behaviour more than they like the rewards that likes bring them.
The only sane arguments against banning tobacco entirely are related to organized crime. I assert that there is no risk of cartels re-implementing the dark patterns of facebook.
This libertarian rhetorical meme of reducing every instance of proposed regulation to ineffectual drug wars needs to die.
-1000 for trying to do this with age-based restrictions. Kids will get around it. Kids SHOULD get around it. Gating content based on age does. not. work. Source: every teenage kid ever
My 12 year old son was helping his 10 year cousin set up Pokemon Go and he told him to just put anything in the year until it works.
Heck when I was 8 my 10 year old friend and I used to guess the leisure suit larry questions.
There is really no way to fix this, without creating some kind of goverment id system tied to biometrics, followed by the plot of any dystopian scifi.
Gating content based on age isn't really about preventing access to it. Gating content (on most any basis) is more about blame-deflecting and CYA: make sure you're not the one to be fingered as the responsible party when the "they should have done something!" hysteria hits.
If something is for adults only, require payment or something. Afaik, you can't get a debit or credit card under 18 without parental approval, so this should lie firmly on the shoulders of parents. However, parents don't like getting blamed for being bad parents.
If my child gets access to adult only stuff, that's my fault.
What you are saying is essentially that all restrictions based on age are invalid because some people will manage to circumvent those rules.
We have significant, long term, data that age restrictions reduced the use of alcohol and tobacco.
What has changed, in the modern era of internet age restrictions, is that the enforcement of age restrictions online has been reduced.
For example, online pornography has massive numbers of users under 18, but there has been little enforcement by law enforcement agencies.
The solution is quite simple. If a person under the age of 18 is in possession of an application that is prohibited for minors and the company that creates that application fails to verify their age, then the company should face criminal charges, just like we do with tobacco and alcohol.
To say that age restrictions do not work is to ignore almost a century of public policy.
> We have significant, long term, data that age restrictions reduced the use of alcohol and tobacco.
Asking for a user's age and giving a dropdown that lets the user select any age they like is in no way comparable to checking an actual government-issued ID.
I'm simply stating that it is indeed possible to restrict online content based on age. When you buy alcohol or pornography at a store, you are required to show identification. I'm not sure why that is suddenly a terrible thing to do when that service is provided over the internet.
With regards to social platforms, I think we need to consider the health of people under 18, just like we do in the real world. If we indeed decide as a democracy, that certain types of social media content are significantly harmful to children, then I think it is our responsibility as adults to impose certain things upon ourselves that may be uncomfortable.
I have gone to the beach and realized that I had left my wallet(and ID) in the car and was unable to purchase alcohol or be let into a bar. We as a democracy have decided that is a reasonable price to pay for protecting children from alcohol abuse.
If age verification were required to access online content, plenty of online services would be available as a third party to verify your age without requiring you to show every website and application your government ID. For example Apple might verify your age and relay that to a website. Or possibly your credit card company or some other new company which provided that service. PayPal for age verification.
I should qualify that I'm not sure we should impose these age restrictions on social platforms, I'm am instead commenting on the feasiblility of such an action.
The costs are different in the internet. At a bar, a human looks at your ID, then gives it back to you. On the internet, there's no way your ID doesn't get recorded in a log somewhere, in a central store where all ID checks you ever do get recorded.
> CONCLUSIONS:
The preponderance of evidence indicates there is an inverse relationship between the MLDA[minimum legal drinking age] and two outcome measures: alcohol consumption and traffic crashes. [1]
Correct, but in the case of a website or a phone application, the producer of the application or website is also the provider. There is no reason why a pornography site could not be held criminally responsible for distributing pornography to minors.
The way we enforce this with alcohol and tobacco is that law enforcement runs a test were they attempt to purchase alcohol or tobacco from a store with a minor. Law enforcement can run a similar process where they attempt to access pornography(or other age restricted content) and if the site or application fails to restrict usage, apply crimial charges.
There is certainly public debate as to if we should use age restrictions on certain features of Facebook, but to say that enforcement is impossible, seems to contradict the data we have with other age restrictions.
And yet, kids still drink and smoke. Yes, age restrictions are foolish and invalid, century of public policy notwithstanding. Not every policy that has existed should continue to exist.
> CONCLUSIONS:
The preponderance of evidence indicates there is an inverse relationship between the MLDA[minimum legal drinking age] and two outcome measures: alcohol consumption and traffic crashes. [1]
It does not matter whether kids can circumvent the restrictions. This is all about providing future legal action banning persuasive techniques used on children.
Now: sue tobacco companies coercing children using targeted advertisings.
Future: sue social media companies coercing children using persuasive techniques.
Question is: could insufficient age restriction methods hold companies liable?
So true. I was surprised to learn that kids are using the "commenting" feature in Google Docs to message each other in class in a way that they don't get caught using their phones. This laws can't have teeth unless they're specific and people will just invent new things and paths don't violate the law. If parents are worried, they should worry more about their own kids and parenting them the way they'd like.
I think getting around things like age restrictions and parent supervision is an important experience growing up, but I'm afraid kids these days are less adept with computers than their parents and won't be able to.
I know one 14yo who complains about not being able to see restricted content on youtube and also believes her parents can see her history even if she erases it.
Just because you were able to do it when you were a kid, doesn't mean other kids will be able to. You're posting on HN with a "linuxasheviller" handle, that makes you an outlier.
They aren't. She thinks they must have installed something in the computer.
To be clear, I didn't mean to imply she's wrong. She may have good reason to believe that, but I haven't inquired further, just offered to teach her to install Linux.
Also, these kinds of ultra-detailed technocratic rules tend to be bureaucratic disasters. The UK government is now going to be going feature-by-feature of every social media system and deciding whether it should be age-gated?
These measures are being proposed because by law in the UK, under 18s cannot have their data used for commercial targetting.
The obvious solution is for the companies to ensure that under 18s data isn't used this way. I will certainly start signing up to all services as a 16 year old.
I don't agree with that statement for "every teenage kid ever". Most kids appreciate separation from adult attention and accompanying concerns, responsibilities, passions, conflicts...
When a boundary is set at 18, its true that many youths approaching that age will look with great interest beyond it. But child friendly networks are important and valuable to children, while they can be children.
I misread this as comparing burning 2,400 gallons of kerosene versus burning 10,000 Americans and was becoming very concerned about where you are getting you data.
What do you mean? Al Gore made an entire movie about climate change and Leo Di Caprio talked about climate change in his Oscar acceptance speech. GP is right about that.
