The problem with several of these is that most humans are in denial.
- They will absolutely yell at their phone "YES, THIS TIME WAS WELL-SPENT!" even after an absolutely soul-crushing political "discussion" session that can only be equated to a real-life screaming contest with a bunch of others. And even with them feeling emotionally drained, angry and tired, they'll still say the time was well-spent.
You know, sunk cost fallacy and all. The "maximum engagement" industry knows all these phenomena very well and they have weaponized them at least a decade ago, if not more.
- "Finite" feeds. They are still infinite but now have page numbers. Sure that might help a little but but I don't think it will make an impact. Plus "Page #7" means nothing; after 10-20 posts from people in your feed it moves to "Page #8" so what's the point?
- Disabling Autoplay is related to the first one -- people are in denial. They'll just nervously tap on the play button. Almost nothing at all will change.
- Hiding certain sections like "Watch Now" is NEVER going to happen. Don't be delusional. That's the way the companies want to further engage you. They'll stop literally everything else before that.
- Greyscale is a cool idea. Didn't know about the reduced engagement with it. I'll try it out!
- Batched notifications are a good idea. Let's go even further: I want to fine-tune which notifications I can receive. I regularly need the notifications from my grocery app (when my wife makes changes to it) but I absolutely don't care about those "17 fantastic paleo meals for you to try today!", thank you very much. This has to stop.
- Showing time spent might increase accountability, or it might not. I know it could have helped me 5 years ago but I also know quite a lot of people who scream at their friends "dude, I've been 10 hours on Twitter today, how cool is that!" so that one is likely to be a hit or miss. I can see how it could help some.
- If you tell somebody that they are "mindlessly browsing" they'll uninstall your software the same minute. Don't. There has to be other ways. Even corny stuff like "are you happy how you spent the last hour?" would work better.
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I applaud Apple's efforts but as usual, they are waaaaaaaaay too slow and too gradual. The axe has to fall harder and quicker.
Just an example. Open App Store on your iPhone. Just two days ago I had the same dumb "Gaming Essentials" section there that seems to appear fairly regularly, containing big earners like Fortnite, CoD, Candy Crush and several others. Of course Apple wants people to pick up these on a regular basis -- microtransactions lead to income for them as well.
- They will absolutely yell at their phone "YES, THIS TIME WAS WELL-SPENT!" even after an absolutely soul-crushing political "discussion" session that can only be equated to a real-life screaming contest with a bunch of others. And even with them feeling emotionally drained, angry and tired, they'll still say the time was well-spent.
You know, sunk cost fallacy and all. The "maximum engagement" industry knows all these phenomena very well and they have weaponized them at least a decade ago, if not more.
- "Finite" feeds. They are still infinite but now have page numbers. Sure that might help a little but but I don't think it will make an impact. Plus "Page #7" means nothing; after 10-20 posts from people in your feed it moves to "Page #8" so what's the point?
- Disabling Autoplay is related to the first one -- people are in denial. They'll just nervously tap on the play button. Almost nothing at all will change.
- Hiding certain sections like "Watch Now" is NEVER going to happen. Don't be delusional. That's the way the companies want to further engage you. They'll stop literally everything else before that.
- Greyscale is a cool idea. Didn't know about the reduced engagement with it. I'll try it out!
- Batched notifications are a good idea. Let's go even further: I want to fine-tune which notifications I can receive. I regularly need the notifications from my grocery app (when my wife makes changes to it) but I absolutely don't care about those "17 fantastic paleo meals for you to try today!", thank you very much. This has to stop.
- Showing time spent might increase accountability, or it might not. I know it could have helped me 5 years ago but I also know quite a lot of people who scream at their friends "dude, I've been 10 hours on Twitter today, how cool is that!" so that one is likely to be a hit or miss. I can see how it could help some.
- If you tell somebody that they are "mindlessly browsing" they'll uninstall your software the same minute. Don't. There has to be other ways. Even corny stuff like "are you happy how you spent the last hour?" would work better.
---
I applaud Apple's efforts but as usual, they are waaaaaaaaay too slow and too gradual. The axe has to fall harder and quicker.
Just an example. Open App Store on your iPhone. Just two days ago I had the same dumb "Gaming Essentials" section there that seems to appear fairly regularly, containing big earners like Fortnite, CoD, Candy Crush and several others. Of course Apple wants people to pick up these on a regular basis -- microtransactions lead to income for them as well.