“User engagement” is code for “addiction”

Re:“User engagement” is code for “addiction” by gnicholas on Thursday March 04, 2021 @06:57PM (#26350298)

It’s not just normal people who are outgunned — I am tech-savvy and have had an iPhone since the day they were released. I know how to modify notification settings, but there’s nothing I can do preemptively when can simply Twitter add a new category of notifications, as they did the other day. I had to go into the notification settings within the app and disable this new category, and then do it again for each of the three accounts on my phone.

Similarly, Lyft makes it nearly impossible to figure out where to turn off the coupon notifications. And don’t get me started on LinkedIn...

This isn’t just an issue for normal people. It’s also time-consuming and troublesome for anyone short of the dev who built the dark pattern.

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Re:“User engagement” is code for “addiction” by guntars on Thursday March 04, 2021 @11:04PM (#26352534)

Why would you have notifications turned on for Twitter? Just turn them off. The trick is to intentionally go on social media and waste time, instead of being pulled in by a notification.

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Re:“User engagement” is code for “addiction” by gnicholas on Thursday March 04, 2021 @11:48PM (#26352849)

I use Twitter for my startup and want to get mention and retweet notifications. I turn off all others, and as a result I get only a handful of notifications per week.

What annoys me is new categories of notifications that Twitter turns on by default, even for users who have disabled all of these novel/generic/impersonal notification types.

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Re:“User engagement” is code for “addiction” by smichel17 on Friday March 05, 2021 @08:58AM (#26356897)

You're struggling against the unbalanced power dynamic that proprietary software creates between developers and users.

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