Actually yeah. The stuff we're discussing here matters. The behavior of developers is being shaped by these designs in absolutely harmful ways. I would know, I've been down that rabbit hole myself with video games and other "gamefied" apps.

Look at the article:

> We find that the unannounced removal of daily activity streak counters from the user interface (from user profile pages) was followed by significant changes in behavior.

> Long-running streaks of activity were abandoned and became less common.

> Weekend activity decreased and days in which developers made a single contribution became less common.

> Focusing on a set of software developers that were publicly pursuing a goal to make contributions for 100 days in a row, we find that some of these developers abandon this quest following the removal of the public streak counter.

Look at this bullshit. People doing work just to maintain their streaks. People making literally one contribution just to keep it up. That's fucked up and needs to be fixed. Nobody deserves this operant conditioning stuff.