"California has empowered them in peculiar and powerful ways"
Fun example of this is John Wayne airport in Orange County pilots do a special takooff involving cutting power to engines to reduce noise for Newport Beach neighborhood below dating back to a lawsuit from the 80s.
I have some mildly related personal experience as well. The glider club I belong to started getting noise complaints from people living near the airport. On a busy day, our tow plane might make 25 takeoffs. We often took the same path every time, repeatedly annoying the same people. We started varying our routes and also replaced the propellor with a quieter one and everybody was happy.
Seems unreasonable to me, who's to say which neighborhood deserves more or less noise pollution? Oh right, economic status and ability to file massive lawsuits. If that takeoff method was all around better they would just do it everywhere, Congress outlawed other airports from doing the same in 1990
"In 1990, Congress, fearing that many localities could eventually hamstring the growth of aviation by implementing their own patchwork of noise restrictions, passed the Airport Noise and Capacity Act which outlawed curfews at airports. John Wayne was grandfathered in, however, due to the original lawsuit being filed in 1985."
This is a narrative the game industry has been successfully pushing through organized PR campaigns and astroturfing online discussions, of course parents share some responsibility but this angle is disingenuous and lets publishers off the hook too easily. I wouldn't beat yourself up too much here you're aware of the situation and actively involved in fixing it.
> Game shops are exploiting advanced psychological tactics to turn young generation into addicts.
This + the instantly available secondary market which allows you to gamble with your digital goods/currency is the major difference between this and it's predecessor: baseball/pokemon/magic the gathering card packs.
Belgium/EU are making strong moves on this but very doubtful we'll see any movement in the US anytime soon, a New Hampshire senator dared to question the situation and was blasted by an aggressive letter from the ESRB claiming loot boxes are not at all gambling.
The games industry is uniquely positioned to allow for this kind of abuse because the primary targets (marks) are unorganized young children that don't know any better. Most games are just a vessel for the 'marketplace' which is an online casino for kids. The current state of gaming is shocking, regulation is desperately needed.
>This is a narrative the game industry has been successfully pushing through organized PR campaigns and astroturfing online discussions, of course parents share some responsibility but this angle is disingenuous and lets publishers off the hook too easily. I wouldn't beat yourself up too much here you're aware of the situation and actively involved in fixing it.
It is almost entirely the parents' fault. Parents are the ones that have to raise their children, especially when the parents are letting the kid play a game that's meant for somebody 4+ years older.
>This + the instantly available secondary market which allows you to gamble with your digital goods/currency is the major difference between this and it's predecessor: baseball/pokemon/magic the gathering card packs.
But those exact same things happened with those games too. The reason those card games weren't so popular was that they weren't as fun and they were prohibitively expensive.
>Belgium/EU are making strong moves on this but very doubtful we'll see any movement in the US anytime soon, a New Hampshire senator dared to question the situation and was blasted by an aggressive letter from the ESRB claiming loot boxes are not at all gambling.
The EU might agree, but that's because the EU makes all kinds of decisions to curb the freedom of its citizens. I say this as a European. And the reason why the ESRB told that senator that lootboxes are not gambling is because they do not fall under the legal definition of gambling.
>Most games are just a vessel for the 'marketplace' which is an online casino for kids. The current state of gaming is shocking, regulation is desperately needed.
I find it ironic that you're asking for regulation on a topic you seem to be completely ignorant of. Most games do not even have a marketplace. What's shocking about gaming is the amount of misinformation floating around. I guess this is our generation's "video games cause violence."
>It is almost entirely the parents' fault. Parents are the ones that have to raise their children, especially when the parents are letting the kid play a game that's meant for somebody 4+ years older.
That just isn't true. Game publishers and developers these days use psychological tricks to keep people engaged and paying money into them.
>The EU might agree, but that's because the EU makes all kinds of decisions to curb the freedom of its citizens. I say this as a European. And the reason why the ESRB told that senator that lootboxes are not gambling is because they do not fall under the legal definition of gambling.
Lootboxes are gambling no matter how you try to justify them. You pay money for the chance to win a prize with no guarantee you will. Protecting your citizens from predatory practices is not curbing the freedom of it's citizens.
>I find it ironic that you're asking for regulation on a topic you seem to be completely ignorant of. Most games do not even have a marketplace. What's shocking about gaming is the amount of misinformation floating around. I guess this is our generation's "video games cause violence."
There's 2 reasons games don't have marketplaces, neither are because these companies have a heart and want to stop gambling. One is that a marketplace requires trading of some kind. Trading can reduce their income on usually cosmetic items. Look at Overwatch, there's no marketplace because Activision Blizzard know they can make more money through just lootboxes because most people only want a skin for a specific character not a random chance to get something they probably don't want. The other reason is they don't want to be associated with "real gambling". Everyone's seen what's happened with Valve and the fire they've been coming under for just ignoring third party gambling sites for years. But they obviously don't care about the consumer when they're using the same tactics as slot machines to get them to spend as much money as possible.
>That just isn't true. Game publishers and developers these days use psychological tricks to keep people engaged and paying money into them.
"Psychological tricks."
Do you use that term to describe your restaurant experience as well? "The cook used psychological tricks to make the food more delicious."
People have simply figured out what others like and made games more in line with that. Yes, they are psychological tricks, but almost everything humans create employ psychological tricks of some kind to make the experience better.
>Lootboxes are gambling no matter how you try to justify them.
Not according to the law.
>You pay money for the chance to win a prize with no guarantee you will.
There is a guarantee that you will get something every time.
>There's 2 reasons games don't have marketplaces, neither are because these companies have a heart and want to stop gambling.
A business is not supposed to "have a heart." It makes absolutely no sense to expect that. A free market doesn't actually work if you expect people "to have a heart."
The reason why most games don't have marketplaces is that most games do not have a large amount of players or it does not fit into the theme of the game. It simply is not worth the effort to implement such a system for most games.
>But they obviously don't care about the consumer when they're using the same tactics as slot machines to get them to spend as much money as possible.
Do you know what else uses the same tactics as slot machines? Almost everything that involves people. Humans seem to enjoy getting rewarded in a semi-random manner more than consistently. This even includes people interacting with one another. We grow more attached to people who sometimes treat us coldly than people who always treat us nicely.
I don't know if you use these terms on purpose or if it's simply an accident, but the way you refer to things such as "just like slot machines" or "this is gambling because xyz simplification" shows that you're trying to evoke an emotional reaction to paint something in a negative light. Those types of arguments don't work when the other person isn't emotionally invested in the same values as you.
I loathe lootboxes. I think they're disgusting, but I also understand that this kind of demand for regulation will only hurt players. If other people don't like lootboxes as well, then the market will take care of it. If the market doesn't take care of it then it turns out that some people do like lootboxes. You can then have a niche for games that have and games that don't have lootboxes.
Why is this not allowed to be discussed here dang?
What's going on on reddit is something never before seen and has directly lead to the rise of extremism in the US. Every thread about reddit should be about this, nothing else matters in the context of what's going on here - on topic or not. How are more people not paying attention or maybe they are and OK with it, which is even scarier.
You've done the same to my comments about this exact issue in the past. You're denying visibility to an issue so much more important than some inc fluff piece, on the grounds of what - making YC funded companies look bad? Being off topic? Too political?
The admin team has shown a flagrant and criminally negligent disregard for the ethical and social impact of their platform which has lead directly to the loss of human life on more than one occasion, the rise of extremism and fascism but we're not allowed to talk about it here on any threads, why?
Right, but the topic here was Reddit’s actions with regards to certain subreddits, and why they can’t simply purge everybody that people wish they would.
It was also on-topic regarding what I replied to, so it was more than a little surprising to see it detached as off-topic. And I find it intellectually gratifying to analyze group dynamics.
Either way, it’s your site, your rules. There are better things to discuss.
It's flat untrue, too. You can hear audio latency nearly down to single-digit milliseconds. In fact, there's a fun recording trick where you duplicate a track, pan it hard left and the original hard right, and then delay one by 10ms. (They get heard as two separate parts even though they're completely identical.)
Yeah that's probably fine. Humans have some sync tolerance because speed of sound is so low. Something 15m away will have 44ms delay of the sound compared to the vision.
But there are other areas where tolerance matters more I think. Say you press a key and sound comes either after 5ms or after 50 ms. I think that would be noticeably different.
Interestingly, I use Bluetooth headphones with my TV and I have never noticed issues with audio/video sync. Have modern Bluetooth stacks reduced the problem or is the TV compensating for the latency by delaying the video?
"100ms" probably comes from the long distance telephony investigations into round-trip time. If I remember correctly, 100-ish ms RTT was when people would start to notice the delay, and conversations became very difficult above ~200 ms. As a result, a lot of telephony hardware tries to keep latencies under that limit.
The brain obviously notices far smaller latencies.
> “The F.T.C. has made enforcement of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act a high priority,” said Juliana Gruenwald, an agency spokeswoman.
> “These sophisticated tech companies are not policing themselves,” the New Mexico attorney general, Hector Balderas, said. “The children of this country ultimately pay the price.”
> “This is as much a black eye on the federal government as the tech space,” Mr. Balderas said. “I’m trying to get lawmakers at the federal level to wake up.”
This is like going after drug dealers for parking violations and calling a press conference to proudly brag about it. Game publishers are doing much worse stuff and you're making a big deal about going after them for tracking!?
To not even mention in passing loot boxes, really NYT? one of the most pervasive unethical rackets in modern tech targeting children, much worse than tracking because it causes real harm to individuals.
FTC: Feel free to exploit young underdeveloped brains to addict them to gambling for profit as long as you're not tracking them.
Whereas what you’re doing is sort of like going after drug dealers and someone else says, “But what about the murderers?!” In fact this is bad, it does violate the law, and it should be called out and punished. Gambling mechanics in games should be too, but part of the problem there is that the laws in most countries haven’t caught up to them yet. Meanwhile tracking children is actually against existing laws.
I also wish that the NYT and other outlets were more interested in covering the worse stuff you mentioned, but in no way is their covering of this other bad stuff anything less than a positive development.
No, This is like going after murderers for being late on their taxes. Call me a cynic/skeptic but I don't see cracking down on tracking that's ubiquitous in big tech (google, fb) on some small devs as a positive. This is a distraction and an attempt to by this DA get PR points for "cracking down on tech" for the next election.
> Feel free to exploit young underdeveloped brains to addict them to gambling for profit
Games are designed to keep you interested and engaged-- that's just what a game is. Children's games have included gambling since toys have existed (dreidel, jacks, marbles, to name a few). Children learn about the real world through play, and gambling is a part of that. Risks give benefits or consequences that are often unpredictable. I don't see the explicit benefit of excluding these gambles from children's games.
> Games are designed to keep you interested and engaged-- that's just what a game is. Children's games have included gambling since toys have existed (dreidel, jacks, marbles, to name a few).
You're not wrong, can also point to baseball cards, magic the gathering or pokemon cards. The key differences today are
1) Instant-availability of the secondary market and third party sites that allow you to gamble with virtual currency you've won.
2) Devs/Publishers hiring psychologists and cognitive behavior specialists to design these loot box experiences to release the perfect amount of dopamine to get users addicted, with frightening efficiency. In comparison your examples are extremely mild.
You could say it's the parents responsibility to educate and protect their children from these practices - but would you say the same about the tobacco industry advertising to children? For me this is the same addiction from profit motive the tobacco industry exploited for many years until they were rightfully regulated.
>Devs/Publishers hiring psychologists and cognitive behavior specialists to design these loot box experiences
Honestly, I think this happens in children's television programming more than in electronic games, and I can actually find sources for this if given an hour or two (I used to be very interested in the developments that took place towards psychology around the 60's). If you can provide sources for your claim I'd be more inclined to discuss this seriously, but as it stands it seems unlikely that a small, 5-employee company pushing racing games for children would hire psychologists and CB specialists to advise their games. I am not specifically talking about the example used in the article, but most such games are released by very small companies and independent devs. I think they rely on heuristics and statistics to tell them which games work and why, for sure, but that's just good design.
there "Instant-availability of the secondary market" you're just talking bullshit, there is no such thing, as per your second point so what? do you think pokemon cards people didn't hired "specialists" either? What are those design choices to make them addicted, is a box it opens and that's it. This kind of post is what I hate about NY, people thinking they are so smart, while having quite a narrow/naive/first world view.
As a content creator it's very quickly apparent the best route to driving views and subs is to push extreme/edgy content. Balanced content gets no engagement. It's really that simple, with the ADHD short attention span of the current gen of heavy media consumers (read: kids) you have to shock them/surprise them/make them laugh ~once every 5-6 seconds to keep them on the video. YouTube offers very detailed metrics on engagement and you can study the exact time where people lose interest/close the video.
Only massive established channels have the privilege of pushing non-edgy content as their audience is built in already, for anyone new it's shock value and hard-line extremism or your voice will be lost among the noise.
Yeah, but if you are shocking and edgy, is your voice preserved? Sure, people may watch but it's in one ear and out the other, a swell in the sea of noise.
I'm sure most youtubers don't care, but viewer engagement is not the same as being a notable voice.
Panda Express kicks this up a notch and has a little bell they ring whenever someone donates their change adding an element of social pressure/shame, super scummy
They are scummy in general. All the PEs near me stop cooking all their best entree items by 7PM on the theory that customers will accept whatever slop is left... yet they continue to offer all their items over mobile (they'll just happily tell you they "ran out" when you get there).
Panda Express is high up there in the list of nastiest fast food places. Pure garbage food. And as you probably know, they will gladly dump a fresh batch of Orange Chicken on top of a 3 hour old batch and so some portion of their entrees are kept on the hot plate for half a day. Nasty. What they do is criminal.
You should perhaps, never look at how food is prepared at any fast food location. At every food prep place I've worked, we only saw the big boss when they were running over to tell us to replace everything because they saw the health inspector. Usually they had the line manager telling us to replace nothing, and firing or reducing hours of employees who followed the posted food safety guides
I absolutely hate their charity solicitation. If I’m going to donate to anything, it’s going to be a charity of my own choice after a thorough vetting with no middlemen. Next time I go there, I’m tempted to request they round down my total instead.
Panda Express is an odd chain, perhaps even odder than Chick-Fil-A (which is closed on Sundays). They participate in Landmark Forum which is a retreat where you spend most of a weekend having some rowdy guy tell you what they think really matters in life. https://www.quora.com/Is-the-corporate-culture-of-Panda-Expr... Like Chick-Fil-A, their unusual beliefs and practices probably just makes the insiders prouder of the company.
If someone's going to make me uncomfortable, I'd stop going there. But if I really still wanted to go there, I'd work on a spiel about the charities I like and when they ask me to donate, I'd ask them to donate.
this is at the core of why the fabric of our society is unraveling. We're heading deeper in this direction with no signs of slowing down. Algorithms that optimize for engagement metrics amplify this.
why would anyone entertain let alone engage opposing viewpoints when it's much more comfortable to just retreat to a place with common similar beliefs. Make no mistake Hn is an echo chamber as well.
Tribalism has been a thing as long as human history has existed and 2 groups of apes both wanted the same banana tree. We have many ways of resolving inter-tribal conflicts, but some just aren't well translated to the internet - primarily because of the consequence free nature of throwing rocks at other tribes. This is changing though - people are moving to more, not less, moderated spaces and communities online. Anonymity only works when there are moderators.
People want to be in a place with common similar beliefs - this isn't a bad thing, its human nature. Its far safer to be around people you know don't like to eat people like you.
The main argument seems to be that because we're not having forced arguments and considerations in meatspace, mano-a-mano, we're not challenged enough. I'd argue we're extremely challenged nowadays, but most of the difficulty is in finding how to deal with the new stage upon with the game is set. Its like arguing that we've lost the ability to form up a cavalry line because of the airplane. You're right in a way, but its irrelevant. The game is changing, and everyone is scrambling to figure out what the new meta is.
> The main argument seems to be that because we're not having forced arguments and considerations in meatspace, mano-a-mano, we're not challenged enough.
In meatspace social pressure exists unlike on the internet. An example is racist/misogynist jokes are not acceptable in most IRL contexts (especially those that are being logged/recorded permanently as is the case on the majority of the modern web) whereas on the internet it's not only discouraged but it's actually a great way to build a following quickly.
The internet is fundamentally changing how we communicate, ingest news, and share information.
The argument is that before safe spaces and echo chambers online, individuals that aim to engage general public with their message in any meaningful context are forced to compromise their extreme views. In my view Alex Jones wouldn't be a nationally recognized name before the internet, at best he'd be able to get influence over 30 or so of his local conspiracy theorists. No publication would print his views, because of how large a portion of the population they would alienate and anger. I'd argue this pressure is a net positive and having it removed online is leading us down a dark path.
> In meatspace social pressure exists unlike on the internet.
That is my point and what is changing, as people figure out how to interact in the platform. In Oklahoma yesterday nearly all local news outlets reported on a group of adults threatening violence (or to have their children/grandchildren commit violence) on a 12 year old transgender girl. They did that on Facebook, and their names are out there along with their identities. People are moving towards more identifiable or at least moderated spaces, because frankly most people don’t want to interact on a platform that’s main feature is they allow anyone to say anything with no consequences.
Alex Jones may not exist if it weren’t for the internet, but the backlash to views like his is real as public spaces on the internet figure out how to deal with bad actors.
> why would anyone entertain let alone engage opposing viewpoints when it's much more comfortable to just retreat to a place with common similar beliefs. Make no mistake Hn is an echo chamber as well.
But in the original "community", you wouldn't actually be exposed to opposing viewpoints all that often either. You actively had to seek them out too. Ancestor comment pointed out that community was required for survival. Once survival and security is guaranteed, then you can start thinking about self-actualisation, which is a different kind of community.
> when it's much more comfortable to just retreat to a place with common similar beliefs
This is an age-old argument, but taking a new form. Of course people like just doing what's comfortable; we've just replaced the 5 hours of broadcast TV a day with 5 hours of mindless social media refreshing. It's only a minority that actively seek to challenge themselves.
Especially when 'engagement-optimising' algorithms realise that the best way to get views is to fan a flamewar by tossing pro-Skub and anti-Skub zealots into a virtual ant-jar and shaking it.
I'm not saying I have any evidence otherwise, but do you have a source for that?
I mean, "more comfortable to just retreat to a place with common similar beliefs" is a good theory. But it is hardly the only one I can think of. Off the top of my head I also have:
1) Wealth is being eroded by the response to the '08 crisis leaving known-bad cultures to thrive in the lending industry. Social fabric starts to unravel due to lack of wealth creation.
2) Academics have had a long history of being in tension with democratic ideals. Famously, right when they came up with the idea of 'academies' Socrates was executed by a jury trial. More recently, communism had strong support in academic circles of Europe. We've massively increased the exposure of people to the university culture in the last 1-2 generations. Maybe technocrat leanings are leaking out? Technocrats don't compromise well on social issues, they believe there is a best answer.
Basically, the problem might not be algorithms and search bubbles, even though this is a forum that knows a lot about algorithms and search bubbles.
I have no source these are just my thoughts and observations.
You bring up very good points.
> Technocrats don't compromise well on social issues, they believe there is a best answer.
You are absolutely correct. Algorithms and search bubbles are just symptoms not the disease. Elite untouchable tech giants with no oversight molding human thought and behavior to increase their bottom line and power with a 'move fast a break things' attitude in regards to the any social or ethical implications - that's the disease.
