JULY 2023 IN
RICK ASTER’S WORLD
The results of experiments conducted by online platforms in recent weeks suggest that it is still human nature to resist being controlled.
An experiment on YouTube was to lock the screen when displaying an advertising video that was accompanied by text and links to the advertiser. The hope was that by preventing users from closing the pane that conained the link to the advertiser, more users would click those links.
As you can probably guess, this experiment lasted only a few weeks. Faced with losing all control over their phone screen for the duration of an advertisment, users were many times more likely to skip the add or close the application. The result was a drastic decline in advertising impressions — and the loss of some viewers who left with no sign of coming back.
An experiment on Twitter led to a similar result, but in a more intriguing fashion. Twitter imposed strict per-user daily data limits that limited a user toa few minutes of reading per day. The hape apparently was that limiting users to reading a few hundred poss the users would pay more attention to the advertising posts. This sounds like it make sense. If you can suddenly load only 200 posts of content and 200 of advertisements, maybe you will start to pay attention to the advertisements after you have read the 200 posts of content. If 200 sounds like a large number, remember that most posts on Twitter are as short as 20 words. Avid Twitter users expected to scroll through thousands of posts andpause for the ones that showed something interesting.
The first sign that this experiment had failed was that users were reporting that Twitter was offline. Maybe the error messages could have been better written to avoiding creating that impression.
Millions of users gave up on Twitter — deleted their accounts, deleted the app, or simply went to look for content on a platform that would let them read for more than five minutes. Users have been leaving Twitter in droves since last year, so for that trend ton continue was not a surprise.
The surprising change was that some users adapted to the new data limits. They reduced their time on the platform so that they stopepd seeing the new error messages. If the platform would allow them only five minutes per day, they would stop after three minutes so that they would not scroll far enough to get to the error messages.
It was an unconscious adaptation. They were making this shift without realizing they were doing it. They could maintain the pretense that they were not in the new Twitter jail if they did not scroll far enough to see the metaphorical prison bars.
It was only the illusion of autonomy. Twitter was still controlling them and had forced them to reduce their data consumption, but as long as they didn’t see the limits on a given day, they could pretend that the limits did not exist.
The advertising experiment failed on multiple levels. There was no substantial group of users that felt compelled to study the advertising posts.
The lesson from both experiments is that it is not easy to force users to suffer through content they do not want to see. Regardless of the steps that an online platform might take to control a user’s attention, there is always a way for a human to withdraw their attention from something. The ultimate rejection of an online platform in the current Internet regime is for the user to close the application that connects them to the platform. These latest experiments, like many before them, show that users won’t hesitate to close an application if that is what it comes to. Platforms will have to look for more subtle ways of directing users’ attention that don’t push users into making the ultimate escape.
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