I strongly believe A/B testing users without their knowledge and enthusiastic consent is unethical. If you don't have enough confidence in your changes to make them carte blanche, then don't make them at all. Users don't want their shit changing all the time.
Hmmm, I am curious about which aspect of this you find unethical.
Is it unethical to do phased rollouts (where a small percentage get the new version) as a way to do safe deploys? If the issue is that two users making requests at the same time might see different things, then this would also be unethical? Yet, these sorts of phases rollouts is the best way to release something safely. When I worked at a large CDN with 50,000 servers around the world, we ALWAYS did phased releases, to make sure we didn't take down everything all at once, and to make sure we caught any performance regressions right away.
Is your issue that the user might be getting a version that won't stick around? That seems always the case, whether you do A/B or not. You might rollback if there is an issue, and you will certainly roll forward at some point, meaning users will get a new version at some point.
Would it be an issue if the A/B test was temporal? Like all users got one version today, and a different version tomorrow?
I guess I am just confused by this statement:
> If you don't have enough confidence in your changes to make them carte blanche, then don't make them at all.
This seems contrary to so many other complaints we see all the time, that companies push changes out without taking into account what users actually want. So, do we want companies that push out changes with no user feedback because they are confident that they know what users want, or do we want companies that get feedback from users on whether new changes are helping or hurting.
How about actually asking the users instead of experimenting on them?
> or do we want companies that get feedback from users on whether new changes are helping or hurting.
You don't get that feedback. The feedback you get is whether some telemetry KPI goes up or down. That's not the same as actual utility for the user.
Asking users for feedback is notoriously bad at generating good feedback. Most people don't respond, and those that do ask for things they don't actually want, or are only wanted by very few people.
I've heard we have this amazing new technology now that can understand natural language and automatically convert it into structured data if we ask it to. Maybe we could use that to ask people at scale now.
> and those that do ask for things they don't actually want, or are only wanted by very few people.
But you can’t build a business on “wants” that people don’t act on.
If everybody says they want foo and don’t want bar, but when you make foo they don’t buy any but will buy a lot of bar, then are you “failing to provide what people want” if you just make bar?
Obviously phased rollouts are fine and even necessary like you said. That’s not really “experimenting on people”, it’s experimenting on the network/system.
I constantly experiment on users in my work. It’s all around extracting the most money you possibly can. Meanwhile we have mountains of UX interview material where people tell us exactly what’s wrong with our site, and we don’t implement any of it lol.
Profits are up though! In a big way! And our users continue to hate us more and more.
> This seems contrary to so many other complaints we see all the time, that companies push changes out without taking into account what users actually want
Are you not aware how unpopular practically all recent changes on YT are among its users? Almost none of the changes done on YT in the last 5+ years would have happened if they took into account what users & creators want. So how exactly does telemetry and A/B testing help when it either tells them the opposite of reality or they simply interpret the data however they like anyway?
I am not saying you are wrong, but how are you so sure that you know what the average user and creator wants? There are millions of youtube users and creators who aren't participating in whatever forum you are basing your information on. Maybe the people you hear complaining are a vocal minority.
It could be that YT is just making everything worse for everyone, but I also know they have data that you and I don't have on how people actually use their product. I don't think we can assume they are just bad at making a product just because all the people we talk to agree with us that it is bad.
YouTube's goals are not aligned with what is best for the majority of users. They are optimizing for maximum time spent watching ads, hence they are working against user interests.
If I paid for a copy of Windows 95, I'm expecting Windows 95 in a box.
When I have two free hours to turn on the XBOX for the first time in half a year, I want it to turn on right away and play my game. I don't want the box I paid for and have been looking at to figure that it needs an OS update, and a game update, and that the game should now be slower and glitchier than it was the last time I played it.
When I play music on my phone in my car, I don't want to find out that the "Start Mix" button moved, or that showing the upcoming playlist now takes one more swipe, or that the UI won't load because YouTube Music doesn't cache it's UI anymore and when you have a cell network reporting 1 bar but it's actually zero bars, you get a spinner for ten minutes.
The six CD changer in my dashboard has worked exactly the same way since 2006, the discs play when the key turns on, and nothing moves. There's no engagement to be had other than "my music plays when I turn on the car in my driveway which also has spotty cell service". There isn't a KPI to be measured, a PM to be promoted, or anything. It's just a car radio.
Most consumer goods are solved problems. Nothing's changed since 2015. Even tech from 2015 is just a convergence of 2005 tech, like MP3 players, digital cameras, and Blackberries. People don't have radically different problems to solve in their day to day lives. People take pictures, share them, do email and group chat, voice calls, read the news, watch TV, pay for parking, do some banking. Watch a 90s TV show and all of those activites required different physical places and tactile goods. (Hell, that's why screens in Android are called *Activities*.).
When I pay for a product, I expect to be paying for a finished product, not some psychological experiment that's someone else's promo packet.
Most of the websites people are talking about here are free, they aren't things you paid for, so the argument that when you pay for a product you should expect something doesn't really apply.
OkayPhysicist · · focus · HN ↗
cortesoft · · focus · HN ↗
Is it unethical to do phased rollouts (where a small percentage get the new version) as a way to do safe deploys? If the issue is that two users making requests at the same time might see different things, then this would also be unethical? Yet, these sorts of phases rollouts is the best way to release something safely. When I worked at a large CDN with 50,000 servers around the world, we ALWAYS did phased releases, to make sure we didn't take down everything all at once, and to make sure we caught any performance regressions right away.
Is your issue that the user might be getting a version that won't stick around? That seems always the case, whether you do A/B or not. You might rollback if there is an issue, and you will certainly roll forward at some point, meaning users will get a new version at some point.
Would it be an issue if the A/B test was temporal? Like all users got one version today, and a different version tomorrow?
I guess I am just confused by this statement:
> If you don't have enough confidence in your changes to make them carte blanche, then don't make them at all.
This seems contrary to so many other complaints we see all the time, that companies push changes out without taking into account what users actually want. So, do we want companies that push out changes with no user feedback because they are confident that they know what users want, or do we want companies that get feedback from users on whether new changes are helping or hurting.
xg15 · · focus · HN ↗
> or do we want companies that get feedback from users on whether new changes are helping or hurting.
You don't get that feedback. The feedback you get is whether some telemetry KPI goes up or down. That's not the same as actual utility for the user.
cortesoft · · focus · HN ↗
xg15 · · focus · HN ↗
> and those that do ask for things they don't actually want, or are only wanted by very few people.
Then how do you know what people actually want?
Joker_vD · · focus · HN ↗
isabelc · · focus · HN ↗
cortesoft · · focus · HN ↗
If everybody says they want foo and don’t want bar, but when you make foo they don’t buy any but will buy a lot of bar, then are you “failing to provide what people want” if you just make bar?
fragmede · · focus · HN ↗
-(not) Henry Ford
carljungslabtek · · focus · HN ↗
I constantly experiment on users in my work. It’s all around extracting the most money you possibly can. Meanwhile we have mountains of UX interview material where people tell us exactly what’s wrong with our site, and we don’t implement any of it lol.
Profits are up though! In a big way! And our users continue to hate us more and more.
dgently7 · · focus · HN ↗
alpaca128 · · focus · HN ↗
Are you not aware how unpopular practically all recent changes on YT are among its users? Almost none of the changes done on YT in the last 5+ years would have happened if they took into account what users & creators want. So how exactly does telemetry and A/B testing help when it either tells them the opposite of reality or they simply interpret the data however they like anyway?
cortesoft · · focus · HN ↗
It could be that YT is just making everything worse for everyone, but I also know they have data that you and I don't have on how people actually use their product. I don't think we can assume they are just bad at making a product just because all the people we talk to agree with us that it is bad.
alpaca128 · · focus · HN ↗
linster · · focus · HN ↗
When I have two free hours to turn on the XBOX for the first time in half a year, I want it to turn on right away and play my game. I don't want the box I paid for and have been looking at to figure that it needs an OS update, and a game update, and that the game should now be slower and glitchier than it was the last time I played it.
When I play music on my phone in my car, I don't want to find out that the "Start Mix" button moved, or that showing the upcoming playlist now takes one more swipe, or that the UI won't load because YouTube Music doesn't cache it's UI anymore and when you have a cell network reporting 1 bar but it's actually zero bars, you get a spinner for ten minutes.
The six CD changer in my dashboard has worked exactly the same way since 2006, the discs play when the key turns on, and nothing moves. There's no engagement to be had other than "my music plays when I turn on the car in my driveway which also has spotty cell service". There isn't a KPI to be measured, a PM to be promoted, or anything. It's just a car radio.
Most consumer goods are solved problems. Nothing's changed since 2015. Even tech from 2015 is just a convergence of 2005 tech, like MP3 players, digital cameras, and Blackberries. People don't have radically different problems to solve in their day to day lives. People take pictures, share them, do email and group chat, voice calls, read the news, watch TV, pay for parking, do some banking. Watch a 90s TV show and all of those activites required different physical places and tactile goods. (Hell, that's why screens in Android are called *Activities*.).
When I pay for a product, I expect to be paying for a finished product, not some psychological experiment that's someone else's promo packet.
cortesoft · · focus · HN ↗
spaqin · · focus · HN ↗
tjpnz · · focus · HN ↗