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.
> 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.
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.
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 ↗