this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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And this is precisely why they use an A/B architecture to implement these sorts of changes. "It's not happening on mine, must be in your setup." delays/prevents people from recognizing the bad behavior, and instead of them being called out on it or forced to behave properly, the users they abuse just give up and switch back to Chrome because it "works better", then the A/B lists are shuffled again and the process repeats.
Or, they could use an A/B architecture because it makes good design sense when you are dealing with a change that will impact millions/billions of people. But the conspiracy theory's sure are a lot more fun to wallow in I will admit.
"Conspiracy theory is sure are a lot more fun to wallow in". Did you miss the recent youtube adblock shenanigans? Do you think google is your friend? Are you aware discord is google adservices integrated? Are you under the impression google wouldn't do something like this to leverage more data from people using one of their sites? Are you unfamiliar with the recent and upcoming OTHER changes to make chrome less friendly? Do you know about google AMP? You're defending a corporation and not an individual here, really take time to consider what you're calling conspiracy theory is (the plural is theories)
A company doing shitty things does not mean everything you don't like that comes out of them is some mustache twirling villain plot. You should spend more time in the real world and less time in the Lemmy/Reddit echo chamber.
I hardly use social media. Maybe you should get a broader scope on the topic you're arguing - there's no moustache twirling going on, just the exact same corporate competition and data harvesting that HAS BEEN going on for decades now. Your take is "NUH UH".
I feel compelled to come back to this thread and eat my crow. Apparently they were doing it to fuck with people, just not Firefox people specifically,lol.
https://lemmy.world/post/8539705
Thank you for doing this. If more people owned up to their mistakes and corrected them, things would be a lot better.
Both could be true though.
They use an incremental rollout system for essentially every feature. Are you suggesting every feature of every product Google makes has some nefarious purpose?
What a wonderful example of a Fallacy of Division. It is true that A/B testing and incremental rollout are both used by Google for non-nefarious purposes, but that does not mean that every use is benign or innocent.
You made it sound like A/B testing us inherently shady. Just own up to it FFS.
I didn't, I specified an architecture that they use for a shady practice. It was a means for describing an activity, a shorthand to be used for greater clarity along with brevity. Your interpretations are outside of my control.
It would be no more me saying that Snapchat as a whole is shady to say that it is used to sell drugs, or a large variety of other similar statements.