Hacker News
points by augment_me 2 days ago | 0 comments
I think that this was true pre-attention economy. If you look at security incidents and other prod issues, they rarely move the needle today. I work at a hyperscalar and we have been shipping 40% more bugs to prod since 2023 year-to-year, yet user growth and revenue is up about 25% similarly due to more features and more ads.

I think that the whole premise of that failure affects things is based on a older model. You kind of assume that:

1) users are able to easily gain information about alternatives. We have seen that since LLMs replaced search engines, we have much less churn.

2) users are not behaviorally addicted/pushed into patterns. We have patterns that utilize users to keep using the app by exploiting their cognitive weaknesses

3) users have the mental fortitude and stamina to learn new tools instead of accepting flaws in the one they are used to

Some failures and bugs in prod don't matters as much

[–] taurath 2 days ago
Almost the entire structure of software oriented companies, and why devs are expensive, are to prevent these sorts of errors. That job has gotten harder, and in some places impossible as management forces more trust on LLMs and reduces the capacity of devs to look. This is less of a problem in existing products in production and existing cultures - revenue is protected. Eventually those structures break down, as does the user perception of quality. Once the brands have taken enough knocks, it accelerates.
[–] matkoniecz 2 days ago
>We have patterns that utilize users to keep using the app by exploiting their cognitive weaknesses

I hope you are aware that you are outright evil. I also hope that you will manage to stop justifying it as acceptable.

[–] pona-a 2 days ago
HN is one of the few sites where someone can launch into an actual villain monologue, the kind you'd read in leaked corporate emails, and receive approximately no negative reaction.

If this is the face of our industry, that might explain a lot of things...

[–] augment_me 2 days ago
You can take the right path and in the end no-one wants to use your product because it's not as engaging.

Instagram tried to take the "good" path in 2014 and lost 90% market share to TikTok who attentionmaxxed things. Then they had to take the exploitative path to claw back users.

As long as it's not regulated for everyone at the same time, you need to do this for survival of your product.

[–] unsui 2 days ago
maybe that product doesn't deserve to survive.

"Hmmm, but if I cap the Torment Nexus, the competing Torment Core will win out, we can't have that!"

[–] augment_me 2 days ago
It's more like it doesn't matter if you sell the most organic, free range, ethically sourced, nutritious, tasty ice cream if your competition is allowed to put cocaine in theirs and get all your customers.

TikTok would survive and do just fine even if Instagram decided to cede the market to them

I am afraid there is a demand for the torment nexus, and until govt steps in, you're out of luck and behavioural surplus is there for the taking by any means.

[–] geye1234 2 days ago
"It's ok that I devote my career to preying on people's mental weaknesses and getting them addicted, because the government isn't regulating it."

I think I'd need to take a zofran if I met you IRL.

[–] matkoniecz 1 day ago
I am well aware that being more evil can be profitable.

Being evil for no gain whatsoever is quite extreme absurdity, though it also happens to some.

[–] unsui 2 days ago
Agreed.

The real alignment issue isn't in the challenges getting AI to align to human values.

It's in humans understanding what is worth aligning to.

"He chose... poorly."

[–] geye1234 2 days ago
Many bad things that people do stem from weakness or inner pain. So it's helpful to be reminded from time to time that some people deliberately, thoughtfully, calmly and systematically devote their lives to harming other human beings -- that is, to evil. We should be grateful to augment_me for this reminder.
[–] trjordan 2 days ago
I agree that not all failures matter (most don't, in fact). On the other end of the spectrum, I know of a bunch of seed/series A startups that basically operate under a model where they ship everything and fix the stuff people complain about. As long as you do that fast enough, the median user experience is pretty good, because only the first n% actually see the problem before a fix is live.

I'll go out on a limb and guess that at a hyperscaler, shipping a bug to prod means hitting canary or 1% of traffic. Seems fine!

I think my point still stands, even as the shape of failures shift. There's certain ones that still hurt (data corruption, exploited security holes, etc.) because they're hard to notice. It might even be that the primary goal of ownership is to develop intuition about where those failures are likely to happen.

[–] ahartmetz 2 days ago
Wait, how do working at a hyperscaler (that's a datacenter provider) and using an addictive app for uhm retention go together? I imagine a gamified AWS provisioning and billing app, but surely that's not it?
[–] ChrisLTD 2 days ago
There are prod issues, then there are issues that cost me money as a customer.
[–] Arkada 2 days ago
This very thing. "Shipment of 40% more bugs and fixing only in response to user complaints" could be done in social streams or advertising tech, but not in finance and trading where margin for errors is close to zero.

A small bug implemented by an agent in the way R-multiples, stop loss distance, or P&L heatmaps are computed will never be complained about by the user—either he will trade incorrectly and lose his money, or see that single off-by-one difference compared to exchange ledger and churn forever.