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Gmail Proves That Some People Hate Smart Suggestions (techcrunch.com)
Citing a number of complaints following Google's Gmail makeover, TechCrunch's Romain Dillet makes the case for why some users don't want smart suggestions in the email service: There's a reason why Gmail lets you disable all the smart features. Some users don't want smart categories, important emails first and smart reply suggestions. Arguably, the only smart feature everyone needs is the spam filter. A pure chronological feed of your email messages is incredibly valuable as well. That's why many Instagram users are still asking for a chronological feed. Sure, algorithmic feeds can lead to more engagement and improved productivity. Maybe Google conducted some tests and concluded that you end up answering more emails if you let Gmail do its thing. But you may want to judge the value of each email without an algorithmic ranking.
VCs could spot the next big thing without any bias. Journalists could pay attention to young and scrappy startups as much as the new electric scooter startup in San Francisco. Universities could give a grant to students with unconventional applications. The HR department of your company could look at all applications without following Google's order.
VCs could spot the next big thing without any bias. Journalists could pay attention to young and scrappy startups as much as the new electric scooter startup in San Francisco. Universities could give a grant to students with unconventional applications. The HR department of your company could look at all applications without following Google's order.
I haven't used FB in years, but when I used it, I found it extremely annoying with how it would try to be smart about how to order my timeline, rather than just putting things in chronological order.
I think such a system would be especially bad with email, because there's a lot of emails I get that are important, but all the necessary details are in the subject. Thus, I never actually open them, which would lead such a system to incorrectly believe that such emails are not important to me.
Google may want to optimize for engagement or whatever, but I don't.
I want to see the videos I want to see, and then I want to go do something else.
Google wants you to keep watching videos, clicking emails, or whatever else all day.
This is why they keep suggesting random videos I don't want to watch.
Just because I watch one trump video doesn't mean I want to spend all day watching rachel madcow, jon oliver, and stephen colbert ranting and raving about him.
I haven't used FB in years, but when I used it, I found it extremely annoying with how it would try to be smart about how to order my timeline,
Oh it still does that.
The worst part about that for me is that what it considers smart now, changes from second to second It seems.
In in effect what would happen is I would see two interesting things on my timeline, click one to read it, go back and... timeline is totally different, no way to find the other thing I wanted to visit.
So frustrating.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
'And only one for birthday presents, you know. There's glory for you!'
'I don't know what you mean by "glory",' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't — till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument",' Alice objected.
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'
Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
The original was the copy machine that after a jam would insist that you "remove the original" without the ability to sense that there was no original sheet on the copier.
Second-guessing systems go back further than this. Elevators that would automatically go to the ground floor unless you pushed a button, jukeboxes with a mechanical memory that would pick the song-before-the-last (thus if no-one inserted a coin and made a choice, they would be stuck alternating between two irritating songs, wearing the records out), but the oldest are likely bibles, where the page width varied slightly by design, so by rifling you would more often end up at popular passages.