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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.
"Smart". I don't think you understand what it means.
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.
Dumb mail, dumb tvs and dumb software. There is a probably a billion dollars to be made from dumbware.
If it ain't broke don't fix it. How hard is this to understand?
Gmail proves that people hate being spied on. These same people do not hate Google until something draws their attention to the fact that they are being spied on. Face it folks, Microsoft is no longer the biggest threat to your digitial rights. Now, Google, Apple and Facebook are, and of those, Google is the worst threat even if not the most visible violator.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
While the world waits for real AI, there is a lot of AS (artificial stupidity). Systems that are too dumb to do what their designers want and instead are just annoying. Email helper apps tend to be like that. I hate when my phone email app tells me that it thinks its found an appointment and pops up a window to enter it. Its just annoying, wastes time and interrupts what I am doing.
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.
Gmail tags every damn email with 'Update' except they're typically not, it's just obsessed and can't leave my email alone, it's got to stick some stupid tag on it. Nothing smart about it.
I get emails I tag with 'gift' they're all very similar, does gmail do me a favour and tag the very similar emails with 'gift'? No, because it's not in the slightest bit smart.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
People hate smart suggestions because AI isn't really there yet. AI can determine what some Silicon Valley developer thinks is important, but what it needs to do is anticipate what the USER thinks is important. I suspect it will be a long time until AI can actually understand how any human things and what any human needs. After all, it isn't even aware of what it is, how is is supposed to understand what the user is?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
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
... a goddam clock on my washing machine.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Uhhh... Did you not know that you can easily change this?
Why should I? Why should I have looked a the three dots next to news feed instead of one of the MANY icons at the top including account config where presumably all configuration would be located?
It is nice to know that and I thank you for pointing it out, but why on earth is that not the default behavior? That is one of the least discoverable settings I've seen in a long time...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
gmail did not support filtering into categories, instead they wanted me to use tags. Tags flat out do not fit my workflow, so I setup Thunderbird to grab my gmail mail to my laptop and sort the damned mail like $diety(and the spam gods) decreed.
I have no idea what Smart Suggestions are and don't really care, I haven't used the gmail web interface since the last time I got a new laptop and had to set it up.
I find that predictable behaviour is more convenient than smart. Case in point: the bash-completion package, it knows which arguments to a command are subcommands rather than filenames, and what filenames you don't care enough. It's right 95% of the time. But it's that 5% that's infuriating: a subcommand that was added only recently, a .tar.zst file not recognized as a tarball (zstd is awesome!), assuming that you want btrfs fi def only directories but not files (VM images anyone?), mysteriously skipping directories with a @ in name, etc.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Mod parent up. This is crucial for any productive activity. Predictable behavior is important. Configurable predictable behavior is even better, but we skip "configurable" if we must choose.
Smart help is only helpful if it is really smart, that is - sentient, i.e. another person.
Because if a person does something you don't like you tell them, and they understand what you said, and they remember and they are effectively infinitely flexible and adaptable.
Attributes that none of FB's algorithms possess.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
I find that predictable behaviour is more convenient than smart.
Yep. Few things annoy me more than people trying to second-guess me (and often getting it wrong). It's even more annoying when software tries to do it (and never gets it right).
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I have 12 items in my inbox, all of them are items I need to address at some point. Every email has been read.
All prior emails have either been deleted or moved to other folders. Not all are read, but all have been taken care of.
I don't need Google telling me what to do with my emails or suggesting canned replies. The spam filter is helpful, but I could survive without that too because I use another email address I rarely monitor to sign up for anything on the internet.
Taking appropriate precautions about where one uses their email and maintaining a little self-discipline goes a long way.
It's like a self-driving car. I don't need a self-driving car. But, I do appreciate some of the features they are developing and as long as I can choose which ones I want to use and when I'm OK with that.
I think having your software or car do too much for you contributes to the dumbing down of society. Just like depending on GPS impacts one's ability to navigate without it.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.