This seems to be ignoring consent. I'd bet you if I went around asking people whether or not they realized their FB app experience was being consistently multivariate tested i'd be on the street a while before someone said yes.
This is FAR different from product testing, say in the hardware world, where you tell people you want them to come test a product, or in the design world where you show them various things and quiz them on their feelings. In these situations they all know they're being tested on.
So no, this isn't "the least" user hostile thing you can do. Doing things without content is basically the prerequisite for hostility here.
> Doing things without content is basically the prerequisite for hostility here.
Do you understand how often websites change without asking the user? Websites are constantly being updated, algorithms tweaked, features being added and taken away. You seem to be taking offense to the fact that they're providing a different experience to different subsets of the userbase? Is that what you're trying to ban? What could that possibly accomplish?
If you don't have A/B testing, then websites are just going to do it the old fashioned way: collect data, make the feature change, compare the data. What does this solve?
Look this clearly is not in the spirit of the argument I'm making. Why would I advocate for rules that restrict a websites ability to change? Again, im talking about consent when it comes to how your behavior is going to be used.
Further I would say that the parent post isn't even about this. It's about protecting the consumer and yes, I would go so far as to say that if the "change" that the websites want to do has violates the rights of the user then yeah they should be restricted in their ability to do so!
No company in any domain rolls out products globally all at once. McDonalds introduces new menu items in test markets, tv shows start as pilots, software is deployed gradually and as it’s deployed it’s usually measured and rolled back if it’s not working as expected. AB tests are hardly any different. Smart companies experiment.
Why do users need to be explicitly informed of AB tests but not about other new gradual feature roll outs?
Frankly I think when you use a web site you are giving consent for your behavior on that site to be analyzed. I wouldn’t act indignant at traditional retailers attempting to learn from my shopping behavior in their stores so that they can improve their shopping experience. That’s just how businesses work.
> Again, im talking about consent when it comes to how your behavior is going to be used.
Why? To make a physical analogy, you're on their property. You're in their store, walking around perusing their wares, using their tools, so of course they have the complete right to watch you.
There is no way to legislate this, your only option is to raise a stink about it and hope that they'll be more transparent in the future. You can't "require" companies to tell you how they're using your data. Once you've consented to your data being collected, that's it.
It is very rare to see this happening with existing features that the users use and like.
And, they do have consent to change the site at any point. The opposite would be for websites to never be allowed to do any kind of update because they didn't have user consent beforehand.
Experimenting with customers if what gives you the information to make a better product.
It's the least user hostile thing you can get.