Willi Kampmann
Sep 8, 2018 · 1 min read

That “hey I see you’re right in the middle of a video, is it interesting? Well, who cares — let’s take a break!!!” popup in the YouTube screenshot extremely reminds me of Microsoft doing the exact same thing for the past 20 years: “We see you’re really busy working on something super important right now. Windows wants to update stuff RIGHT NOW and when it wants something … anyway, see you after the update in like 2 hours or so. Just use a pen in the meantime you animal.” (paraphrased, but pretty close)

In all seriousness (which I was: forced updates are the absolute worst!), I think it’d be much better if those popups would only appear after the time is up and the currently played video is over. But still, they feel like being in a candy store and having an employee come over and tell you to take a break outside, while you can still see all that candy around them.

In regards to social networks, a timed pause or mute function is a nice idea. However, in general I feel like the worst problem are endless feeds! Medium has this amazing slogan of “we don’t want mindless feeds, but feeding minds”. They are still doing the same as everybody else as far as I can tell (rather, the slogan is used to make people subscribe), but I really do think the way feeds are designed is crucial in changing users’ behavior in and perception of social networks. You can’t ever calm down if there’s always more, more, MORE