An alcohol manufacturer rarely has an army of designers, data scientists and engineers working non-stop to make their product more addictive and measuring their success on engagement growth.
> An alcohol manufacturer rarely has an army of designers, data scientists and engineers working non-stop to make their product more addictive and measuring their success on engagement growth.
They have at least the first two, and tobacco companies have, or historically have had, all three. Job titles are slightly different, but basic functions are the same.
This is just not true. Go visit a vineyard, distillery, or a brewery. People may be trying to improve the quality of the product, but they are not relentlessly trying to increase "user drinking minutes" or any metric like that. They do try to sell more of their product, but their main goal is getting better reviews, wider distribution, and more customers, not stuffing people like foie gras geese.
> . Go visit a vineyard, distillery, or a brewery. People may be trying to improve the quality of the product, but they are not relentlessly trying to increase "user drinking minutes" or any metric like that.
Yes, that's exactly what the marketing arms of the firms involved, and the advertising agencies they employ, are trying to do. (There's some actual product-development involvement there, too; light and ultra-light beers were invented pretty much exactly to maximize user drinking minutes.)
That's really only true for big companies like Ab-Inbev. You aren't going to see any of that at your mom and pop vineyard or craft microbrewery. You also don't see much of that pathological, exploitive behaviour in 1 person indie game shops either, however.
Yes, and tons of indie developers are beholden to big publishers like Sony and Microsoft. That doesn't change the fact that there are plenty of properly independent folks.
Also, I am not aware of the craft microbreweries owned by the big companies engaging in the sort of abusive behaviours that the main brands engage in, are you?
As others have pointed out, alcohol/tobacco manufacturers do in fact have these.
However because addiction is a known factor in their industry, I think they are kept somewhat in check, if only for legal reasons. I don't think Internet companies have any such qualms, so I would agree that they basically are trying to 'weaponize' this addiction.
I would be utterly shocked if most of the big ones didn't, and I'd be even more shocked if they (along with tobacco companies) had helped to develop techniques now taken for granted in the digital world.
