cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/50434194
Proton VPN’s pricing page exposed an ab-test identifier linked to two VPN Plus prices: €2.99/month (70% off) and €3.49/month (65% off). Repeated testing produced B → A → B → A → B, with the variant matching the rendered price each time. €12 difference over 24 months.
Can someone articulate what is wrong with this? It intrinsically feels wrong to me, but when I think about it I dont really have any good reasoning why this would be bad.
We expect a standard price and it feels bad when we find out someone else got it cheaper.
But the consumer should be operating the same, they review the deal and if its a price they are willing to pay they go through with it.
This article could have been several times shorter.
Probably AI generated
With the amount of ads it feels more like it’s purposefully made longer to increase ad revenue
Put a Tl;dr at the top for me, and you can be as autistically thorough as you want to be.
I agree except you can’t have something be “several times shorter”. Yes, I know what you mean, but “several times” can only be longer. It’s like saying “500% less”. You can’t do that. The best case scenario is that means “20% of the original” but arguably “500% less” would mean you take five times the original amount and subtract it from the original, leaving you with negative 4 times the amount, not twenty percent.
Anyway. This is just a light-hearted pedantic pseudo-rant, although I also do stand by the truth of what I’m saying. But I’m not intending corrections, just being silly about a pet peeve of mine. heh
hmm… that article might be better off being -4 times its original length, come to that. heh
I disagree. Twice as short would be half the length if you asked me (same as twice as long, in a glass half empty, half full situation).
In a similar but different example, if you have a 1000 word essay and you cut it to 500 words, you could make it twice as short again by cutting it to 250 words.
That’s because you wrote something different than the other comment.
Twice as short != twice shorter
And the second version is just wrong.
I don’t understand twice shorter – how would you use it in context?
I think my example stands
OK, either I don’t understand you or you don’t understand me, because that’s what I’m also saying?
Your example “twice as short” works.
The original comment wasn’t about your example.
The original comment was “several times shorter”.
As you used twice in place of several times, I also put twice in there to make the difference to yours more obvious.
Twice shorter isnt the same as twice as short. You talked in your first comment about something different than the other comments talked about. That is what I wanted to express.
I don’t think we understand each other.
To me, several times shorter makes perfect sense, and twice as short is a special case, where it is two times as short. Thus, several times shorter includes:
- two times shorter == twice as short
- 1.5 times shorter == 1.5 times as short
- five times shorter == five times as short
- several times shorter == several times as short (the “as short” construction sounds clunky to me here in this case)
As i write these out, i realize what you were trying to say: X times shorter is equivalent to X times as short for me, so equivalent that I didn’t realize when I was using one or the other.
You are saying that for some people, the “X times shorter” construction doesn’t sound natural. I can respect that, but it doesn’t seem like a part of mainstream English to me at least.
“Twice shorter” isn’t what anyone is talking about. That isn’t how you combine the words, at least to me.
Language is generally workable if it communicates the intended message. In that sense, I acknowledge that it is generally understood what something means, but not always.
However, it is semantic gibberish, and fuck anyone who supports that gibberish.
But yes, it’s fine enough in the same way that when someone says “could of” we know they meant “could’ve” or “could have”. It doesn’t make it correct. And it is still grating.
Two asshats disagreed with my comment above enough to downvote. This is also grating because it means they actively support WRONG. And it is WRONG.
It’s fine, but it is irritating when people are willfully ignorant.
Could of is gibberish, i agree with you there.
But making something twice as short makes perfect sense to me. However short it is now, make it half that size.
What is the confusion?
I’ve always said Proton feels like they just can’t wait to be Google. I don’t trust them at all.
Yet again Lemmy shows that much of the userbase is young and has little general knowledge. A/B testing is quite standard, and there is nothing shady about testing different prices to see what consumers will purchase more.
A couple of times I’ve been walking in a mall (dating this anecdote back a couple of decades or so. heh) and got asked to participate in product testing where I was shown - in the case I remember better - two cans of soda with different designs. Strawberry soda - one pink can, one red can - which one I was more likely to purchase.
A/B testing is quite common as companies figure out how to sell you more. Assuming it’s randomized, it’s completely ethical.
and got asked to participate
Key difference here.
Ethical would be for them to look at all their Capex. Opex and charge a healthy 20% profit on top. And if they can’t survive. Fold shop and do something else. A/B testing randomised or not, simply sees customers to be squeezed.
Why is “randomized” what makes it ethical?
Companies change prices all the time. Is that unethical? All that happens in an A/B test is that different people get different prices, and the company sees how many people buy at which price. There is no one single ethical price for anything. Thanks to capitalism, you charge what the market can bear. And it’s not like we’re talking something like a million dollars vs a dollar. The amounts are both pretty clearly within a reasonable amount.
Randomised is not what makes it ethical. It’s what makes the AB test statistically valid such that you can test your hypothesis.
Ethical would be to run the test, gauge the click through rate to checkout to find a winner, then for all those you charged the higher price to give them a discount code such that everyone gets the product at the same price. What you’re testing is the click through rate of a price advertised further up the funnel.
Maybe later you can say ok the rates didn’t drop off people seem ok with the higher price. Higher price for all. Or not as the AB test would reveal.
Getting the same price in the end is great and all but I can’t say being tested on without my prior knowledge or consent seems ethical.
Well, regardless, it’s a part of our capitalistic system, and clearly people here on Lemmy are unaware of how business works.
I have cookies blocked, and have uBlock Origin on, there are no prices at all when I go to the Proton page. What a sketchy company.
I was posting about these kind proton pricing shenanigans months ago and no one was listening.
Way back when, the observed ABAB sequence could be explained by one server using outdated data and another having the new data and visitors being round-robined to each in turn. I have investigated issues like this and this has happened. Not sure how many companies still use a setup like this, though. It’s been K8s clusters everywhere I’ve worked for many years now. This does indeed look like a proper AB test, the HTML already looks pretty clear.
Yeah and what’s worse is Proton denying AB testing and instead claiming that it was a promo pricing
Never put my trust in proton, remember, they aren’t non-profit at the core!
Is this article AI generated? It seems to wander and repeat itself instead of being well-structured like a standard three-part article (background, analysis, conclusion).
Whether the poor quality was a result of humans or machines, it still leaves me wondering “who cares, why does this matter?” A/B testing, including on pricing, is a standard practice. (But usually you keep it consistent per person instead of switching back and forth. If a refresh gets them a cheaper price, they’ll do it and spoil your data.)
