Way back when, the observed ABAB sequence could be explained by one server using outdated data and another having the new data and visitors being round-robined to each in turn.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

denying the undeniable, they think we are tech illiterate fools. disgusting. is that why they left their fediverse accounts with anger? that users were pointing out lies?

They didn’t. They are active in Mastodon.

oh they came back in February. they were inactive before that for a year, shortly after the republican drama

mastodon.social/@protonprivacy

Happens all the time with GitHub Actions when they update runner images. According to Microsoft, it’s “fundamentally unfixable”.

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.

Same thing here but prices show up normally. Idk what’s going on in your case.

I’ve always said Proton feels like they just can’t wait to be Google. I don’t trust them at all.

This article could have been several times shorter.

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?

Put a Tl;dr at the top for me, and you can be as autistically thorough as you want to be.

Probably AI generated

With the amount of ads it feels more like it’s purposefully made longer to increase ad revenue

Seriously, it’s like a middle school writing assignment to reach 5 pages, but worse.

I was posting about these kind proton pricing shenanigans months ago and no one was listening.

Never put my trust in proton, remember, they aren’t non-profit at the core!

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.

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.

Who gets to decide the exact profit margin all companies must stick to?

Why is “randomized” what makes it ethical?

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.

That kinda depends on where in the world you are. In Europe we have strong protections such that users need to consent to that type of testing (remember those annoying cookie banners? well what do you think they’re for 😉). But if you’re in the US… well, my apologies.

and got asked to participate

Key difference here.

Do you normally participate in how companies set their pricing? No.

Do companies update their pricing? All the time.

All you don’t like is random people paying different prices. It’s not unethical, it is normal business practice, whether you are ignorant of it or not.

Something being normal business practice doesn’t make it ethical.

I mean I agree that AB testing is normal, and not really anything to start clutching your pearls about.

Yet again Lemmy shows that much of the userbase is young and has little general knowledge.

But this is a pretty patronising statement, mate.

edit: too long of a reply, nobody cares as much as I wrote. Thank you for feedback. I humbly disagree, but appreciated anyway.

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.

It’s because despite what economists believe, prices are not determined fairly by the market but are dictated supply-side. So this kind of “testing” is one of the more blatant ways in which consumer trust is violated in the name of maximizing profits. It makes it obvious that you’re not paying a fair price for a service or product, but a price that was dictated for someone else’s convenience without taking your interests into account at all, violating the social contract.

IF the testing was purely random assignment of price points to gauge the markets ability to support a higher price, I think that is capitalism operating normally.

Now, on the other side, if the pricing changes were based on using the customers own data and spending habits to determine what a specific customer could be squeezed for, it is unacceptable and should be boycotted.

“Capitalism operating normally” is often unacceptable as well. This is one such case. At best, they screw over a few people with no public backlash. There should be backlash.

You’re not wrong! Life is a nightmare. It’s really sad that my metric nowadays for right and wrong is mostly whether or not the business is actively spying on me to find out how many pennies they can squeeze out of me.

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.)

another user claims they were denying AB testing being used for the prices

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).

It very much is. The same user has also been systematically sharing content from this blog across half a dozen communities.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a bot.

TL;DR Proton ran an A/B test for their mid-tier vpn pricing.

Introductory pricing specifically, not their regular pricing.