Ask HN: Have you ever heard of users demonstrating against software?

Isn’t that what the farmers did against John Deere’s “lock your tractor through software” software?

Secondary to the question, but I live right by the Epic campus and use the Epic MyChart platform to communicate with the University of Wisconsin health system. It is phenomenal as a patient; I can handle all billing, message any doctor I've seen, view test results as soon as they're uploaded, etc. Recently I saw the results of some bloodwork in the ER before the nurses had time to come and tell me about it. (The UI/UX is awful, though.)

I look at the screens of the medical staff when I'm in the office and I can see why they don't like Epic; bad UI/UX and they definitely reorder and rearrange common menus when there's a big update. For overworked medical staff it's got to be a nightmare.

There must be a middle ground. I never want to go back to a healthcare system where I don't have something like Epic, but also it would be nice to have a platform with a more stable, simple design philosophy.

Usually that appears to stop at protests that aren't so publicly visible, and by smaller cliques of technically sophisticated users.

It seems to me that most unsophisticated users tend to view software as mysterious and immutable. Something which can not be amended and no-one can be held accountable for. They will suffer, but mostly without grasping that they could resist.

I'd be happy to be shown wrong I'm wrong for a substantial amount of places or cultures.

Old school RuneScape is an mmorpg where each game update goes to a vote, and if it doesn’t get 75% approval the updates are not worked on by devs and don’t get released. The community feels a strong ownership and connection over the game. So much so that when the development company (Jagex) makes a wrong decision, it’s common for users to “riot” in game. They go to a specific world, at a specific town, place down specific items, and chant.

While not rioting in real life, it feels familiar.

Wiki article about an example with a video. Occurred prior to the voting system, but still occurs even 15 years later https://runescape.wiki/w/Pay_to_PK_Riot

this month a bunch of people closed their paypal accounts in response to a planned policy change that claimed the power to take $2500 from accounts that published misinformation. paypal claimed it was a mistake

https://twitter.com/hashtag/BankruptPaypal

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2022/10/10/how-to-delete...

https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/xzdu8x/whats_...