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

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

#41

Post by xnyan »

version_five wrote: post #2

I've not seen anything as extreme as people in the streets, but regularly have seen employee pushback about erp system implementations, e.g. SAP. These enterprise systems are are all on the back of employees, by which I mean they are forced to take the extra time to use them while they are extremely unfriendly to the user - because they are bought by execs, and their value is not at all apparent to those who use then…

> imagine you told employees they now had to log their time and account for each 15 minutes

You don't need to imagine, this is becoming (if it is not already) the norm for salaried employees. Maybe not to the 15 minutes, but hourly accounting is very widespread.

That said, the joke is on the c-suite in this case - almost everyone makes it up, or at least guestimates heavily.

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

#42

Post by guilhas »

In the UK NHS, the staff have software that they think is working, but the management thinks its best to change. They are changing systems every year, once they have adapted, there it comes a new platform that is "going to solve everything"... their email provider, the patients management, drugs stock, the staff management, reporting... then they get tablets, then laptops, the PCs on wheels, then barcodes... Combined with their understaffed shifts, errors are increasing, and people dying

Obviously people are tiered, but they can barely finish their shifts, let alone have strength to protest. The whole thing must be about to implode soon

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

#43

Post by awinter-py »

I mean 'exit voice and loyalty' right? A few paying users, getting a little loud about the product they pay for, can change priorities pret-ty quickly

Or like enterprise software -- some of these were initially built for a single client. Others have many customers but a few whales that cover most of payroll.

Harder w/ consumer stuff (google reader), there's less 'voice' and more 'exit', and 'exit' sometimes doesn't get the point across until it's too late

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

#45

Post by humanistbot »

There was a case more than 20 years ago of a similar revolt against a Canadian hospital's automated drug dispensing machine that would only let nurses withdraw the exact dose of medicine a patient needed in a short window around when patient was supposed to take each dose. It was so bad it got written up into an academic article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/016224390202700...

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

#46

Post by awinter-py »

317070 wrote: post #12

Here you go, from a UK protest against a programme for automatically grading students. If I remember correctly, there were street protests across the UK. https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/129527788941230489... https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/feb/18/the-studen...

related, people were pretty angry about covid-era remote exam proctoring / goguardian-style spyware

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

#47

Post by h4n1 »

3pt14159 wrote: post #23
msbarnett wrote: post #20

Sure. Public servants rally in Ottawa to protest Phoenix payroll system: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/public-servants-ra... Highly doubt that this is the only time a Peoplesoft clusterfuck inspired demonstrations, either. Some software is just unbelievably shitty.

Also, ArriveCan was frequently mentioned by many in the protests around covid. From my end: I dislike near-mandatory apps by governments, but I felt like Covid was an exceptional time and at least it is non-mandatory now at the boarder.

ArriveCAN was quite stupid, but at least it was fairly simple and the mobile app was just a convenient wrapper around the web app. It could have been so much worse.

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

#49

Post by DiggyJohnson »

soared wrote: post #17

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 spe…

I’m writing a book about Why We Play RuneScape, and the evolution of democratic updates is one of my favorite topics.

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

#50

Post by nmc »

Students in France protested multiple times at least partly against Parcoursup, the government software where high school students enter their choices for higher education and get selected by universities.

https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20181204-high-school-protests-c...

> In the past few months, several high school student unions have called for protests against recent reforms in France's education system.

> They have also been protesting against 'Parcoursup', an online government platform designed for selecting students for university.

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