(to post again) Imagine if the people designing the Discord, Windows 10+, Telegram UI, and Amazon Prime cancellation UI to manipulate you into paying for services, were in charge of designing airliner cockpits and industrial plants. User interfaces can and should do better in preventing unintentional user error, and people should refuse to implement, use, or accept dark patterns.
Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?
41–50 of 131 posts
Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?
#42Twitter recently removed the login prompt[1], so at least one website is now slightly less pushy. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33724569
Does that work consistently for anyone else? I don't have a Twitter account but there are a couple of Twitter posters I occasionally check on - and I'm still seeing the "See more Tweets from ..." modal at times (I just verified it now).
Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?
#43This is cyclical - sites lock down access and push popups/nonsense etc, new sites are created "designed to make reading content easier", those sites gradually decay until they are locking down access, a new wave begins.
Substack and Medium are clear poster children for this.
Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?
#44I like it, I find it limits myself tremendously if I browse said sites not logged in or a browser that disables cookies. That login wall/prompt is easy to bypass but when I see it, I capture myself and quit the tab.
Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?
#45Agree. There's a bunch of websites I don't visit anymore: Pinterest (you need an account just to browse pictures? c'mon!), Reddit (some subreddits are only available via the app... I'll never install the Reddit app), Instagram, Medium, Twitter, lots of newspapers. I thought I was going to miss them, but I haven't.
> some subreddits are only available via the app
just fyi: old.reddit.com accesses ALL subreddits
Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?
#46It's a downward spiral. Short-term-focused metrics and promotion cycles have no way to see beyond local optimization. With each cycle of changes, the product is increasingly user hostile and the corporate culture gets further away from knowing how to build product features that are usable and enjoyable. It gets harder and harder to get the numbers to go up legitimately, so PMs and complicit engineers resort to even more user-hostile behavior.
It's a cancer that has infected the industry under the guise of being data driven. We've thrown out basic reasoning in favor of juicing vanity numbers. And then the people responsible for driving the product into a ditch fail upward to another company, get a bigger title and salary, and start grabbing at the wheel of a new car to repeat the cycle.
Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?
#47Interestingly, TikTok feels like the exact opposite of this; I used it without an account for a while and enjoyed the experience so much that I created an account and started making videos myself. It's quite rare that I have an experience with this kind of app /service these days where I'm invited to see the best of what it has to offer without being pestered in the same way that I am if I ever try to use Twitter, Instagram or Facebook while logged out.
Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?
#48Agree. There's a bunch of websites I don't visit anymore: Pinterest (you need an account just to browse pictures? c'mon!), Reddit (some subreddits are only available via the app... I'll never install the Reddit app), Instagram, Medium, Twitter, lots of newspapers. I thought I was going to miss them, but I haven't.
> some subreddits are only available via the app just fyi: old.reddit.com accesses ALL subreddits
Using a 3rd party client also fixes all the UI issues with new reddit as well.
I use Apollo on iPhone, but I've heard Sync for Reddit is good on Android.
Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?
#49Most of the web and apps feel hostile these days
On Playstation starting the YouTube app now gets you a full screen unskippable ad before even reaching the app
Prime video show you ads even if you're a paying customer
Every now and then I listen to a podcast to fall asleep, 50% chance I'll be jump scared by a 0.1kbps ad in German that has the volume 4x louder than the podcast itself
Google removing video previews form YouTube links in search results so it's harder to visually ignore video tutorials when you look for a written one
The golden age of internet died a while ago but until recently it was still somewhat useable, it's degrading rapidly these days
Re: Ask HN: Are companies becoming increasingly pushy? If so why?
#50Meta just got a 265 million euro fine because their stuff was too open and people/companies scraped the data of 533 million users.
Best way to stop people from scraping (and getting fines) is to require an account.