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The rise of user-hostile software

den.dev

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Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#21

Post by TeMPOraL »

nicbou wrote: post #2

With all the praise Brother laser printers get for being just a damn printer, I wonder what the end game is for some of those businesses. I can understand that monetisation and user well-being can be at odds sometimes (e.g. with free apps and services), but surely a generic hardware manufacturer wants to ensure a generic experience? This is why I tend to buy things that use generic, open standards. I don't trust some…

> surely a generic hardware manufacturer wants to ensure a generic experience?

What they want, first and foremost, is to not be a generic hardware manufacturer.

Quite a lot of those user-hostile choices - custom apps, SaaS-ification, focus on collaboration features - are attempts to prevent the product from being a commodity.

For example, I can replace my current washing machine with any other model of any other brand. Independently, I can use any brand of detergent with my machine. Both the machine and the detergent are commodity products. They mostly compete on price and marketing bullshit, which offers very limited margins. Modern tech companies desperately want to avoid being in this situation.

The most common - but by far not the only - approach of ensuring you can't be easily commoditized is through network effects. Not just "I can't switch from Facebook to Diaspora because all my friends are on Facebook", but also the weaker forms: "I can't stop using Teams because everyone at work uses Teams, and we can't switch because of SharePoint integration - which also incidentally means we have to use MS Office and Windows". Or, "I can't stop using Google Docs because a bunch of non-techies I have to deal with don't know how to (or don't want to) use anything else".

This is why companies fight interoperability[0] tooth and nail - breaking lock-in for users threatens breaking the weak network effects they need.

--

[0] - Except "API interoperability", which isn't really proper interoperability for users, as it's governed by business contracts between API providers and API consumers.

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#22

Post by JimDabell »

Almost all of the examples listed are in relation to hardware. As far as I can see, hardware vendors see software as a cost centre and at best don’t care about quality and more often than not try to make up for the cost by bundling crapware with the drivers.

General purpose application software is leagues beyond the crap that hardware vendors pull off.

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#23

Post by forgingahead »

jacquesm wrote: post #20
forgingahead wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a lot of jumping to conclusions to fit your pre-determined opinion of them. Without derailing the thread, I do think we all need to extend charity to people who have openly declared what their affiliations are not . We shouldn't normalise bad interpretations regardless of our own biases. They have said they're not, so we should take them at face value. Let's now focus on participating to achieve the s…

> They have said they're not, so we should take them at face value. If only it were that simple.

I've enjoyed your comments here, and have learned a bunch from them over the years, so I'm honestly surprised by your comment. Are you saying personal interpretation always supersedes direct clarification by the person or group in question?

Seems like a lot of what ails modern discourse is simply imagining malicious injury or oppression when we should work on finding commonalities instead of what differences are there.

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#24

Post by MereInterest »

forgingahead wrote: post #23
jacquesm wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They have said they're not, so we should take them at face value. If only it were that simple.

I've enjoyed your comments here, and have learned a bunch from them over the years, so I'm honestly surprised by your comment. Are you saying personal interpretation always supersedes direct clarification by the person or group in question? Seems like a lot of what ails modern discourse is simply imagining malicious injury or oppression when we should work on finding commonalities instead of what differences are ther…

What you are calling direct clarification can instead be deliberate misinformation. Should we consider North Korea to be a democracy because their official name includes "democratic"?

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#25

Post by southerntofu »

forgingahead wrote: post #17
southerntofu wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This seems like a lot of jumping to conclusions to fit your pre-determined opinion of them. Without derailing the thread, I do think we all need to extend charity to people who have openly declared what their affiliations are not . We shouldn't normalise bad interpretations regardless of our own biases. They have said they're not, so we should take them at face value. Let's now focus on participating to achieve the s…

> This seems like a lot of jumping to conclusions to fit your pre-determined opinion of them.

Unfortunately, that's the opposite. I was very interested in suckless some years ago, and was very disappointed to learn their tolerance (if not sympathy) towards nazism.

> They have said they're not, so we should take them at face value.

Denying affiliation is a classic strategy in psyops. The alt-right and manosphere have established entire PR strategies based on that.

I'd be more inclined to trust a person/collective declaring they anti-nazi (or antifascist if you will), than a person/collective declaring they're "not a nazi" then leaving traces of nazi symbolism everywhere.

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#26

Post by TeMPOraL »

Agreed on all points.

Interesting to see this:

> You can argue that all of this has existed for a very long time, back from the days of all kinds of toolbars and extensions that created multiple levels of address bar nesting in your web browser and taskbar.

What I find ironic about the whole situation is, back then it was universally known that those toolbars and extensions are distributed by assholes. The whole software category was called by various pejorative names - "adware", "spyware", "malware". There was a whole ecosystem of tools and tricks to get rid of them, as well as preventing them from being installed in the first place.

Something weird happened over the past decade. We find ourselves in times where most mainstream software from renowned companies should be, by the standards of the toolbar era, classified as malware.

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#27

Post by forgingahead »

MereInterest wrote: post #24
forgingahead wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've enjoyed your comments here, and have learned a bunch from them over the years, so I'm honestly surprised by your comment. Are you saying personal interpretation always supersedes direct clarification by the person or group in question? Seems like a lot of what ails modern discourse is simply imagining malicious injury or oppression when we should work on finding commonalities instead of what differences are ther…

What you are calling direct clarification can instead be deliberate misinformation. Should we consider North Korea to be a democracy because their official name includes "democratic"?

The opposite can also be true - if I said I met MereInterest in real life and you were behaving badly (shouting at wait staff and so on), and you claimed you were not, who should be believed?

If I wanted to slander someone, believing me, the accuser, over you, the accused, is a good way to break societal trust since nothing can be believed any more.

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#28

Post by rich_sasha »

Ultimately, a developer's or a company's objective is not to provide good software, but to succeed financially (or in some other metric). This is somewhat aligned with the user's needs - if a user wants a calculator app, it should do arithmetics. But beyond that, The Dev is not a benevolent entity, and users are a means to an end.

It doesn't have to be cynical and exploitative, but when push comes to shove, The Dev will act in their own interest and not that of the users.

Maybe sad, but really that's how everything works. Are energy companies interested in a world with plentiful green energy? No, they want to make money and pay dividends.

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#29

Post by ajsnigrutin »

This flowchart is true for many things... even webpages:

How many users actually wanted to subrscribe to your newsletter the first time they visited your page, before they even read the first article there?

How many first-time visitors actually want to donate money?

...

Re: The rise of user-hostile software

#30

Post by TeMPOraL »

MereInterest wrote: post #24
forgingahead wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've enjoyed your comments here, and have learned a bunch from them over the years, so I'm honestly surprised by your comment. Are you saying personal interpretation always supersedes direct clarification by the person or group in question? Seems like a lot of what ails modern discourse is simply imagining malicious injury or oppression when we should work on finding commonalities instead of what differences are ther…

What you are calling direct clarification can instead be deliberate misinformation. Should we consider North Korea to be a democracy because their official name includes "democratic"?

Well, besides the well-known fact that all countries with $adjective in the name aren't really $adjective...

... then yes, as a general principle, we should take people at face value on the Internet, unless there's a clear reason to do otherwise - which could be a reason to confront the person about their statements. Quite a lot of dysfunction in Internet (and increasingly, offline too) discourse comes from "they say X, but what they really mean is Y" pattern of thinking.

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