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Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?

#161

Post by bayindirh »

antocv wrote: post #146
bayindirh wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's consider a basic example: How can you justify not using Microsoft Office? Yes LibreOffice is there and works 95% of the time, but the remaining 5% are not completely useless parts of the software. It's same for most of the user-hostile software. Alternatives are not as intuitive, easy to use, or easy to find. Also, free software is not guaranteed to be sustained or be in front of the pack. I use Linux, and free…

> How can you justify not using Microsoft Office? I never had to justify it, nobody forced me or expected me to be using Office, they expected me to deliver a thesis or other document. When there was the "5% expectation", kindly decline, uninstall. The road I picked, was not always success or easy, I got failed in high school "informatics" class because I could not show that I could use Office. Twice. I refused to le…

> I never had to justify it, nobody forced me or expected me to be using Office...

You had it easy it seems. When someone sends you a document which contains convoluted structures and only renders in a very recent version of Microsoft Word, and you have to fill it for work purposes, you have no other choice (We're a Linux shop, but not everyone we interact uses Libre Office, so yeah).

> Whats ease is what you have learned. Had you began with Linux since 1999 you would not even know how to do anything on Windows or MacOSX.

I started with a C64 in 1989, jumped to a 486 some years later and installed Linux in 1998, when there was no documentation, and dial-up was kinda hard without any. So I double booted Linux and Windows for a lot of years, and despised Windows since Windows 95. However, I can use all three without problems, making all other ecosystems work with my Linux systems (I adapt them to talk with Linux, not vice versa).

> The "easy to use intuitive" eventually becomes the dark UX hell it is today, a slow descent.

No, it's not. Automatically adding another bullet point is not. Marking the center of a shape and snapping to it is not. Having sensible defaults and intuitive key bindings are not dark patterns. Also fixing bugs in two days, getting direct replies from developers, your feedback taken seriously are not dark patterns. The bitter part is they can be all done in FOSS, very easily (I've developed such software for some projects, and it's well loved), but developers are not motivated or bothered by it.

Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?

#162

Post by AstralStorm »

robertlagrant wrote: post #131
toastal wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roku is now publicly traded so its beholden to getting quarterly value for shareholder. Investors have deemed all of this data collecting valuable. Capitalism killing innovation by making it another homogeneous device that doesn't respect you doesn't surprise me.

> Capitalism killing innovation by making it another homogeneous device that doesn't respect you doesn't surprise me. What is this weird fascination with capitalism on HN? If a socialist government thought collecting data was a good idea and directed its resources that way, would that okay? My read is (rightly or wrongly) they want to have cloud services, and cloud services require identification.

No they don't. You could and should provide a baseline experience with no account. The account could be used for extra, like say sharing favorites across devices.

Even storing payment details or favorites on the device is trivial. It's not done because it's not trackable and the user data sellable.

Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?

#163

Post by bryanrasmussen »

Ensorceled wrote: post #145
ratww wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anyone is directly blaming the users here. It is just a fact of life that a sizeable portion of users "accept" dark patterns, and PMs consider that as a sign of success. However I strongly doubt users are doing it by choice. IMO it's actually because of lack of choices, lack of knowledge or learned helplessness. That might be controversial, but to me the point is that A/B tests and KPIs are the wrong in…

> I don't think anyone is directly blaming the users here. The comment I'm replying to is LITERALLY blaming "normal users" for these problems.

someone can say that people are allowing themselves to be victimized, without saying that the people doing the victimizing are in the right.

The comment however is wrong in that it is perhaps not possible for the users to keep themselves from being victimized, without some recourse to the law.

Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?

#164

Post by nathias »

antocv wrote: post #22

Users tolerating such bullshit is the reason why it exists and keeps on existing. Nobody is forced to continue using dark-pattern software, nobody was forced to use Apple and tie their credit-card to their "apple cloud account", yet normal users dont see a problem with it at all and just continue even paying for software which is hostile to them and their interests. Your question is like, "Why does DRM exist it is ac…

we kind of are, because dark patterns get into regulation and become part of law

Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?

#165

Post by jakub_g »

One thing is IMO that internet became victim of its own success and grew too big. You don't have physical constraints in it and you can grow almost infinitely.

Previously you'd have a bunch of users and mostly somehow tech literate. Now ~everyone is on the net. Most successful companies grew too much and with 1B+ users, each company will have tens of millions of users who are tech illiterate / harmful / scammers. Designing for such a massive user base and dealing with all this requires either enormous fleet of support staff, or "works for 90%" attitude powered by shitty AI which is unfortunately what happens.

And then once you have 100k smart and motivated employees, everyone wants to move the needle a bit, hence everything changes ~weekly in every product. It's super easy to add new things and release in prod, much easier than before (better deploy monitoring tooling and practices etc.)

Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?

#167

Post by ArnoVW »

tndtgrwy wrote: post #90
Ragnarork wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users voted with their wallets at the time (back in the late 2000s), which led to Apple and Google becoming the dominant forces in the market and the providers of a huge chunk of the worlds smartphone. How would users vote now with their wallet when everything is tailored for users having either an iPhone or an Android phone? (Yes, I know alternatives exists, even alternatives not built on top of Android, but it's ex…

I agree. I own a pine phone. It's all but un-useable in any meaningful sense of the word. I own a brick and motor and have just been mandated by the government to run their version of the vaccine passport app. It's android OR ios. What choices do I have here?

Not really your question I think, but, what country do you live? You are mandated an app? That's crazy?!

What about people that don't have a phone? Or a 'dumb'-phone?

Where I live any valid QR code works, be it paper or even just a picture of the paper. No need to use an app.

Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?

#168

Post by thfuran »

antocv wrote: post #146
bayindirh wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's consider a basic example: How can you justify not using Microsoft Office? Yes LibreOffice is there and works 95% of the time, but the remaining 5% are not completely useless parts of the software. It's same for most of the user-hostile software. Alternatives are not as intuitive, easy to use, or easy to find. Also, free software is not guaranteed to be sustained or be in front of the pack. I use Linux, and free…

> How can you justify not using Microsoft Office? I never had to justify it, nobody forced me or expected me to be using Office, they expected me to deliver a thesis or other document. When there was the "5% expectation", kindly decline, uninstall. The road I picked, was not always success or easy, I got failed in high school "informatics" class because I could not show that I could use Office. Twice. I refused to le…

>nobody forced me or expected me to be using Office

>I got failed in high school "informatics" class because I could not show that I could use Office. Twice

How curious.

Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?

#169

Post by codeptualize »

I definitely agree some things have gotten quite bad, but at least for me there have been quite a lot of massive improvements.

Banking is a good example, it has significantly improved for me; Instead of having to use one of those 2nd factor dedicated devices that require my card and pin code, I can now use my phone with the app as second factor, it's way more convenient as I don't have to go search for the device and type in random numbers. Also checking my bank statements and saldo doesn't require a second factor so it's much easier now.

My impression is that for elderly people things have improved as well, although based on a small sample size. I have tried to learn elderly people how to use a laptop and the internet some years back, it was almost impossible. But, if you give them an iPad and some very basic instructions they just figure stuff out, do banking, messaging, gaming and what not. I have honestly been surprised.

When talking search and shopping I fully agree; I think the issue here is that not-very-ethical parties have actually succeeded quite well in gaming and flooding the system with the clickbaity low quality crap. It has become hard or impossible to distinguish real & quality vs fake/low quality/scam, manual and automated.

Multi factors do require some work, and captchas really suck (but those are not new!).

My point is that I think overall things have improved, there are exceptions, but the web and digital products in the past were really very bad.

It might not feel like it has improved because expectations rise with the base level, and our expectations are way higher now, so bad apples stand out.

Check out https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-gains-shrinking/ some strong pointers that at least the user experience situation has improved.

Re: Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile?

#170

Post by pixl97 »

antocv wrote: post #146
bayindirh wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's consider a basic example: How can you justify not using Microsoft Office? Yes LibreOffice is there and works 95% of the time, but the remaining 5% are not completely useless parts of the software. It's same for most of the user-hostile software. Alternatives are not as intuitive, easy to use, or easy to find. Also, free software is not guaranteed to be sustained or be in front of the pack. I use Linux, and free…

> How can you justify not using Microsoft Office? I never had to justify it, nobody forced me or expected me to be using Office, they expected me to deliver a thesis or other document. When there was the "5% expectation", kindly decline, uninstall. The road I picked, was not always success or easy, I got failed in high school "informatics" class because I could not show that I could use Office. Twice. I refused to le…

If you dont consider most Linux software user hostile in it's own ways then their really isn't much to discuss here. You've just accepted its series of failures, rather than the failures associated with commercial software.
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