Ask HN: Why is today's Internet experience so user hostile? • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by lotsofpulp » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

noduerme wrote: post #67

You hit the nail on the head -- repeatedly. Shit. I just bought my gf a Roku as a stocking stuffer. We were setting it up and it made her put in her email and phone number to verify. I was appalled; I was like don't put in your email! I'll return it! But she wanted be able to watch YouTube on her TV since Apple removed it without warning from her AppleTV device . My own Roku from a couple years ago works great with n…

> But she wanted be able to watch YouTube on her TV since Apple removed it without warning from her AppleTV device.

Apple did not remove the Youtube app. Youtube made changes that caused their app to no longer work on older Apple TVs. The Apple TV that are no longer compatible with YouTube’s app (and CBS and MLB) were released before 2015.

It is reasonable that an Apple TV released in 2012 to not have the technical specifications to be compatible with other providers after Mar 2021 due to rapid changes in technology and software.

https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/03/older-apple-tv-will-require-a...

https://9to5mac.com/2021/03/02/apple-tv-3-losing-signal/

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

#252

Post by paulryanrogers » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

simonh wrote: post #214

r_singh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users are the last ones to blame. If anything it’s policy makers, investors and industrialists. If you want to participate in society, you need a smartphone, and guess what? The whole world is okay with only 2 companies doing this….

For the same reasons the world is ok with only 2 commercially viable mass market desktop operating systems. Consolidation benefits users. It increases capital investment in the dominant platforms making them better faster; it increases the chances your software and skills will be compatible with your next computer; you benefit if your family, friends or colleagues use a compatible platform; it focuses developer effor…

> Consolidation benefits users.

Only to a point then it crosses over into exploitation. If users could switch OS's more easily then there would probably be more of them in widespread use, like browsers. As it is most people have to buy a new device to change OS.

Websites themselves become sticky because of network effects and familiarity.

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

#253

Post by amznbyebyebye » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:34 PM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #102

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…

> Users tolerating such bullshit is the reason why it exists and keeps on existing. This is an intensely user hostile view point, ironically enough. "The dark patterns being foisted upon the average user are their own fault, they deserve what they get" In fact, I think this attitude is how the developers and product managers responsible for this stuff sleep at night, "these people deserve this for their moral failing…

> Her extended family are all on Facebook, her grandkids are posting pics of the great grandkids on Facebook. Yeah, she deserves the disaster that is Facebook.

We use WhatsApp groups for this now. It’s perfect, no ads, only the content from people I want content from. No slimy Facebook algorithm. Between tiktok Instagram and whatsapp how is Facebook.com even still a thing?

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

#254

Post by falcolas » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:37 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #96

fxtentacle wrote: post #12

I think it's mainly your last reason. After the founders have cashed out, there's nobody left to care about user experience, because by then, most things are run by MBAs as dictated by shareholders. And shareholders don't care who suffers. They care purely about profits. The solution is to introduce laws to reign in "profits at the expense of others". When chemical companies were polluting the ground (superfund sites…

> The solution is to introduce laws to reign in "profits at the expense of others". Now you have two problems.

When something isn’t working, you don’t point at ideologies and say “if we followed this to the letter, things may get better”. You change something.

None of the changes so far seem to be catching industry wide. Perhaps it’s time for a change that comes with teeth.

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

#255

Post by greenbit » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

20-25 years ago there was at least lip service paid to the idea of "how do we improve software quality", but somewhere along the line that got lost under "move fast and break things", which paved the way for "as a service" madness. I don't want your half baked junk, I don't want constant updates, I don't want monthly fees for perpetually shifting, broken crap. I don't want any ongoing relationship with a team of "devs". I want to buy it once, and if it doesn't work I want my d### money back.

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

#256

Post by bryguy32403 » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

AstralStorm wrote: post #150

JKCalhoun wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who do I think is to blame? Investors of all kinds. They are making it harder for entrepreneurs who care about their customers to stay in business by throwing money and exploiting consumers weakness for deals/freebies. I'm not sure. It might also be the opposite: this might be the precise time for a new business that can cut out all the bullshit and give the users what they want. It's not just the HN crowd that is…

Good luck getting the advertising bandwidth to grow...

TikTok didn't seem to have any problems.

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

#257

Post by foxfluff » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

mistersys wrote: post #6

It really feels like internet infrastructure has been growing more unstable. More outages, feels like way more bugs happening on my apple products as well. I believe this is the result of the same thing that causes all the chaos in all human fields, lack of consciousness. We live in a very distracted time, COVID is still one more stressor on top of all the other things we have to manage in the world we've built to be…

> My two cents, to start we need to stop building things with such low-level tools.

Interesting -- my take is more that we should throw away the ever growing pile of high level tools and architecture and cruft and start all over again at the low level (I think accumulated complexity -- and accumulated expectations due to complexity -- cause a lot of issues). Heck maybe start by writing an OS and some useful applications that run on a $1 microcontroller that you can hand-solder on a cheap two-layer PCB. 256kB of SRAM and four megabytes of flash ought to be enough for quite a lot..

That said I don't necessarily mean we should abandon all progress e.g. in programming languages and revert to assembly and C'89.

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

#258

Post by iso1210 » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

tluyben2 wrote: post #7

Not a main factor but a factor is 'always the latest tech' issue. Most banks and airlines I use rewrote their perfectly fine and fast sites and apps to reactjs and now they seriously suck. This is not the fault of react but more of this idea of tech people that everything has to be new which means we don't have 10+ year experience in it and the results just take more work to get right (despite what everyone says here…

I logged into British Gas yesterday to look at my account. It was painfully slow, wouldn't even load before I disabled ublock origin, and cpu shot up.

All to output something along the lines of

"select * from meter_readings where accountid = ?", $accountid "select * from bills where accountid = ?", $accountid

In the end I never actually got what I wanted.

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

#259

Post by Freak_NL » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:42 PM UTC

dools wrote: post #245

Freak_NL wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel a constant tension where companies and governments are all but demanding everyone owns a smartphone with one of these two specific operating systems for all sorts of things (from banking, to authentication, to government services), but have to somehow facilitate the remainder of users as an afterthought. It makes a lot of things really suck, and that's ignoring all those walled gardens essentially requiring th…

Your government demands you own a smart phone?

You can of course function without one, but the nudging towards getting their authentication app is getting worse. For healthcare records, vendors in the Netherlands are required to move authentication of their portals to the government provided DigiD¹. Healthcare will be the first field where the minimum level of assurance is being raised to 'substantial', and this means that only authentication via the Android or IOS DigiD app will suffice (right now for other government functions like taxes and planning your booster shot you can also use SMS as (weak) 2FA).

While the government is aware that there is a group of people who can't or won't use a smartphone or their app, there is no technological solution on the horizon, despite viable alternatives for 2FA existing (like WebAuthn). This is what I mean by “all but demanding”.

Because you do have a right to view your medical records, there is a fallback option which essentially means going to the healthcare provider and asking for paper records. This is behavioural nudging taken to the extreme.

1: Broader than just DigiD actually, supporting European eIDAS standards, but for 99% of citizens this means DigiD.

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

#260

Post by neom » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 2:44 PM UTC

greenbit wrote: post #255

20-25 years ago there was at least lip service paid to the idea of "how do we improve software quality", but somewhere along the line that got lost under "move fast and break things", which paved the way for "as a service" madness. I don't want your half baked junk, I don't want constant updates, I don't want monthly fees for perpetually shifting, broken crap. I don't want any ongoing relationship with a team of "dev…

It's an interesting question, from a user perspective, would you prefer highly polishes feature rich yearly releases, or continuous feature release? Comes down to competition I guess, for web people can compete against you a lot quicker, if you think back to the 90s, Adobe could afford to take a year, no one was going to do better than Adobe anyways. Depends if the customer could understand/accept the value prop of "we're slow but good" - and if you just ship then get "good" in the wild.. well.. you may end up at the same level of baked when the other person released theirs.