Ask HN: Why do so many developers seem hostile to their users these days?

I previously wrote about how various shopping sites are being very hostile to their customer base [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29384866]. Why does a 32kb text article need 10MB of battery draining heavy javascript to just work? But this is more then just shopping sites as so many websites, browsers, programs, and even OS's are making decisions that are hostile to their users. And it's coming from everywhere. What used to be controversial (e.g. dark patterns), is now normal. And if the user complains - the answers from the developers is "we're sorry, just live with it?"

I could write an essay on this but I'll focus on a company which publicly represent this hostility - Blizzard. Blizzard is an entertainment company in an industry which has a tremendous amount of competition. And many Blizzard games are paid for directly from the user's pockets so the customers are paying. But yet, even with this, the contempt the developers have towards their users is immense. While I'm not a Blizzard fan but listening to people who are - they are not happy. Yet at the same time, even with this angry customer base, the developers kept saying they "knew best" demanding the customers do things their until the ceiling broke and the mass exodus we know today happened. There's no apology, no sympathy - nothing - just complete hostility against their users.

But of course, this is not just a story about Blizzard. It's Apple, Google, Firefox, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, etc. Just look at Microsoft and their heavy use of dark patterns to force Windows 10/11 options (another essay unto itself). And so many companies gleefully advertising "it's your choice" where "your choice" is slowly "depreciated" until "your choice" is no longer in the deeply hidden options menu.

What is it about this field that attracts people that are so adamant, so demanding that their users, their customers do it "their way or the highway"? People who seemly absolutely refuse to even acknowledge the burdens they force upon their users even when their users are saying, very loudly, "I don't want this."

In the past, I used software because I wanted to use it. These days, I use software, not because I want to, but because I have to.

(To be fair, it might not be the individual developers who is hostile but something in the decision making process is causing entire company to be hostile to their users.)

But devs have a lot less authority in the modern corporate bureaucracy, and what I think of as "the product people" are the source of not so much contempt, but just a lack of interest in practical, useful outcomes. Product "vision" is harder than it looks, and in my mind, that product vision is the singular most important job in the whole dang world. When vision succeeds, it's often coming from customer-obsessed, fully committed founder types. When it fails, it's often coming from bureaucratic functionaries who care about titles and politics and other insider nonsense. Add in a dismissive wave of the hand to devs who complain "But this doesn't make any sense!" and you've got a recipe for slow death.