
The User Always Loses - musha68k
https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/joanne-mcneil-lurking-review/tnamp
======
benjaminjosephw
The VC model for funding technology is the root cause of user hostile
technology. The pressure of investments that expect high returns is a
feature/bug that determines the course these companies are likely to take. It
creates the need to occasionally tade end-user freedoms for opportunities to
"capture value".

Venture Capital also imports theories of scarcity and under-production that
our entire open-source ecosystem have shown don't apply in the same way to the
digital world. The funding of end-user friendly software development clearly
isn't a solved problem but the history of the internet clearly demonstrates
that our existing models aren't sufficient. VC is ripe for disruption.

I believe that the next leap forward to "make the world a better place" isn't
new digital products but a new framework for how we build technology companies
in the first place. We needn't accept this as a fundamental foundation that
can't change - creative destruction is the name of the game after all.

~~~
jasode
_> The VC model for funding technology is the root cause of user hostile
technology. The pressure of investments that expect high returns [...]_

VCs are not the root cause. You're not looking hard enough for
_counterexamples_.

Examples of software companies that didn't take VC money that many consider to
be "user hostile" are:

\- Intuit -- see 1-star reviews on Amazon of annual Quicken releases and
forced upgrades of buggy software that nobody wants

\- Autodesk -- expensive licensing and stagnant features and bug fixes in
Revit, 3ds Max, etc

\- Microsoft -- list of various user complaints over decades are well known
[pedantic alert: MS took a little bit of VC money from David F. Marquardt but
they didn't need it because they were already profitable with cash in the
bank; they just wanted DFM as an advisor for their upcoming IPO]

The real root cause of "user hostility" is that companies are run by _humans_
and humans are self-serving and want to make more money. E.g. Look at COVID
causing some colleges/universities cancelling in-person classes and refuse to
refund tuition fees claiming that "video instruction" is same quality of
education. The money came from students and not VCs. You can't blame VCs for
that.

 _> VC is ripe for disruption._

The issue is the company _founders_ , not the VCs.

~~~
ohazi
> The real root cause of "user hostility" is that companies are run by humans
> and humans are self-serving and want to make more money.

At least for software, we know of one solution that works: free (as in speech)
software. Still made by humans, but usually without the self-serving greed,
and if any of that does turn up, you never lose access to the last-good
version and source, in case you or someone else wants to fork it.

That's not to say that there aren't valid complaints about the availability
and usability of free software.

There are some free applications that can do amazing things, but are genuinely
less intuitive than comparable commercial software. It's not surprising that
users who aren't free software diehards don't want to use these tools.

There are also entire ecosystems where free software just isn't a thing, e.g.
phone software and hosted user services.

~~~
thewebcount
> At least for software, we know of one solution that works: free (as in
> speech) software. Still made by humans, but usually without the self-serving
> greed

Sorry, but this is laughable. Instead of self-serving greed, you have self-
serving "what interests the person writing it." That leaves us with open
source software that has horrible user interfaces and is every bit as user-
hostile as for-pay software. (For example, see the recent arguments about
git's UI in this thread[0].)

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24374268](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24374268)

~~~
ohazi
> laughable

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you
win" \-- Misattributed

> horrible user interfaces and is every bit as user-hostile as for-pay
> software

 _This_ statement is laughable. A poorly designed UI is not equivalent to a UI
filled with dark patterns. I was asserting that free software is a known
solution to user-hostile software, not a solution to bad UI.

Do you really think being confused about how to rebase in git is the same as
being tricked into creating an online Microsoft account instead of a local
account when installing Windows? Or being tricked into buying some TurboTax
add-on that you didn't want or need, and can't refund without wasting 2 hours
on the phone?

The solution to the git problem is to read the documentation. Nobody is
actively trying to prevent you from solving your problem, the designers are
just bad at UI design. The solution to Microsoft's problem is to realize that
it's intentionally user-hostile, and you have to find a workaround that they
don't want you to use, like temporarily disconnecting from the internet. The
solution to the TurboTax problem is to just be vigilant and paranoid and
exhausted at all times.

The git situation is unfortunate. The Microsoft and TurboTax situations are
stupid user-hostile bullshit. They're not even remotely equivalent.

I'm going to stick to my principles and continue working to create the
software future that I actually prefer. I won't tell you to "just fork it and
fix it yourself" like some other people might -- you're free to take the short
term perspective if you prefer. You're free to laugh at me and others if you
prefer.

But in the long run, your perspective is wrong. Free software is like a
steamroller. It's slow, but it's slow because the people building it observe
what's being built around them and tend to take the longer route of building
it correctly rather than just cranking out whatever makes investors happy.

In the long run, the git UI will be improved, or an better replacement will
turn up. Microsoft's telemetry, on the other hand, will never go away.

~~~
juped
The Git UI will probably never be "improved" because it makes sense to people
who understand how Git works rather than pasting command lines they found
online, and the few real warts like status output telling you to use "git
pull", which is a mistake in the workflows most people use, are too old and
entrenched.

If you look at the discussions on the mailing list, you'll see people care a
lot and make thoughtful decisions about the user experience, it just isn't
aimed at the people for whom no possible user interface change would be
helpful, because they don't know what's going on and don't read documentation.

~~~
ohazi
I mostly agree with you, but it was just the example that the parent comment
used. The same could apply to the GIMP or Inkscape or Blender or FreeCAD or
... (etc.)

~~~
a1369209993
Well, GIMP breaking ctrl-S is actively user-hostile, but:

> if any of that does turn up, you never lose access to the last-good version
> and source, in case you or someone else wants to fork it.

------
jiofih
> blogging take off as a shared response to the US invasion of Iraq

Blogging took off because half the worlds population started having access to
the internet in the early 2000s. That seems incredibly myopic and US centric.

~~~
astura
Not only is myopic and US-centered, it's just plain non-factual, LiveJournal
really took off pre-9/11\. Around 2000-2001 literally everyone in my friend
group were on LJ (except me), and not just passively/occasionally - regular
active users and always talking about LJ stuff IRL. Even people who didn't
have a computer at home! It seemed like it was just as much a social network
as it was a publishing platform.

According to Wikipedia LiveJournal had to implement an invite-only system for
new users because they were growing faster than the server architecture could
handle. This was all started pre-9/11.

That being said, I didn't hear the word "blog" until the year 2003.

Beyond that I don't recall the Iraq War being a major blogging topic. Sure,
everyone has an opinion on the Iraq War, but how many blog posts can the
average person actually write about their feelings on the Iraq War? Can't be
more than a few, not a topic that's going to keep the masses activity
blogging.

To say blogging was a "shared response" to the invasion of Iraq is just...
bizarre.

~~~
techer
Maybe vaguely referring to Salam Pax.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salam_Pax](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salam_Pax)

Iraqi blogger.

~~~
astura
The claim was not "there was several popular blogs that dealt with the topic
of the Iraq War." The quote in full

>Why did blogging take off as a shared response to the US invasion of Iraq?
(When “the Internet became an ideal valve to release opinions,” she writes,
“who didn’t have an opinion on the Iraq war?”)

Basically claiming that blogging became popular because everyone wanted to
share their opinion on the Iraq War. That's just not factual and, quite
frankly, ridiculous.

------
superkuh
So don't be a user. Self host and federate. The internet of the 90s is still
alive if you step outside the walled gardens.

And when you use other's services, like, say, reading an article hosted at
'thenation.com', a site which attempts to block you from reading unless you
run their javascript and CSS, use a browser with tools that allow you to
toggle things like JS and CSS to read it anyway. Then re-share the article as
plain text,
[https://write.as/tg3o7a6dfa5ck.md](https://write.as/tg3o7a6dfa5ck.md)

And always remember: Lurking is good,
[https://i.imgur.com/7NYQ17y.mp4](https://i.imgur.com/7NYQ17y.mp4)

~~~
tqi
But for many of the core criticisms of large tech platforms like
Facebook/Google/Twitter self hosting and federation doesn't really address the
problems (fake news, fomenting extremism or conspiracy theory, harassment,
discrimination) so much as make it so that there is not a single entity to
villify.

~~~
NineStarPoint
And if you remove them from Facebook/Google/Twitter, they’ll still make their
own side sites and keep spreading those things anyway (see: Reddit->Vote). The
value of those things not being present in easy central entities is that it
heavily limits their ability to easily spread.

------
danielhua
"Let’s admit it, we are all in the persuasion business. Technologists build
products meant to persuade people to do what we want them to do. We call these
people 'users' and even if we don’t say it aloud, we secretly wish every one
of them would become fiendishly hooked to whatever we’re making." \--"Hooked"
(2013)

The snappy aphorism off the top of my head is that "only drug dealers and IT
call their customers 'users.'"

One day perhaps we will indeed look at the apps of today as massive social
engineering experiments gone haywire. But the author's categorization of
Facebook as an "ant farm of humanity" and a "digital cesspool" is juuuust a
bit too misanthropic and bitter for my tastes. The internet has connected
humanity to an extent that is literally hard to grasp, and yes, that does come
with very human problems, so it's silly imo to pin all of our woes on Facebook
et al. I'd love to hear what kinds of creative derogatory phrases the author
would come up with to describe the period of dominating telephone networks, or
mass media television, or even before we had any wires at all and just had to
rely on the post and grapevine in the horrific dark ages before the invention
of the telegraph in the 19th century.

Plus, for nostalgia's sake, the indie web's still out there if you know where
to look (e.g. [https://wiby.me/](https://wiby.me/))

~~~
eesmith
While it's a well-known and indeed snappy aphorism, many years after I heard
it, I found out that in the mid-20th century, librarians used the term "users"
for what they now call "patrons".

For examples: from 1952, "A public library user is defined as an individual
twelve years of age or over who used either a branch library or bookmobile
during the thirty days preceding the interview." (Quoting "Rural reading
habits; a study of county library planning, Prince Georges County, Md.",
[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015034569759&vi...](https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015034569759&view=1up&seq=20&q1=user)
)

From 1931, "This was the first complete triple asyndetic dictionary catalog.
It became a favorite with town and mercantile libraries, the idea always being
that the user was searching for some book he knew about ..." ("Outline of the
history of the development of the American public library",
[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015019970162&vi...](https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015019970162&view=1up&seq=73&q1=user))

From 1928, "Consider the User of Bulletins", title of a letter to the editor
in Science -
[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/67/1724/40.2](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/67/1724/40.2)
.

Maybe it wasn't specific to library science either. I just did a broader
search for "user" and found, for example, a 1905 ad for a book of tables for
surveyors and engineers: "The computations enable the user to ascertain the
sines and cosines for a distance of twelve miles to within half an inch, and
this by reference to but One Table, in place of the usual Fifteen minute
computations required. This alone is evidence of the assistance which the
Tables ensure to every user ... "
[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015063579133&vi...](https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015063579133&view=1up&seq=205&q1=user)

~~~
danielhua
Fascinating! I'll update my nomenclature, that's some quality digging.

------
ppod
>When users are scapegoated, Silicon Valley is left off the hook

Is this really the dominant narrative? Are there lots of thinkpieces going
around about how fair and kind Silicon Valley is, if only it weren't for all
those mean people using their services? Maybe it is so obvious that it doesn't
need to be said, but when comparing the early internet to the current
internet, we cannot let the users off the hook!

The further back you go, the harder it was to get on the internet, both as a
user and a publisher. That meant the early internet was full of people who
worked at universities, or were so motivated to discuss weird hobbies and
interests with others that they struggled through the expense and technical
difficulties, maybe even self-hosted, learned weird new languages from
scratch. These were interesting, educated, intelligent, thoughtful and
passionate people.

It's like air travel. If you were flying in the 1970s you probably had an
interesting or important job or story. Getting on a plane meant meeting a
bunch of interesting people. Now it doesn't. That is not a bad thing and it's
not Southwest's fault. And when people complain about it, even though they
might target Southwest (or Facebook), there is really an underlying snobbery
about it. I can't believe I have to sit next to all these commoners on my
internet!

~~~
Orou
> These were interesting, educated, intelligent, thoughtful and passionate
> people

> there is really an underlying snobbery about it

These contrast very interestingly, but I think it's missing an important
point. The early internet was characterized by complete freedom of
association. You could talk about whatever, with whomever. If enough people
shared an interest, a community could form.

The problem with the modern internet isn't that the filthy plebs are using it
- it's that all of the content suggestion algorithms, clickbait articles, and
advertising are designed for maximum engagement. It's no longer what groups of
"interesting, educated, intelligent, thoughtful and passionate people"
collectively put forward, without an ulterior financial incentive, that
determines what content people see. I think that's the ultimate issue - it's
not that low quality content proliferates, it's that there are few if any ways
of finding high-quality content among all the crap.

It's one of the main reasons I read Hacker News - it's an excellent content
filter.

~~~
tomc1985
Precisely. Call me elitist all day long -- get those filthy plebs out of my
spaces!

------
katsume3
I find it ironic that this article talks about the user losing out to
aggressive (and intrusive) advertising on the web, but presents me with an un-
closeable modal window[0] asking me to subscribe to their blog. Note: I have
JS disabled by default, and had to temporarily enable JS to view the article,
but it's still intrusive and annoying for users.

[0] [https://imgur.com/a/SQSHh0i](https://imgur.com/a/SQSHh0i)

~~~
true_religion
Is it an advertisement when it’s the same property that you are in? That’s
like HBO advertising the next episode of a show you are watching.

~~~
aaronax
Yes, though it does become a fuzzy line.

I believe it would not be advertising to display the next episode of a series,
or even auto play it. But it would be advertising to display a different
series or film.

For a fuzzier one, how about a newspaper providing links to their other
stories at the bottom of an article that you have read? Typically I gain
nothing by ingesting more of a particular publication's writing, so that could
be an ad rather than useful functionality. Perhaps not in a special
circumstance such as if I am trying to catch up on news local to that
publication.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
I don't really mind links to other articles at the _bottom_ of the article
that I'm reading. I mean, yes, it's a kind of advertising, but it's not
intrinsically intrusive. If a site brings up a modal popup while I'm scrolling
an article saying "OMG ENTER YOUR EMAIL HERE TO GET NOTIFIED WHENEVER WE WRITE
ANYTHING ABOUT ANYTHING [or click this tiny text that says "no" in the most
passive-aggressive phrasing we could think of]", that's a different issue.

(I kind of wonder if internet advertising would be a lot less hated if it had
developed with a culture of restraint rather than maximum in-your-faceness,
although to be fair, I'm not sure how that could ever have happened.)

------
hh3k0
> […] carpet-bombing campaign to market the still nascent World Wide Web […]
> ad blitz […]

I get it, advertising sucks. Still, save the military terminology for things
that are related to the fucking military.

I mean, I wonder what a 57-year-old from Cambodia would think when he reads
about how much the author suffered under the "carpet-bombing campaign" of AOL
and the likes.

------
api
The user always loses because the user is not the paying customer.
Advertisers, surveillance agencies, and propagandists are the paying
customers. Businesses serve the paying customer, not the “user” who in this
model is the product.

This is not much better than old media really, which was always mostly ad
supported. Media has always been a deflationary race to the bottom. When one
player offers something cheap or free everyone else must follow suit and the
economic model collapses. The cheapest crap and/or content with ulterior
motives funded by someone else wins.

~~~
blfr
Advertisers aren't winning either. They're paying more and more for ads with
fewer avenues for unpaid traffic.

You could maybe say that they're getting more measurable results than back in
the day of TV and press dominance but having seen it from the inside, I doubt
most are sophisticated enough to make use of that.

~~~
moksly
I don’t think the metrics or analytics are really giving better results.
Mainly because platform access has become a product, that is defined by the
seller.

You could very easily measure the effects of a 90’ies styled super soaker TV
adds in sales. You can’t as easily measure the success of the Facebook
advertisement for your board game kickstarter campaign.

------
cryptica
> How did the Internet get so bad?

The article misses the point. The problem has its root in monetary policy. The
problem is supply-side economics.

Money printing and giving control of the money supply to banks has made
consumers redundant appendages of the financial system.

Imagine that you're the CEO of a unicorn startup or a big corporation and you
constantly deal with investors, banks and customers. Which of these 3 groups
do you derive most of your wealth from? Banks and investors.

Banks print money and loan it out to your investors and your investors use
that money to buy your company stock and drive up its price - Also, banks loan
your company money directly to buy back its own stock... As an executive, if
you want to maximize your bonus, banks and investors are the only two entities
you really care about... Your actual customers are merely appendages; they're
merely a useful metric which allows you to get more money from investors and
banks.

So long as all the new fiat money enters the economy through big institutions
and big investors via bank loans, the consumer will always be an afterthought
in the decision-making process. You're the product because you're not the
source of money. Consumers don't have any money. Only institutions have money
because they're printing it for free and distributing it among themselves by
the trillions.

That's why we need UBI (Universal Basic Income) urgently - That's the only
safe way to switch to sane demand-side economics.

~~~
afarrell
This problem is most apparent during a recession, when the central bank
(rightly) strives to quickly increase the money supply by buying bonds (and
apparently equities!).

If instead there could be a joint policy by The Fed and the Social Security
Administration, then the flow of money (and thereby attention)_could be less
lopsided.

~~~
cryptica
>> when the central bank (rightly) strives to quickly increase the money
supply

I disagree completely that central banks trying to increase the money supply
is righteous in any way. I'm a value producer and this monetary policy has
harmed me.

I can see exactly how it has harmed me and I can see the kinds of people it
has benefited and I don't agree at all. The central bank has stolen value from
me and given it to my enemy.

~~~
afarrell
Okay. I don't see how you make the logical leap from "this monetary policy has
harmed me and benefited people I don't like" to "this is not righteous".

~~~
cryptica
Printing of fiat money and injecting it into the economy through big
government contracts and bank loans has mostly benefited large corporations.
Because of their front row access to all this easy money, corporations and a
handful of big VC-backed unicorn startups have had an upper hand in the market
(see Cantillon effect) and they were (and still are) in every industry; this
made it impossible to start my own business no matter what industry I went
into. Also, I did some open source work, launched a popular project and
corporations got into open source too and destroyed all possible business
opportunities for me. Corporations couldn't even keep their hands off from
open source.

It seems that my project was blacklisted/censored somewhere because no
corporation seems to have ever used my project in spite of the fact that it's
very popular with startups and independent developers. I got 0 consulting
contracts from any big corporations. I had discussions with some corporates
who backed out in a very suspicious way for no apparent reason.

And also, as a software developer I was harmed through the ongoing
bureaucratization of the tech industry by big corporations and the startups
who mindlessly copy them; I've witnessed the introduction of more tools, more
processes and ever decreasing productivity in the industry.

I could go on and on for hours about all the problems I've encountered and
most of them link back to corporations and their upper hand in our fiat
monetary system due to Cantillon effects.

------
rossdavidh
At one time, a minority of people were on the internet, often with their own
blogs, but most people were just watching TV.

Now, most people are on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a few other massively
high-traffic websites, while a minority of people are on the rest of the
internet, often with their own blogs.

It's not as different as it looks, it's just that the TV networks got
displaced by the few high-traffic websites. It's apocalyptic for for-profit
TV, radio, and newspaper companies, who have been mostly circling the drain as
FAANG gobbles up their ad revenue. But the impact on "the internet" is not as
different as it looks, it's just that "the internet" now needs a new name,
like maybe "the low-traffic-website internet" but shorter (tltwi, pronounced
"tilt-we"), because the Old Media are now co-hosted on the same
infrastructure.

Most people didn't get on the internet prior to AOL. Most people don't leave
the high-traffic-sites internet now. It's not like there aren't any blogs
left. It's not as different as it looks.

------
gumby
This transformation of customers to “users” (an otherwise appropriate and even
innocuous term when used in context) parallels the commonplace use of
“consumer” for “person” (a usage I even see on HN).

We all have many roles, in which it may be appropriate to consider us as
“user”, “customer”, “consumer”, “driver”, “parent”, “friend”...* preferring
the term “person” might remind us that at the end of the day that the user’s
interest is not necessarily aligned with ours (usually joystick in face) and
that we need them more than they need us.

* I had a colleague who refers to parents of teens as “protectors of terrorists”. Yes, he had four teens himself. While the term was unwieldy and the joke rapidly wore thin, it reminded me of the various roles played by parents...and kids, and made me more tolerant of the foibles of teens. When we bundle a person into “user” it’s easy to lose perspective on the actual objective.

------
zwieback
For a while old media subsidized online media and that was the short "golden"
age of online newspapers, magazines etc., Never to return.

For those if us not obsessed with twitter and Facebook the golden age is now,
the amount and quality of information available to an engineer is incredible
and the online communities are mostly positive.

------
eximius
Someone mentioned federation but the problem is that often there isn't a good
group to federate. Google+ wasn't great, but I do miss circles. But the
intersection of my circles and the circles of those in my circles were small.

I feel like the "correct" model is users hosting their data with apps
operating on it in a decentralized (or multi-layer federation ) way. But the
economics are just really, really hard without certain restrictions, like
always on connections for a primary 'home' device.

------
marban
I'm currently working on something I would describe as Digg 1.0 for grown-ups
and during my recent research cam across
[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/m7jwyx/celebrities-
ruin-e...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/m7jwyx/celebrities-ruin-every-
platform-bella-thorne-onlyfans-controversy) — mostly fluff, but the celebrity
factor makes a point.

------
amelius
We also have "The customer always loses".

I guess it all translates to "The small guy always loses".

And VCs piling up money doesn't work in favor of the small guy.

------
excalibur
I mean... Users wrote us. A User even wrote you!

~~~
teddyh
No one user wrote me! I’m worth millions of their man-years!

------
pinewurst
Nobody seems to mention Product Manager culture e.g. the cult of A/B and their
rewards for often dubious engagement metrics. Admittedly this is somewhat of a
second order effect of the VC model, but I'll argue it's now the universal
standard for success regardless of the initial motivator.

------
newyorker2
If people openly believe that centralization of the web is bad yet we continue
pumping unnecessary money into the tech industry - then surely this must mean
we're in a bubble. How wrong am I?

------
hinkley
This is probably why I’m always attracted to productivity tools. Spending $10
to save $100 is a net positive contribution. Skinner boxing people and spying
on them are not.

------
nphd
>the Internet didn’t have to become what it is today.

Part of my last-lecture pep talk to every 300-student CS class I taught.

------
unabst
We also live in a "consumer always loses" economy as well. It could just be
"consumer" supercedes "user".

I was listening to Richard Wolff describing to Patrick Bet-David how
capitalism creates monopolies and in the end the consumers always lose [1]. As
companies get bigger, they become worse actors. I can't think of a counter
example.

Patrick thinks everything has gotten cheaper and the consumer is winning, at
least today (since history only backs the thesis). Richard couldn't come up
with immediate counter examples regarding how Amazon is abusing their monopoly
priviledges but FBA pricing and seller fees came to mind. Someone in the
comments mentioned prescription drugs.

[1] Heated Debate On Capitalism with America’s Most Prominent Marxist
Economist - Richard Wolff [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj-
zFgxCUnY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj-zFgxCUnY)

------
lemonlizzie
A healthier internet? yeah right

------
fullshark
Nostalgia for the old internet is basically nostalgia for a wild period of
market capture that will never come again. People took chances and accepted
massive short term losses in an attempt to capture hypothetical market share.
Now that we know better what the internet is going to look like you aren't
going to see people take big chances and provide user value at massive
discounts again (simple example: News papers providing articles in front of
paywalls).

~~~
im3w1l
It's not that I miss the bait part of bait-and-switch. I miss what the bait
outcompeted.

