> "The saddest thing for me about modern tech’s long spiral into user manipulation and surveillance is how it has just slowly killed off the joy that people like me used to feel about new tech. Every product Meta or Amazon announces makes the future seem bleaker and grayer."
I was reminded of this quote (from Shannon Vallor who I don't know via a Cory Doctorow post https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#fel...). It's not even just about having too many features anymore, it's about having actively user hostile features that want to manipulate you into doing things or steal your data.
The article mentions Word / MS Office which is the prototype for this. They long ago crossed the Rubicon into the "too many features" domain, but recently they have moved into "connected experiences" - we want to upload everything you write and will dark pattern you into some technicality of consent, plus nonsense like accessibility checker that complains about things I do in internal company presentations while (outside of connected experiences, through some other scam to steal my data) uploads all my charts to MS servers and captions them for me so that blind users will now they are "a picture of a chart"
Anyway, that turned into a rant. Tldr, 2005 was about too many features, 2022 is about ultra manipulative features that try to steal your data and impose tech designers' world view on users
There’s some truth to that sentiment about a bleak and grayer horizon. Now I shop in tech while looking over my shoulder waiting to get mugged by some shady dark patterns and outright user hostility. It’s not friendly solve my problems territory but a menacing gauntlet of wolves waiting to feast on the next unsuspecting prey to leak all their user data back to some awful place. It’s a bit hyperbolic but that’s the color of the feelings wandering around some new tech product. I just experienced this tonight shopping for a barcode scanner and having no clue how they operate and wondering what beastly proprietary software will have to be installed and worrying about all the security junk surrounding that. Turns out they’re not too bad, basically many can go into a keyboard mode.
I was reminded of this quote (from Shannon Vallor who I don't know via a Cory Doctorow post https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#fel...). It's not even just about having too many features anymore, it's about having actively user hostile features that want to manipulate you into doing things or steal your data.
The article mentions Word / MS Office which is the prototype for this. They long ago crossed the Rubicon into the "too many features" domain, but recently they have moved into "connected experiences" - we want to upload everything you write and will dark pattern you into some technicality of consent, plus nonsense like accessibility checker that complains about things I do in internal company presentations while (outside of connected experiences, through some other scam to steal my data) uploads all my charts to MS servers and captions them for me so that blind users will now they are "a picture of a chart"
Anyway, that turned into a rant. Tldr, 2005 was about too many features, 2022 is about ultra manipulative features that try to steal your data and impose tech designers' world view on users