Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonathansampson | Hacker News Reader

What missteps? The only notable UX issue we've had was years ago, and was a matter of naïve design. When we were made aware of the issue, it was corrected within 48 hours. Hard to portray that as a "culture of hostile UX".

View on HN

I'd say only allowing BAT withdrawal to a single hosted wallet provider that requires KYC is a pretty significant UX issue.

That’s not hostile, it’s literally a requirement in the US for crypto.

Maybe that's a sign that we should keep our browser and crypto wallets as separate entities, no?

Yea, but I mean who would want to cash out their pennies earned anyways. Only businesses/creators should be cashing out and they would need to KYC for any normal donations. Users should be just donating their pennies to creators and websites, which doesn’t take any KYC.

This was only a year ago and not a great look - https://brave.com/referral-codes-in-suggested-sites/

I haven't noticed any UX issues, great job on the browser, looking forward to the search engine. Thanks.

Maybe you could start by listening instead of accosting every comment that you find. Your incessant reply-bombing is childish and unprofessional, nobody wants to engage with someone who defends a browser like it's their sole lifeline.

Furthermore, you don't get to choose what your "UX issues" are. "UX" quite literally stands for "users experience", which is on the other side of the spectrum from "developer experience". As a dev myself, I know it's difficult not to conflate the two, but acting like issues straight up don't exist is blatantly hostile.

I have no personal qualms against Brave. I'm just another developer who wants a browser, and Brave's naive featureset doesn't appeal to me: that's fine. I'm just helping other, similar users make the right choice.

I'm responding to users. You happen to have numerous comments here which aren't entirely accurate or fair, so I have responded to you a few times. Don't take it personal; if you publish something I feel is inaccurate, I'll post a response.

Regarding user experience, I'm not just a developer of Brave, but I'm a user also ;-) Not only that, but I spend a lot of time speaking with users all across the Web, so as to understand how they're using Brave, what works, and what doesn't. I do feel uniquely qualified to talk about matter of UX when it comes to Brave.

> I'm responding to users. You happen to have numerous comments here which aren't entirely accurate or fair, so I have responded to you a few times. Don't take it personal; if you publish something I feel is inaccurate, I'll post a response.

I’m not posting this in fight mode, I sincerely hope it will help: this is user hostile.

You’re responding but you’re not listening. You’re certainly not asking. How could you be sure you know what the other people you interact with think if you feel uniquely qualified to talk about users’ experience and just brush by people who don’t feel supported in their own experience?

I don’t use Brave but I think these guys are being unfair. Your comments are generally fine because they’ve prompted responses with detail, which I as a third party prefer.

“Brave is full of UX issues” <<< “Brave allows withdrawing BAT to only a single wallet provider”.

Okay, the latter comment is way more useful to me, a lay follower than the former. And it only happens because you pushed.

> I'm responding to users.

I'm gonna have to agree with GP that you're responding too much. I don't even use Brave nor do I care but I still browse HN. Obviously different people will see things differently, but you seem very defensive and it makes you come across as difficult.

Like I said, I have no skin in this game. You are welcome to ignore what I say if you don't find it helpful.

Since you seem to know it all I'll just leave you be. My only actionable advice is that you should hire someone nicer to handle public relations, lest you bleed users from your own mouth.

I do believe I've been quite respectful with you. If at any time I was caustic, abrasive, or offensive, I apologize. It is certainly not my intention.

From my read through the thread, you're being very nice, but also very dismissive. That's not actually respectful, even if it's not the harsh things you describe. And it's not kind. If you disagree with someone's experience that you feel passionately about defending, you might have better luck defending it by taking a moment to think about what they experienced differently from your own experience, how much you care about that different experience, and how you might incorporate that into future action. Not everything needs public relations, and it can definitely feel uncaring if it's mostly public explainings.

People are too sensitive nowadays. Everything needs to be wrapped silk and the actual information gets shrouded by fluff.

It’s not clear who you’re saying is being too sensitive, or why you think so.

People who think it's disrespectful when a company representative do not preface every response with "I deeply apologize that you feel this way" or some equivalent nonsense. You even claim responding to something inaccurate is user hostile.

Huh? I wasn’t suggesting the person should apologize. I was suggesting they should ask about the user’s experience rather than telling it.

Or they can just tell them facts instead of pretending to care what a random hater thinks. Just like they did. They also asked what bad UX they referred to, so they did what you wanted but it was still disrespectful apparently. If genuine feedback was met with "go fuck yourself" we could maybe call it user hostility but this was not.

I feel like pretending to listen, which is what he is doing, is worse than saying "go fuck yourself" because then it would be honest. I find it bizarre you find his feedback genuine, as to me it's the same thing as "go fuck yourself" but neatly wrapped up in a "I pretend to care what you say" format.

If he came straight out and said "I don't care about your opinion and here's why" I would respect him. Instead he just talks over the people he's pretending to listen to.

His job should be to solicit feedback, not dictate it. And if he's going to dictate it I wish he would at least be upfront about it.

You put it better than I could have before I got back to this. It doesn’t really count as “asking” if you’re preemptively dismissing the answer in the same comment.

I respect the candid comments from the Brave Dev. I wish all "PR departments" acted like this to be honest.

I see you put the twit in twitter.

We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines.

If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com