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Comment by Ensorceled | Hacker News Reader

> I don't think anyone is directly blaming the users here.

The comment I'm replying to is LITERALLY blaming "normal users" for these problems.

Normal users, as they represent by definition the largest numbers, are necessary to enable the network effects on which the Internet companies rely, and as a result they also put other, reluctant users in a position of minority, the position of the 'unreasonable', the position of the grumpy old fart, the position of the burden to support.

The mass, thus the normal user, is indeed the enabler.

I fall in the "grumpy old fart" category.

But this isn't the fault of users, "normal" or otherwise; enablers don't make people abuse alcohol or whatever. Alcoholics who blame their enablers are deceiving themselves, and if designers try to blame users for their design errors, they are making the same mistake.

A lot of the crapness, AFAICS, is down to mobile. Mobile browsers and desktop/laptop browsers are different, and are used differently. And mobile browsers aren't all alike. Since most website hits are now from mobiles, designers are optimising for mobile, and then their employers stop the project before the desktop/laptop work is done. This really annoys me, because I'm too blind and fat-fingered to use a mobile as much more than a phone.

I think the crapness of the modern web[1] is going to eventually result in a rebellion. Like, the crapness seems to be snowballing. I mean, popups? What? I thought we got rid of them 15 years ago, because they were crap. How come people think they're now OK?

[1] The OP spoke of "todays's internet experience", but all he spoke of was the web. The rest of the internet seems to be working as well, or better, than it was working yesterday.

"Enabler" is a good term, as in psychology enablers can often be victims too.

It’s pointing out that it’s a side effect of user market forces. The point is that users keep using these sites despite all of these annoying patterns.

It's blaming users for market forces though. It's kind of a lazy invocation of the just world fallacy: the users must be ok with it because otherwise they would have revolted if they werent.

I've accepted many a dark pattern because of sunk costs and a lack of energy, time or options. I dont always have the energy to fight and punish.

Ultimately market forces are about collective power, not a collective representation of "what people want". A lot of people would like us to blur the two but they are distinct.

The challenge is, when no notable end user group is coordinate enough to havd significant market force/power to push back, what else do you call it but ‘users accept it’.

Everyone I know hates Comcast and the defacto monopolies in many areas with internet service. (Among many examples). But except in a few small areas, no one seems to even be effectively pushing back.

‘We’ve reached a hopefully temporary equilibrium point where corporate interests and ability to extract value vs user interests (and their lack of ability or interest in fighting for them) result in users hating life consistently’ isn’t any more explanatory I think, but says pretty much the same thing.

Users are relatively helpless/uneducated/captured and uncoordinated here at the moment, and the business interests are getting less pleasant as they fight each other in the absence of any other guidance/regulation as they try to grow and extract the maximum value they can.

At some point something with change and we’ll start shifting to another equilibrium point. Based on past experience I doubt it will be much friendlier to end users, but I have been surprised once or twice before.

And this isn’t (near as I can tell), ‘corporations bad’. Everyone always tries to get the maximum value they can get out of a system barring energy expended/concern about social judgement/blowback concerns.

From kids downloading warez to someone looking for maximum stimulation/emotional load from browsing instagram for free to a company getting the extra couple dollars from improving a signup flow.

Or because they have no other choice. It's mind-boggling that the very people responsible for creating this landscape have the audacity to throw up their hands and try to absolve themselves of responsibility for the things they built by saying "idk the users just love being screwed". We must do better.

> We must do better.

Meaning what? Name-and-shame clearly won't do the job. The only solution I can see is for there to be laws against dark patterns. The profit incentive for user-hostile design isn't going to go away.

I would absolutely support stronger regulation. Unfortunately, I don't believe the Overton window will be there in the United States for some time.

I said "directly" blaming, very important distinction.

The people making the garbage is still the ones to blame for the garbage itself. The reason people make such garbage is because a subset of people accept it. But nobody is saying the people accepting it are doing it out of an evilness (maybe they're saying it's out of "dumbness", but I would disagree with that too).

someone can say that people are allowing themselves to be victimized, without saying that the people doing the victimizing are in the right.

The comment however is wrong in that it is perhaps not possible for the users to keep themselves from being victimized, without some recourse to the law.

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