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Comment by reverendsteveii | Hacker News Reader

I have a UX rule that I try to implement: if I'm in a workflow and the app interrupts with something that is not immediately related to that workflow, I uninstall the app and never use it again. No, I don't care about that new feature. I care about the feature I'm currently using. No, I don't want to allow notifications. You don't choose when we interact, I do. You're the machine and I'm the human. No, I don't want to join your discord, or follow you on social media. I assure you that if you prompt me to give you a rating in the app store that you do not want my rating. Let me do the thing I installed you to do and otherwise fuck entirely off.

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> I assure you that if you prompt me to give you a rating in the app store that you do not want my rating.

This recently got egregious. Android itself is now showing these prompts for the Messages (SMS) and Phone apps! Like What The Actual Fuck?!

You must have a very empty phone. I salute you.

I usually take the time to send an email to whoever's email I can find over the issue before walking away.

Sounds like a way for them to Fire their too-smart customers.

Sort of how obvious typos in phishing emails leave them with "customers" who will "buy" what they're selling.

Amen. We need a whole movement around this to take back control of software.

Ahem... https://www.fsf.org/

In the year of our lord 2025 Futo is doing more for real users than the FSF could ever dream. The FSF had their day but it's pretty long passed for people who aren't tech nerds.

f/oss is a good thing and is probably a natural ally to what we're doing (after all, if something is evil but you're able to change it you can just make it not evil) but it's not actually the goal. f/oss is about what you can do with software once it's built. this is about what you can make software do.

https://futo.org

We need to coin a term for this concept into a “law” got a nice name we can use? e.g. FuckOff’s Law

If enough users adopt this behavior you can force companies to change hah

I mean, my username is reverendsteveii, maybe Steve's Law of Reverence for End Users?

Sounds good now cement your name in history, go post on X with a timestamp

I love that that's the web2.0 equivalent of mailing yourself a letter w your claim in it and keeping it sealed and postmarked. That being said, twitter is dead to me.

Yeah, well, I for one trust HN to perform that function more than I do Twitter. Specifically, Twitter is more likely to delete old tweets out of a profit motive or an ideological or propaganda motive.

Parenthetically, a solution that relies on a blockchain can be much better than either. Blockchain tech does have some merit although the world doesn't need hundreds of blockchains: a few will do (and the official git repo for Linux could probably suffice as one of them).

Amen. I just uninstall applications that do anti-user crap. There are very few applications that I need. Almost all are replaceable or truly unnecessary.

The most recent example that sticks in my mind is I uninstalled Duolingo because they kept changing the app icon, but what finally did it for me is when they changed to some disgusting version of it with snot dripping from the creature's (is it an owl? some kind of bird? I forget) nostrils. WTF Duolingo? Uninstalled, I'm done with it.

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