Comment by schmuckonwheels | Hacker News Reader

Comment by schmuckonwheels | Hacker News Reader

schmuckonwheels

It's difficult to capture into words how much contempt I hold for Google and Amazon, two companies which lost their way long ago and are now actively user-hostile.

YouTube has gotten worse with every release. Endless, pointless UI changes. Sneaky resolution downgrades. When your video says "Auto 1080p" it's like 480p quality, manually choose 1080p and watch it change.

Amazon has been working overtime to make your experience worse. The latest innovation is to eliminate invoices for US customers. This wasn't a mistake, as it was rolled out gradually over a few months, with workarounds quickly plugged as users become aware of them. Oh, there still is a "view invoice" button but it's just a redirect to order summary now.

Dark patterns galore since cancelling Prime. Every checkout flow I'm hit with a minimum of two clicks where I have to decline or change something. Ordering a packet of laundry soap feels like buying a used car.

The employees that implement this stuff dare to call themselves "engineers" yet their entire energy is devoted to making their customer's lives more miserable, which they are somehow paid a disgusting amount of money to go do.

Real engineers solve problems.

These people invent new problems to then go solve, likely because they are chasing their next promotion.

There's a lot of folx who got into this business for all the wrong reasons and we're now seeing the results of that on a massive scale.

>entire energy is devoted to making their customer's lives more miserable

If these changes are not hurting user metrics are they really making their lives miserable? When you are optimizing an experience for billions of users, numbers are the only thing you can trust.

Lies, damned lies, and statistics

I’m still using Amazon as much as I was before, it’s just a more miserable experience now which I can feel and the annoyances are compounding. I’ve not yet done anything that would show in their numbers, like cancel my prime or start trying to shop elsewhere or even boycott them altogether, but that doesn’t mean I’m happy as I was and would say they’re pushing me to a point of defection. All to say, they should be smart enough to not just do uninformed numerical analysis. They need to hone a gut feeling for how pleased people are or build metrics around that. They should see satisfaction is waning. In fact, it may be what’s driving this behavior. If satisfaction is down, people leave, sales slump, then they make more user hostile changes in hopes to cover the sales gap with existing customers, but results in satisfaction going down at every pass. It’s a vicious cycle.

> If these changes are not hurting user metrics

I suspect there is no metric specifically answering the question "do users want [enshittification of the day]?"

There are probably plenty that measure success with dark patterns however, like viewership and engagement.

The metrics are bad. Data driven decision making is a very easy trap. If you capture the wrong data then you just optimize for worse stuff.

Classic example: reactions and watch time as measuring engagement. Leads to shittier content being promoted because the more garbage something is, the more outraged people will be.

And that's why Facebook has "optimized" itself to be as shitty of a platform as humanly possible.

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