Comment by venturecruelty | Hacker News Reader

Comment by venturecruelty | Hacker News Reader

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>I have a big problem with a government forcing companies to enable toggles on features because users complain about the UX.

I have a big problem with companies forcing me to use garbage I don't want to use.

>If there are problems with copyright, that's an issue for the courts -- not a user toggle.

But in the meantime, companies can just get away with breaking the law.

>If you have problems with the electricity, then that's an issue for electricity infrastructure regulations.

But in the meantime, companies can drive up the cost of electricity with reckless abandon.

>If you think it doens't work, then don't use it.

I wish I lived in your world where I can opt out of all of this AI garbage.

>Passing a law forcing a company to turn off a legal feature by default is absurd.

"Legal" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. You know the court system is slow, and companies running roughshod over the law until the litigation works itself out "because they're all already doing it anyway" is par for the course. AirBnB should've been illegal, but by the time we went to litigate it, it was too big. Spotify sold pirated music until it was too big to litigate. How convenient that this keeps happening. To the casual observer, it would almost seem intentional, but no, it's probably just some crazy coincidence.

>It's no different from asking a publisher to censor pages of a book that some people don't like, and make them available only by a second mail-order purchase to the publisher. That's censorship.

Forcing companies to stop being deleterious to society is not censorship, and it isn't Handmaid's Tale to enforce a semblance of consumer rights.

> I have a big problem with companies forcing me to use garbage I don't want to use.

That pretty much sums it up. And the answer is: too bad. Deal with it, like the rest of us.

I have a big problem with companies not sending me a check for a million dollars. But companies don't obey my whims. And I'm not going to complain that the government should do something about it, because that would be silly and immature.

In reality, companies try their best to build products that make money, and they compete with each other to do so. These principles have led to amazing products. And as long as no consumers are being harmed (e.g. fraud, safety, etc.), asking the government to interfere in product decisions is a terrible idea. The free market exists because it does a better job than any other system at giving consumers what they want. Just because you or a group of people personally don't like a particular product isn't a reason to overturn the free market and start asking the government to interfere with product design. Because if you start down that path, pretty soon they're going to be interfering with the things you like.

>That pretty much sums it up. And the answer is: too bad. Deal with it, like the rest of us.

I am dealing with it, thanks, by fighting against it.

>I have a big problem with companies not sending me a check for a million dollars. But companies don't obey my whims. And I'm not going to complain that the government should do something about it, because that would be silly and immature.

Because as we all know, forcing you to use the abusive copyright laundering slop machine is exactly morally equivalent to not getting arbitrary cheques in the mail.

>In reality, companies try their best to build products that make money, and they compete with each other to do so.

In the Atlas Shrugged cinematic universe, maybe. Now, companies try to extract as much as they can by doing as little as possible. Who was Google competing with for their AI summmary, when it's so laughably bad, and the only people who want it are the people whose paycheques depend on it, or people who want engagement on LinkedIn?

>The free market exists because it does a better job than any other system at giving consumers what they want.

Nobody wants this!

>Because if you start down that path, pretty soon they're going to be interfering with the things you like.

I mean, they're doing that, too, and people like you look down your nose and tell me to take that abuse as well. So no, I'm not going to sit idly by and watch these parasites ruin what shreds of humanity I have left.

>> The free market exists because it does a better job than any other system at giving consumers what they want.

> Nobody wants this!

OK, well if you don't believe in the free market then sure.

Good luck seeing how well state ownership manages the economy and if it does a better job at delivering the software features you want, or even of putting food on your table. Because the entire history of the twentieth century says you're not going to like it.

"regulating corporate overreach = state ownership"

Huh.

Your argument boils down to "it is wrong for people to defend themselves from corporations", but the cases you're making are incoherent. It seems like you believe this but don't know why you believe it and you're making up gibberish to defend it. I'd suggest you stop and analyze why you believe this--like what you really think will happen, and why you really think people do not have a right to defend themselves. Personally I can think of no situation where it is moral to say: people should not defend themselves. The concept seems absurd. To me all of human history is evidence that people do, always, have a right to defend themselves, and much evil has been perpetrated by the notion that they should sit down endure abuses instead.

No, you seem to not be reading what I'm saying. Please don't call it "incoherent" or "gibberish" just because you don't agree. That's completely inappropriate.

We're talking about a UX choice and you're talking about people "defending themselves" as opposed to "enduring abuses" coming from "much evil"?

The justification you're proposing is the same one that censors free speech, because people want to defend themselves from certain ideas, or things they just don't "like".

There's no harm here. Nobody's attacking you. You're not being abused. We're talking about a software feature you think is inconvenient that it takes up space on your screen.

I think companies should have the freedom to design products the they want, as long as it's not causing harm. Which in this case, it's not. You just don't like it. But that's not harm. If you don't like it, don't use it. Same as if you don't like a book, don't read it.

Rights and freedoms exist for a good reason. They're not absolute because they can conflict with each other, but in this case there's zero conflict. There's no justification for the government to start dictating Google's UX in this case.

> The free market exists because it does a better job than any other system at giving consumers what they want.

Bull. Free markets are subject to a lot of pressures, both from the consumers, but also from the corporate ownership and supply chains. The average consumer cannot afford a bespoke alternative for everything they want, or need, so are subject to a market. Within the constraints of that market it is, indeed, best for them if they are free to choose what they want.

But from personal experience I know damn sure that what I really really want is often not available, so I'm left signalling with my money that a barely tolerable alternative is acceptable. And then, over a long enough period of time, I don't even get that barely tolerable alternative anymore as the company has phased it out. Free markets, in an age of mass production and lower margins, universally mean that a fraction of the market will be unable to buy what they want, and the alternatives available may mean they have to go without entirely. Because we have lost the ability to make it ourselves (assuming we ever had that ability).

> But from personal experience I know damn sure that what I really really want is often not available

But that's just life. I genuinely don't understand how you can complain that not every product is exactly the product you want. Companies are designing their products to meet the needs of millions of people at the price point they can pay for it. Not for you personally.

We have more consumer choice than we've ever had in modern history, and you're still complaining it's not enough?

Even when we lived in tribes and made everything ourselves, we were extremely limited in our options to the raw materials available locally, and the extremely limited ability to transform things. We've never had more choice than we have today. I cannot fathom how you are still able to complain about it.

I'm just formulating an argument that a free market is not the be all and end all. If you have the money, bespoke is better. And if you don't have the money, making it yourself is better, if you have the skills (which most don't for most purposes).

Issues that do plague the current market in the US, that impact my household enough to notice, are:

1) Product trends. When a market leader decides to go all in on something, a lot of the other companies follow along. We've seen this in internet connectivity, touchscreens in new cars, ingredients in hair care products, among others. This greatly limits the ability of consumers to find alternatives that do not have these trends. In personal care products this is a significant issue when it comes to allergies or other kinds of sensitivities.

But in general just look at the number of people who complain about things such as a lack of discrete buttons for touchpads. Not even Framework offers buttoned touchpads as an option, despite there being a market for them.

It's obvious that it's the vocal, heavy spenders who determine what's on the market. Or it's a race to the bottom in terms of price that determines this. It's not the average consumer.

2) Perfume cross-contamination as an extension of chemical odors in general[0,1]. In recent years many companies with perfumed products such as cleaning agents have increased the perfume or increased its duration with fixatives. This amplified after so many people had their sense of smell damage during early COVID (lots of complaints about scented candles and the like not having an odor anymore, et cetera).

This wouldn't be a problem from a consumer point of view except that the perfumes transfer to non-perfumed products - basically anything that has plastic or paper absorbs second-hand fragrances pretty well. I live in as close as we can get to a perfume-free household, for medical reasons. It's effectively impossible to buy certain classes of products, or anything at all from certain retailers, that doesn't come perfumed. There are major stores such as Amazon and Target that we rarely buy from as we have to spend a lot of money, time, and effort to desmell products (basically everything purchased from Amazon or Target now has a second-hand perfume).

It's possible to have stores that have both perfumed products and non-perfumed products such that perfume cross-contamination doesn't occur. But this requires the appropriate ventilation, and isn't something that's going to happen unless one of the principals of the store has a sensitivity.

And then there are perfumes picked up in transit from the wholesaler, trucking company, or shipping company.

I hope someday to win Powerball or Mega Millions so that I can start a company dedicated to perfume-free household basics. That are guaranteed to still be perfume-free on delivery.

0 - https://www.drsteinemann.com/faqs.html

1 - https://dynamics.org/Altenberg/CURRENT_AFFAIRS/CHINA_PLASTIC...

On the one hand, I'm annoyed by some of the same things that annoy you.

On the other hand, it's never been easier to buy fragrance-free versions of detergents, cleaning products, personal care products, etc. When I was growing up, they didn't exist at all -- everything was horribly scented. Now "free" or "free and clear" is a whole product category. Literally everything I buy is fragrance-free, and it's wonderful. Little of it's available at my local CVS, but it's all available on Target.com or Amazon. Thanks to the free market.

And when you say "it's the vocal, heavy spenders who determine what's on the market" that's not true at all. It's the race to the bottom in terms of price, which you say, but that is the average consumer. The average consumer wants to spend less. You can spend more to get better products, usually.

Trends really are cost-driven and consumer-driven. If companies make things people really don't like, people stop buying them and the companies change. There are a million examples, from New Coke to the Apple touchbar. You're arguing the free market is failing, but it really does work. You're demanding something better, but when you add government intervention to dictate how products are made, that's generally going to make things worse, because why would the government be better than free competition for consumers' wallets?

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