Respect the user and all else will follow

Doing what’s best for the user, respecting their wishes, used to be the best approach to deliver software. Sure, it required knowing the user, but applications that provided more user care, had more focus on solving their needs and keeping them in control, were the applications that tended to win. No longer true.

As the space of applications that solve a certain thing diminishes, as the number of applications that want to be everything for everyone increases, the mantra of respecting the user is starting to lose steam. Instead, we have PMs, execs, and so on, that think that they know better.

Nowhere is this more evident that in the “features” which are forced opt-ins, with potentially no opt-outs. Nagging features, features that just push a specific piece of “tech” forward, even though almost no sane user would want it. Think of any product, from any company, and you will see at least one such feature. Just writing this single paragraph I got 5 different such products.

Open source (at the start) gained traction because power users managed to stay in control by creating replicas of existing stuff that would match their needs better than what was commercially provided. But then it became embedded in the entire tech world, it gained additional roles. And restrictions started popping up, Cory Doctorow describes this dynamic in multiple of his articles.

I’m just hoping that the AI will give again power to users to take back some form of control. There is for example AI that automatically skips sponsored content on videos and podcasts. We’ll see how the future spreads. Either users get more respect or the technology that becomes easier to use would be used to get back those rights. Or, there will be new restrictions added. To end with a bummer, that’s probably the most likely alternative.