2026-10-05 17:46 UTC
Replies (3)
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@misty@digipres.club 2026-10-05 17:47
@mcc@mastodon.social I do feel like there’s something to the idea that users no longer have a mental model of what software will do when they try anything, and have responded by retreating more deeply into the comfort zone of the things they *do* still think they can predict.
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@eri@mk.moth.zone 2026-10-05 18:24
@misty@digipres.club @mcc@mastodon.social well yeah, because every single stupid app is full of scams and dark patterns. when a big tech company tries to push me towards doing something i assume by default it's bad, and i should avoid it
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@dpnash@c.im 2026-10-05 18:30
RE: https://hachyderm.io/@inthehands/117129965997668260 @misty@digipres.club @mcc@mastodon.social That, and also this fact: The median software user’s experience in my country (the US) is, beyond a doubt: software is terrible. And not just in an “it’s ugly/hard to understand” sort of way. It’s regularly unfit for purpose, extractive and exploitative, rarely if ever respectful of users’ choices and preferences, does not acknowledge the need for affirmative consent to do things a user really does not like (or even genuinely needs to *not happen*), and brittle to the point that minor errors of usage can translate into serious problems for the end user. The problem has existed ever since there were computers, but it’s gotten visibly worse in the last few years. When software fails or acts strangely, it often does so in ways that are *harmful*, not merely inconvenient, even if the harm is hard to measure in ways that techbros can comprehend. That in it of itself makes non-experts (which is *all of us* in some domains) less willing to try something that “might go wrong”. When “it went wrong” means important data or information gets lost silently, or an important email/chat message doesn’t reach the intended recipient, or some other silent but consequential problem occurs, “just try it out” is a much less viable option. Good thread from someone else who’s written a lot on the topic: https://c.im/@inthehands@hachyderm.io/117129966082285244