Title: This is a discussion I hope can lead to some answers among the developer community about what&#x27;s going on these days.<p>I previously wrote about how various shopping sites are being very hostile to their customer base [https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=29384866].  Why does a 32kb text article need 10MB of battery draining heavy javascript to just work?  But this is more then just shopping sites as so many websites, browsers, programs, and even OS&#x27;s are making decisions that are hostile to their users.   And it&#x27;s coming from everywhere.  What used to be controversial (e.g. dark patterns), is now normal.  And if the user complains - the answers from the developers is &quot;we&#x27;re sorry, just live with it?&quot;<p>I could write an essay on this but I&#x27;ll focus on a company which publicly represent this hostility - Blizzard.  Blizzard is an entertainment company in an industry which has a tremendous amount of competition.  And many Blizzard games are paid for directly from the user&#x27;s pockets so the customers are paying.  But yet, even with this, the contempt the developers have towards their users is immense.  While I&#x27;m not a Blizzard fan but listening to people who are - they are not happy.  Yet at the same time, even with this angry customer base, the developers kept saying they &quot;knew best&quot; demanding the customers do things their until the ceiling broke and the mass exodus we know today happened.  There&#x27;s no apology, no sympathy - nothing - just complete hostility against their users.<p>But of course, this is not just a story about Blizzard.  It&#x27;s Apple, Google, Firefox, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, etc.  Just look at Microsoft and their heavy use of dark patterns to force Windows 10&#x2F;11 options (another essay unto itself).  And so many companies gleefully advertising &quot;it&#x27;s your choice&quot; where &quot;your choice&quot; is slowly &quot;depreciated&quot; until &quot;your choice&quot; is no longer in the deeply hidden options menu.<p>What is it about this field that attracts people that are so adamant, so demanding that their users, their customers do it &quot;their way or the highway&quot;?  People who seemly absolutely refuse to even acknowledge the burdens they force upon their users even when their users are saying, very loudly, &quot;I don&#x27;t want this.&quot;<p>In the past, I used software because I wanted to use it.  These days, I use software, not because I want to, but because I have to.<p>(To be fair, it might not be the individual developers who is hostile but something in the decision making process is causing entire company to be hostile to their users.)
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