From: commodorejohn@gmail.com   
      
   On Tue, 23 Dec 2025 22:48:55 GMT   
   Charlie Gibbs  wrote:   
      
   > > Obviously, having trouble with a misbehaving website is a smaller   
   > > thing than burning to death in a badly-renovated apartment   
   > > building.* But even in the little things - every pointless extra   
   > > step, unneccessary delay due to lazy, inefficient implementation,   
   > > thing that has to be re- done thanks to a buggy form, or irritating   
   > > search for a feature buried under baroque UI or incompatible CSS is   
   > > seconds - minutes? hours? - off of *someone's* life, maybe multiple   
   > > someones', maybe *many people's.*   
   >   
   > You make this sound like a bad thing.  But it's merely the latest   
   > manifestation of something that's been around much longer than the   
   > Internet.  Consider the arrangement of products in a supermarket.   
   > Sometimes there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.  I remember   
   > when the local Safeway had spaghetti noodles in one aisle, and   
   > spaghetti sauce in another.  This kind of thing is often deliberate -   
   > it keeps you wandering the aisles longer, making you more likely to   
   > make impulse purchases, which translates to more sales, i.e. profits.   
   >   
   > Cory Doctorow recently did a series of podcasts on "the   
   > enshittification of the Internet".  One example he mentioned was that   
   > Google has started making their searches less useful and more   
   > cumbersome, requiring you to make more mouse clicks to find what   
   > you're looking for.  Since their revenue is based on mouse clicks,   
   > it's in their best interests to keep you pointing and clicking for as   
   > long as possible before yielding up the answer to your inquiry.   
      
   I mean, it's *both* - a continuation of a long-established pattern in   
   our society *and* a bad thing. The fact that someone out there excuses   
   it as rational self-interest* (and may even be factually correct) does   
   not make it cool; abusive design patterns are bad, and those who employ   
   them knowingly are *bad people.* They should feel ashamed of themselves   
   and their mothers should all call to tell them that they're very dis-   
   appointed and had hoped they raised them better than this.   
      
   * (And as Doctorow has brought up in his writing on "enshittification,"   
     it's often self-defeating in the long run - you win temporary gains,   
     but your thing is much worse and once someone comes along with a less   
     awful alternative, people will abandon you - and rightfully so.)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)