Yeah, it used to feel like "we'll crush competitors, but at least we ship solid software"

Even if gov adoption dropped, I suspect the incentives wouldn't change much unless there were genuinely viable, low-friction alternatives.

The underlying point about power imbalance and gradual normalization of bad behavior is fair, but that analogy carries a lot of real-world weight that doesn't map cleanly to software decisions

> but that analogy carries a lot of real-world weight that doesn't map cleanly to software decisions

Twitter literally runs CSAM-as-a-service.

While Microsoft is not quite that evil, building the North Korean computer surveillance system with "Recall" comes pretty close. Other examples include things like Facebook's regular doxxing of it's users with their real name policy.

It's a crass comparison, but not unreasonable on both sides. Abuse goes beyond just physical violence, and the practices of these tech companies really do match those other kinds of abuse. The other half is that software has eaten the world, and these changes really do affect people's lives.

> but that analogy carries a lot of real-world weight that doesn't map cleanly to software decisions

It's imperfect. We have way more choices in domestic partners than we do with operating systems but I think there are a lot of similarities though too. User-hostile software like Windows is intentionally designed to develop dependence and learned helplessness in users. Windows will gaslight you. Microsoft will victim blame. Many shared tactics. It's a fair comparison to make.

One more similarity is how hard it seems to be to break up with an abusive partner: when I saw the "Windows anounces Recall - Linux increases its Steam market share by 25%" meme, I checked under https://www.gamingonlinux.com/steam-tracker/, and yes, in May 2024 it went up - from 1.9% to 2.32%. But in February 2025, it was back down to 1.45%. It has rebounded since, to 3.38% in January this year, but dropped to 2.23% in February. Not sure where these big fluctuations come from - maybe Linux gamers don't really play that often, so they only log on to Steam sporadically?!

saying victims of domestic violence should chose better is also victim blaming ma dude.

> saying victims of domestic violence should chose better is also victim blaming

You're the only one saying that, not me.

The rollback only ever applies to the thing people noticed. Everything else quietly becomes the new normal.

The pattern is pretty familiar at this point:

1. Ship something user-hostile 2. Wait for backlash 3. Roll it back partially 4. Get credit for "listening"

Also called the door-in-the-face method.

Yep paying for content is part of the solution, but it doesn't fully explain why the experience has become so aggressively bad

I think your point about one-off visitors is key. If most traffic is coming from search/social, there's no real incentive to build a clean, loyal-reader experience

... when it comes to news, however, I am always winding up at the major newspapers (e.g. New York Times) from search and social.

At some point, either subscriptions have to carry more of the load or the web experience just keeps degrading

Or someone can invent an ad supported business model that isn’t abusive.

A lot of print magazines, like Vogue or even Field & Stream, are like 60% or more full page ads. But if you’re reading something like New Bride magazine you’re probably actively shopping for wedding dresses and flowers and such, so the advertising ideally works as part of what makes the magazine valuable for the reader and the advertiser.

The real problem is that the finance and business folks are addicted to performance metrics and they preferentially put their money towards things that can be represented as graphs because it’s hard to argue with a graph. Jon Gruber has a vague sense for what sort of audience he has and what they’re into, so he can pitch advertisers on the idea that by advertising with him they’re going to reach an audience of Apple enthusiast technologists who presumably care about design and UI/UX and whatever other intuitions he has about his readership. But none of that is a quantitative metric, so only a small market is open to putting money into it.

I've long thought this. Ads don't need to follow people. They don't need to track. The entire world suffers under the weight of corporate internet surveillance.

If I want to know something, I will search for it. The sites that offer the info could easily choose to show ads specifically relevant to the topic at hand instead of hiring out that task to a cyberstalker.

I don't want to see ads for pet medicines on multiple sites because some algorithm has decided that I have a pet in need of medical assistance. I don't have a pet at all.

I'm sure I only get those because I'm using apps to poison my digital footprint, but my ex-gf, who didn't and did have pets, probably got my home IP tagged as a pet owner.

He also has no shareholders except himself. So the only person he has to please is himself, and if he is wrong, the only person who suffers is himself (and, I suppose, his family).

This very direct, very personal connection to the web business doesn't exist in most other sites.

He also has no ambitions towards being a billionaire, he just wants to make enough money to sustain a mostly upper middle class lifestyle and keep his business going.

I think a lot of online publications could be modestly sized businesses with a very respectable annual revenue range in the tens of millions or even hundreds of millions, but they erode their own brand value chasing tantalizingly higher numbers that SEEM in reach but actually aren’t.

If anything, LPR data might be a useful lead generator. But using it as decisive evidence seems like a stretch

The irony is that the system might technically be "correct" about where the car was seen overnight, but that still doesn't prove anything about where the family actually lives