I’m surprised YouTube is getting all the heat here. User-hostile product design has become the norm in the industry, _especially_ among FAANG/MAMA. Twitter, Mi

I’m surprised YouTube is getting all the heat here. User-hostile product design has become the norm in the industry, _especially_ among FAANG/MAMA. Twitter, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, all streaming sites (anything that makes you scroll to find the “continue watching” list), arguably Apple, Nextdoor, anything that uses an algorithmic feed and won’t let you permanently enable chronological feed, anything that prioritizes “engagement” in a coercive way (so all social media including YouTube), etc. I used to aspire to work at a company like Microsoft or Google, but now I’m so glad I dodged that bullet. I care too much about making a _positive_ impact on the lives/experiences of users. I also have values that don’t tolerate industrial scale fraud and abuse (and yes, promising relief for 30 days and withdrawing it after 7 is clearly fraudulent). I hope more engineers would be willing to consider their role in making the world a worse place, and consider working for a company that doesn’t actively harm their users. But it seems most engineers will do anything in exchange for a total comp package bigger than the next guy. P.S. To the user-hostile PMs who aren’t swayed by a values argument consider this: if you let off the gas just 5% and allowed some breathing room for objectives other than user/engagement growth this quarter, you might spare yourself the PR/reputation hit that lead to things like hostile HN posts, popular support for antitrust enforcement, and executives being called to testify.