18 ms·

But what if I want a faster horse?

• hollywood_court 2y ago
  Dang. Now I’ve got to go listen to Tom T Hall.
• chrsw 2y ago
  We don't fight enough to keep software that works for us.
• scotty79 2y ago
  tiktokification of content sites ... tinderisation of dating apps ... similar interaction model
• pwatsonwailes 2y ago
  Welcome to what happens when everyone optimises for the same metrics, and looks at the same companies for inspiration as to what to do. At most of these corporations, over time they've learned to be product and financially oriented, because it's what the markets reward and it's easy to do, rather than customer orientated, because as long as they're not unusably shit for the majority of their customers, then that's good enough. It's an attempt to reverse backwards to the worst possible thing that works, because that gets you more ad revenue, rather than the best possible thing. I say this as someone who's walked away from strategy consult gigs for multinationals where the objective was literally to do things like this. Revenue and margin maximisation in ways the stock market and PE/VC investment rewards is frequently orthogonal to building the best thing for the customer.
• gostsamo 2y ago
  Sorry, no money in horses, donkeys are all that we can offer you. What color would you like your donkey in?
  • JKCalhoun 2y ago
    Any color as long it is black (of course).
• arkh 2y ago
  All the result of A/B tests. Everything will converge to give you an engaging experience for most people. The only not too bad student is reddit which lets you keep using their older UI if you want to. But everything else is pushing new driven by A/B tests UI optimized for engagement.
  • bflesch 2y ago
    With the onslaught of Javascript-parsing bots and crawlers, how useful are A/B testing results any more?
  • wazoox 2y ago
    "Engaging experience" being actually a weasel word for "sucking your brains out to make you watch ads and valueless nonsense".
  • ballenf 2y ago
    My hunch is these algos are also optimized for hiding the long tail of content that's more expensive to serve as it's not edge-cached. And it was the long tail that drew many of us to these services in the first place. At least that's my feeling using Youtube and Netflix these days.
    • IshKebab 2y ago
      I don't think it's about expense, it's more about hiding the fact that their catalogue is actually really small. They can't let you narrow your search at all because then they wouldn't have any content to give you. Think how many times you've searched for a specific film and it says "Content related to <thing that you actually wanted>".
      • Apocryphon 2y ago
        Meanwhile, a lot of this content is on places like Tubi.
      • Wowfunhappy 2y ago
        > I don't think it's about expense, it's more about hiding the fact that their catalogue is actually really small. I agree with you for Netflix. However, Youtube's catalog is almost certainly larger today than it was a decade ago. Even if you could somehow weight by quality, I think it would be hard to argue that Youtube's content catalog has gotten worse. Maybe average quality per video has gone down, but there is so much content on Youtube nowadays, assuming you're able to find it. I'm not sure about Spotify.
• kcatskcolbdi 2y ago
  Going back to horses sounds so nice.
  • thijson 2y ago
    I see people riding them around the hood here in Philly. There's also pop up stables here and there.
• PaulHoule 2y ago
  Funny I use the recommmender to listen to music in Plex a lot these days.
• deleted 2y ago
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• hackitup7 2y ago
  "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." This line is especially silly when making B2B products, especially very expensive enterprise ones. It's often used to justify building "great ideas" from some exec or overzealous PM/engineer over concrete asks from customers. Like you really think that a team of 20 experienced people paying >$1M to help run their multi-billion dollar business, both have no idea what they actually want and don't understand the capabilities of new technologies in the market? Totally condescending.
  • hobs 2y ago
    Have you ... done enterprise sales? The idea that a group of people working for a multi-billion dollar business having no idea what they want and no understanding of capabilities of new technologies is ... standard? I have seen it personally ... dozens? of times? Its the reasons startups can even succeed at all given the enormous momentum and cash reserves of these bigger companies - their goals, management, approach - it all becomes more diffuse and poorly executed.
    • 1dom 2y ago
      Strong agree. I've also seen it a lot: sales person at a small tech startup convinces business person in large tech company to ignore their own engineers. I suspect most engineers at large firms have been on one side of this experience at somepoint, and most engineers at small but successful tech startups have been on the other side (lead engineer to sales: "You told them our our product could do _what?!_ That's fine. I never wanted my PTO anyway...:(")
      • hobs 2y ago
        Hell, small in this context can be Snowflake or Databricks, this is the concept of Shadow IT - a slick sales call can convince and move things in a business that an army of engineers will struggle to convince their bosses of. External sales person says "oh you've been struggling with that for YEARS?!!?!?! We can get that done in 90 days if you can get that group of people on board" (3 years passes, everyone involved doesn't work there anymore, the project is a mess) External sales person says "oh you've been struggling with that for YEARS?!!?!?! We can get that done in 90 days if you can get that group of people on board" (3 years passes, everyone involved doesn't work there anymore, the project is a mess) You get the idea.
• furyg3 2y ago
  The TikTok-ification of advertising supported platforms is terrible, but makes sense to me. LinkedIn pivoted from making money on subscriptions and fees for job postings to ads, which mean the leading drivers are 'engagement' e.g. time you spend doom scrolling on their platform. This will end in disaster for the platform as a place to find jobs or employees. Netflix I understand much less. They make money from subscriptions. If you perceive having a fantastic experience on the site by just going there, finding something you enjoy watching, and leaving... they win. Why they would foster a doom-scrolling experience I really can't really explain, other than imagining some dark pattern like they have to pay per view and want you to watch C grade movies? More time spent looking for something to watch means less time streaming? I don't get it.
  • kilian 2y ago
    This is strongly in tin-foil hat territory but: streaming video costs a lot more money than streaming some JSON to populate a UI. Every minute you spent browsing the catalogue over playing a video is probably a significant costs saving for Netflix.
    • nottorp 2y ago
      But they play those previews automatically... and that's still bandwidth used.
      • tonightstoast 2y ago
        And tragically most users prefer the auto playing previews. Theprimeagean has a YouTube video about how he tried to a/b test it before release thinking "no way that's what users would prefer" and was unfortunately wrong.
        • HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
          Well, there is a setting to turn it off.
• cjs_ac 2y ago
  For any given thing or category of thing, a tiny minority of the human population will be enthusiasts of that thing, but those enthusiasts will have an outsize effect in determining everyone else's taste for that thing. For example, very few people have any real interest in driving a car at 200 MPH, but Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Porsches are widely understood as desirable cars, because the people who are into cars like those marques. If you're designing a consumer-oriented web service like Netflix or Spotify or Instagram, you will probably add in some user analytics service, and use the insights from that analysis to inform future development. However, that analysis will aggregate its results over all your users, and won't pick out the enthusiasts, who will shape discourse and public opinion about your service. Consequently, your results will be dominated by people who don't really have an opinion, and just take whatever they're given. Think about web browsers. The first popular browser was Netscape Navigator; then, Internet Explorer came onto the scene. Mozilla Firefox clawed back a fair chunk of market share, and then Google Chrome came along and ate everyone's lunch. In all of these changes, most of the userbase didn't really care what browser they were using: the change was driven by enthusiasts recommending the latest and greatest to their less-technically-inclined friends and family. So if you develop your product by following your analytics, you'll inevitably converge on something that just shoves content into the faces of an indiscriminating userbase, because that's what the median user of any given service wants. (This isn't to say that most people are tasteless blobs; I think everyone is a connoisseur of something, it's just that for any given individual, that something probably isn't your product.) But who knows - maybe that really is the most profitable way to run a tech business.
  • soco 2y ago
    Then, how could a business identify its (or market's) trend-setters, enthusiasts, or whatever we call them, which will push towards something new? I see this as essential for either making the business better, shinier, or to avoid losing users.
    • _kush 2y ago
      It has to be built by those enthusiasts
    • 2y ago
• dijit 2y ago
  I don't really know how to form this into words on a short-form text medium like this. So please read charitably. I'm by no means a conspiracy theorist, however as I've risen the ranks of my chosen technical field I see more and more that what George Carlin said was really poignant. "You don't need a formal conspiracy when incentives align"[0]. And incentives align really easily. Every company has some form of market analysis going on. CEO's will be invited to rub shoulders with the same groups of people. Conglomerates will have information sharing of some kind across all subsidiaries. Everyone is acting independently, but towards the same goal. It's actually quite shocking to have been part of (and hearing about) meetings between CEOs where "new information from CMK (consumer market knowledge) indicates that smaller dev teams all onsite are the best way to do things" - and everyone gets the same "information" at the same time, and thus the entire market moves in that direction, as if it was a fixed horse race and they were acting on a secret tip they heard from their uncle... I'm a bit counter-culture in my missive, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt, but a little nudge across a limited population seems to be enough - and it exists. Controversially: Blackrocks DEI initiatives are perfect public example of what I mean, no matter if you are pro or con, you can't deny the impact. [0]: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XE3sYUJASLY https://youtube.com/watch?v=XE3sYUJASLY
  • miltonlost 2y ago
    All the shitty CEOs start doing the same shit at the same time, because most CEOs are not exceptional workers or thinkers or innovators. They are simply the (in)human conduits doing as much as possible to siphon money from their users to the shareholders and Board Member class. They follow the trends that their consulting firms tell them to follow (the same consultants that work at multiple companies within the industry), which is why we get massive hiring at the same time, massive layoffs at the same time, RTO at the same time. The US has allowed collusion and market coordination via 3rd parties (so we have, e.g., landlords sharing rental prices with a 3rd party consultant, who then combines this data and illegally collude to set prices but with a Computer instead of Bob). Modern-day capitalism has said "monopolies and huge conglomerates are good because they're EfFiCiEnT!!!" (though what kind of efficiency and to whom the efficiency gain are given is entirely ignored -- the efficiency to max profit is the only one that matters). > It's actually quite shocking to have been part of (and hearing about) meetings between CEOs where "new information from CMK (consumer market knowledge) indicates that smaller dev teams all onsite are the best way to do things" - and everyone gets the same "information" at the same time, and thus the entire market moves in that direction, as if it was a fixed horse race and they were acting on a secret tip they heard from their uncle... The same thing too when companies hire consultants to look at the "market wage" and then set salaries based on what the consultant said. Every worker at the same "market wage" with no incentives to be above that.
• yakkomajuri 2y ago
  I feel like this with my (current) bank of choice here in Brazil. They were one of the first to focus on being digital-first and allowed opening an account without going to a branch etc. They grew fast and became one of the largest banks in the country and generally considered pretty solid. I've been banking there for like a decade. Now they've decided to be what they call a "SuperApp". This goddamn super app has a Twitter-like thing inside of it, shopping, and literally dozens of other products. Some core banking features are now hard to find but more importantly I had quite a few issues with investments as well. People who work there also tell me about messy problems on the financial services bits. It's very clear to me that in trying to become everything, they've deprioritized the fundamental products they offer, which are those related to banking. I want to store money, send and receive it, invest it, and have access to credit. But the experience of using those features has become significantly worse as new verticals sprouted up.
  • jgilias 2y ago
    That’s because WeChat has really taken off in China. So there are companies in different markets trying to replicate that. And, well, from business perspective it does make sense. If you manage to pull it off, the reward is massive.
    • yakkomajuri 2y ago
      Yeah definitely. I'm not oblivious to the potential gain to the business. I'm just frustrated with the user experience of the core banking products. And it seems like this is the direction other banks might like to follow.
      • jgilias 2y ago
        I feel you. Having a chat function is the last thing I want in my banking app lol.
  • hcarvalhoalves 2y ago
    I believe the "Peter principle" [1] also holds for companies. A company grows until it eventually outlives its mission and loses focus. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle
• gmuslera 2y ago
  Doesn’t matter what you want anymore. You are not the client, but the product. They are the ones getting faster horses.
  • cratermoon 2y ago
    > They are the ones getting faster horses. To a point, until stage 3 enshittification hits, and the business claws back all the value.
  • bluGill 2y ago
    Until I finally get fed up and leave. There is value in my sharing pictures of my kids with distance friends and seeing pictures of their kids - but Facebook has got so bad at that I finally gave up logging in and not I'm not a product that exists for them. And in turn because I'm not there facebook is less valueable for my friends and so they are more likely to leave in the future. The only question are people like me outliers that can be ignored - there will always be a few people you can't get. However I could be a sign of the end.
    • immibis 2y ago
      They don't need you as the product - they found better products their customers would rather buy. My dad is one of the better products. I've seen what Facebook turned him into.
• api 2y ago
  What this is describing is not what the Ford quote is talking about. Netflix and all the rest didn't TikTokify because they were trying to create some massive visionary innovation, but the opposite. They did it because it's more profitable to shovel slop than to distribute quality. Quality content is expensive to make. Slop isn't. The way you do that is by hypnotizing people with addiction. To do that you have to have control over what people see and use algorithms to optimize that to "maximize engagement." You need your users mindlessly scrolling, not searching and categorizing and exploring. You need to disengage the neocortex and engage the brain stem. TikTok is being copied by everyone because they nailed this formula better than anyone. They didn't invent it, just perfected it. I'd say Meta/Facebook invented it, which is why Zuckerberg should be known as the man who destroyed the Internet. The next step beyond TikTok is a 100% AI generated algorithmic feed. Drop the human creators entirely. Everyone gets a personalized feed of low-quality AI slop tuned for maximum engagement. Addiction is the best business model.
  • kelnos 2y ago
    Part of the problem specifically with Netflix is that they lost the rights to most of the good stuff, or at least the stuff that everyone wants to see, because the Disneys of the world set up their own streaming services and pulled their content from Netflix. So in a way Netflix had to learn how to push slop. Because they can't make their own Star Wars or MCU or Friends or whatever. It's just not easy to build a catalog of reliably-profitable franchises. Especially when many of those franchises were born decades before Netflix even existed. Even the good stuff Netflix has (like say Black Mirror) isn't going to be enough to keep customers unless they get people watching some slop.
    • tuna74 2y ago
      "So in a way Netflix had to learn how to push slop. Because they can't make their own Star Wars or MCU or Friends or whatever. It's just not easy to build a catalog of reliably-profitable franchises. Especially when many of those franchises were born decades before Netflix even existed." They could try. The budget for the first seasons of Friends was the same as any other sitcom of that era. Sitcoms would be perfect for streaming companies but non of them seem to get that for some reason.
• bru 2y ago
  Related: enshittification. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
• Taek 2y ago
  The root problem seems to be monopoly and fragmentation. When Ford was working on a car, people who wanted a faster horse could go to the horse store. There were reasonable alternatives to Ford's new method of transportation. But here, you can't recreate Spotify from 2015. You'll never get the rights to play the music for users. Same with Netflix, you'll never get the rights to show the movies. Same thing with Twitter, Facebook, etc. Even if you know exactly what content your user wants, you can't fetch it for them because it was posted in some other walled garden, and that wall stops you from competing. If you want a faster horse, change the laws so that people can build faster horses and compete.
  • ks2048 2y ago
    Maybe it depends on your listening habits, but for me, Spotify and Netflix are very different experiences. Spotify has almost anything I look for. Netflix I struggle to find anything of interest.
    • kmacdough 2y ago
      Sure, spotify has maintained a near-complete catalogue where Netflix hasnt. But I no longer find Spotify any good at finding new music, beyond manually looking through artist catalogues. For context, try out Pandora's recommendations. They haven't improved, yet they're orders of magnitude better than Spotify. The songs are hand annotated for style, content, etc. As a result, they recommend truly new songs with regularity that truly match the vibe. Compare with Spotify, where everything is based on statistical "people also listened to X". Everything converges on some pop form of whatever genre and songs you've listened to a lot. It'll play odd, out-of context songs from the same artist before it'll find you new artists. Sure they have a few manicured playlists, but its nothing compared to the value Pandora has provided for years.
    • Taek 2y ago
      Spotify only has about half of the music that I like. A lot of it is remixes and jams from Japan that can only be found on youtube, soundcloud, or in some cases it's actually only available on private trackers.
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• thej4ck 2y ago
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• Freak_NL 2y ago
  One upside: by degrading the experience¹ Netflix did make it a lot easier to simply stop your subscription and hop over to another streaming service for a few months. A very interesting development: in the Netherlands KPN, one of the largest telcos, introduced a feature where any household with several of their products in use (e.g., two cellphones and fiber internet) could choose a free 'gift'². The gift is a choice from a bunch of subscriptions, including Netflix, Disney+, and HBO Max. And you get to switch monthly if you want to. So we ditched our own Netflix subscription and started watching Disney+ for now. Perhaps we'll switch in a few months. These services probably realise that their customers are made up of 'hoppers', and 'stackers' (people who take out multiple subscriptions to streaming services at once). I wonder what the distribution for each service is. 1: In part forced upon them by the content owners waking up and wanting to set up their own exclusive shops of course, and in part because of, well, greed (the UI suckiness). 2: The trade-off is obviously that this stimulates consumers to consolidate their telco products with them. In my case this was already so, so for me this is just a small incentive to stay with them (i.e., it saves me €9 a month).
  • Cthulhu_ 2y ago
    I'm surprised that the services don't seem to have updated for that reality yet; it feels like there's only one or two "hits" on each service per year. They did already adapt a bit by no longer releasing a whole season in one go, so you need at least three months of subscription for a 10 episode weekly series. But what they need is rolling releases across the whole year, so that once one production is "done", the next one rolls around. (maybe they already do, I don't know, I'm just thinking of Stranger Things which seems to be Netflix' main seller at the moment)
• vanschelven 2y ago
  The title is a great hook, but it doesn't really cover what's being described... which is the TikTokification of everything and (implicitly) that there's some bait & switch going on.
  • nthingtohide 2y ago
    Earlier people used to spend 2-3 hrs watching and absorbing a single movie. Now people spend 5 hrs scrolling tiktok. So in a sense time spent on content has actually increased. People don't need filler and lengthy buildups. People have been exposed to so much culture they can almost predict the general plotline so no need to spend time on that. Give me the plot twist or the drop (in case of spotify) with short relevant context. I remember Balaji saying something to this effect. He said don't give me filler content, just give me "fixed point" content which doesn't change after successively summarization and pruning.
• deleted 2y ago
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• ozim 2y ago
  I hate algo feeds that change each time I refresh. On LI I lost already like 3 articles that I really wanted to read but I clicked notification and I can never get that articles back.
  • robofanatic 2y ago
    Its like when I go bird watching and finally see that elusive bird. but if I lose my focus for a split second, its gone, never to be seen again.
• thih9 2y ago
  I wouldn’t give TikTok too much credit or blame. The process started earlier, with snapchat stories UX dominating platforms, and feeds UX becoming popular before that, etc... There is an aphorism that with enough A/B testing every website turns into a porn app or a gambling app. I guess we’re observing something similar.
• bloak 2y ago
  This sounds like an economic problem with no obvious solution: network effects => monopoly => "optimising" for typical user. Where there isn't a monopoly (or anything close to a monopoly) you find different firms specialising in different ways. For example, small independent restaurants survive by being distinctive, not by trying to imitate McDonald's. YouTube and LinkedIn are practically monopolies. Netflix isn't a monopoly in the same way but you usually don't have a choice of streaming services for watching a particular film or series so it's different from being able to buy the same cheese or the same wine from any of several different supermarkets.
  • JKCalhoun 2y ago
    Yeah, more like Netflix (and we might as well add Amazon here) became popular because of "the long tail". Once, I could easily find 1930's classics like "Stella Dallas" on Netflix (and early Ultravox! on Amazon when they would have to be ordered from brick and mortar music stores at the time). For some reason (perhaps because it costs money to keep a large catalog?) Netflix retracted the long tail while Amazon at least kept theirs unfurled.
    • Apocryphon 2y ago
      My guess is that Netflix is tried to cultivate a semi-premium brand (but not premium in an Apple TV+ way), which means getting rid of the long tail in favor of what's hip, sexy, exciting, etc. Whereas while Amazon is making expensive boondoggles like Ring of Power, they are also comfortable with keeping dozens of conspiracy theory documentaries on. I guess that's in line with the identity of their main store, and the concept of Amazon being a series of warehouses.
  • cratermoon 2y ago
    > no obvious solution: network effects => monopoly => "optimising" for typical user. ahem. We have a solution for the monopoly part. We've had it since the 19th century. We just stopped enforcing it in the 70s and 80s when the Chicago School convinced everyone that as long as judge Robert Bork's "consumer welfare" can be trotted out to prove that the "free market" is working and prices are low.
• est 2y ago
  I to miss old internet where everything is placed under a catalog, instead of endless stream of crap I dont like.
• jakey_bakey 2y ago
  Honestly that last sentence about Substack hit me hard. I just want them to import a syntax highlighting library but instead they are pushing video content into my face
  • nthingtohide 2y ago
    Why don't companies have multiple recommendation strategies. One for power-users. One for casual users etc. Have the router infront of these models to intelligent switch between the different styles. In fact, there are times when I want indepth analysis. But after understanding the topic, I need short form content or memes which "update" or "entertain" the same topic in ongoing manner.
    • cratermoon 2y ago
      Doing all that would hugely increase opex, a non-starter for companies, especially the ones prioritizing growth over everything else.
• totetsu 2y ago
  I was just thinking today about how much better my media experience had been in 2010s with XBMC on a spare e-waste even then pc plugged into the TV than anything available today, and how much I enjoyed listening to the music of my music neighbors last.fm from my listen history I scrobbled from foobar2000..
• andai 2y ago
  I think Spotify was perfect in 2008. I think people's need to justify their existence by constantly doing things creates an unfortunate incentive where perfect products are mutated beyond recognizability. (This coupled with the tendency to hire more people as you get more popular, you have more people mutating the thing. Also novelty bias...)
  • madmountaingoat 2y ago
    In those early days the Spotify user experience needed to try and differentiate and put up barriers to being copied. Later it suffered from being purely metric driven and tracking things like user-engagement thinking it's a proxy for happiness with the platform. And then later still they start to mostly care about the cost of delivery.
• Learn2Burn 2y ago
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• drcongo 2y ago
  I just stop paying for things when they do this.
  • cratermoon 2y ago
    They don't care. They now make more money selling ads and the user data they've collected.
  • tuna74 2y ago
    If you payed for things that are better (like physical media over Netflix etc) the producers would actually respond and there would be more of that.
• andai 2y ago
  Ironically the old horses were faster! Run XP on modern hardware (if you can get it running at all) and you'll see what I mean. Explorer opens fully rendered in the span of a single frame (0.016 seconds). And XP was very slow and bloated for its time! It'll do this even in VirtualBox, running about 20x snappier than the native host, which boggles my mind.
  • svachalek 2y ago
    It's amazing how fast we can eat up new hardware capabilities. The old 6502 1-MHz CPUs were capable of running much more sophisticated software than most people today imagine, with 1/1000 or 1/millionth the hardware. And now we're asking LLMs to answer math questions, using billions of operations to perform something a single CPU instruction can handle.
    • TuringTest 2y ago
      The classical answer of why more hardware resources are needed for the same tasks is that the new system allows for way much more flexibility. A problem domain can be thoroughly optimized for a single purpose, but then it can only be used for that purpose alone. This is quite true for LLMs. They can do basic arithmetic, but they can also read problem statements in many diverse mathematical areas and describe what they're about, or make (right or wrong) suggestions on how they can be solved. Classic AIs suffered the Frame problem, where some common-sense reasoning depended on facts not stated in the system logic. Now, LLMs have largely solved the Frame problem. It turns out the solution was to compress large swathes of human knowledge in a way that can be accessed fast, so that the relevant parts of all that knowledge are activated when needed. Of course, this approach to flexibility will need lots of resources.
  • IshKebab 2y ago
    To be fair even with modern software bloat the overall experience is a lot better now than it was in the XP days. I think it's mainly due to SSDs. They were a huge step change in performance and we fortunately haven't regressed back to the slowness of the HDD era. At least on most hardware. I have a shitty Dell laptop for work that's basically permanently thermally throttled... :(
• FinnLobsien 2y ago
  I also dislike the TikTokification of everything, but I also know that all of us on this platform are wrong in the sense that we're not the user being designed for. Consumer apps at massive scale like TikTok and Netflix don't design for nerds like us, they design for the average person. Actually, they design for the average behavior of the average person. And most people on this planet are more or less happy with whatever they're presented with because they don't care about technology. And when you control what's presented to people, not they (and they don't care), you can push them to consume what you want them to consume. I heard a YC group partner once that he's worked with a ton of delivery apps. Many of them start out as differentiated apps for ordering from the best "hole in the wall" places or the app for authentic foreign cuisines, only to discover that the best growth hack is getting McDonald's on the app, because that'll be your top seller, instantly. Most people just do the default thing everyone does—and we're probably all like that in one aspect or another of our lives, and that's who many experiences are designed for.
  • bombcar 2y ago
    There’s a lot of money to be made in letting people order takeout from McDonalds while not feeling like the kind of person who orders takeout from McDonald’s.
    • FinnLobsien 2y ago
      I hate that more than McDonald's. The restaurants making mediocre-tasting but instagramable food in a place that spent more on the interior design consultant than the chef who created the menu. At least McDonald's doesn't pretend.
    • mattgreenrocks 2y ago
      This is the idea of premium mediocre: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-life-of-maya-millennial/ https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/08/17/the-premium-mediocre-l...
  • mppm 2y ago
    > And most people on this planet are more or less happy with whatever they're presented with because they don't care about technology. I think this is a debatable statement. It could be true, but I am increasingly convinced that enshittification, TikTokification, AIfication, etc. is proceeding despite what the average person wants. Average does not mean gaping, uninspired idiot. I think people in general do notice that everything is broken, short-lived, watered down and ad-ridden. But what to do? When every company does it, voting with your wallet becomes practically impossible.
• pal9000i 2y ago
  Companies work on averages, statistically what retains, engages the users. But Spotify is far better now than it was 10 years ago. I still have playlists, I can still instantly find any song I want. The added bonus is the discovery engine. So the UX now is a superset of what it was before.
  • dogleash 2y ago
    Oh come on. I have this thing open all day when I'm working, you can't bullshit me like that. It's a not good UI, its serviceable. It's not good by any conceivable metric other than those they have internally decided represent business goals. If you want to have a tautological argument that makes it good, because those goals are the only goals that matter. That's a boring response to an article about how business incentives have turned the UI into trash. FFS the Play button frequently breaks requiring a refresh. And as much as I appreciate the inevitable response that I'm holding it wrong, how is that my problem?
• darkshark 2y ago
  did anyone try taste dot io? It solves this salad media issue, recommending films based on your taste.
• darkshark 2y ago
  did anyone commenting here did a shot to taste dot io? It solves this salad media issue, recommending films based on your taste.
• raldi 2y ago
  People overuse the original quote as an excuse to never listen to customers, but the real wisdom is to ask why they’re asking for a faster horse (to get around quicker) and see if you can think of a better way to meet that goal.
  • 9rx 2y ago
    Overused and misattributed. What Ford actually said was: “If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own”
  • billmalarky 2y ago
    ^ this guy knows Jobs To Be Done theory ;) For those who don't, reading "Competing Against Luck" by Clayton Christensen will dramatically improve your ability to create successful products/services.
• deepsun 2y ago
  > Spotify today is... basically Netflix Yep, Spotify keeps showing me podcasts right at the top, even though I've never listened to one on their platform ever. Sometimes with titles like "how we f**ed yesterday", while I keep it open on my work computer. It looks like they know better what I want!
• damnitbuilds 2y ago
  A mention for Amazon search here. Which is a very slow horse and always has been, when even a horse that can walk would greatly benefit their customers. I can only guess that for some reason Amazon think they make more money by not making search work. Work, generally, like only actually returning things with the search term or, work specifically, like letting you specify hard drive sizes above 6TB. But I find it hard to believe this shit horse actually drives sales. I always end up looking elsewhere in frustration.
• ramses0 2y ago
  "Lisp and Email" ... all languages grow a half-baked lisp, all programs expand to read email. Now: all content/social sites devolve to tik-tok? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenspun%27s_tenth_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Zawinski's_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski#Zawinski's_Law
• bambax 2y ago
  If you want a faster horse, your best bet is to make it yourself. For media library, I use Jellyfin and host all my media files locally on a NAS. I self-host all my projects on that same NAS, which works just fine and and makes me not need to subscribe to some offer or other from hosting providers. I quit SmugMug last year, because it turns out, hosting my photos on the NAS costs nothing, and remaking the small part of the SmugMug web interface that I need is trivial. And for vehicles, I also made myself a faster horse, by bolting a Bafang motor on an ordinary mountain bike. Things break occasionally on that thing, but I know how to fix them, and so I do.
• AlienRobot 2y ago
  There is a flip side to this graph. Every entertainment platform becomes video centric. Every discussion platform becomes political. As someone who prefers text and static images and doesn't like politics, this is really bothering me right now. Adding to the list: image-sharing platforms, Instagram, Pinterest and Imgur, are also Tiktok now, specially if you use the apps instead of the website. Tumblr and Flickr somehow have resisted Tiktok-fication so far.
• qoez 2y ago
  I feel like they just want the era of movies that existed in 2012 (as opposed to the ones they get on the front page today). The experience hasn't changed that much
• chanux 2y ago
  > An inconsistent stream of ever-changing content Instagram. I have clicked through an ad, yes AN AD, and came back to get to another ad and had it refreshed away. I hope they are doing this because it works for them, somehow. PS: LinkedIn does this too.
• mushufasa 2y ago
  The examples in this blog are of online streaming media changing from a wide searchable library to an unsearchable tailored recommendation feed. As I understand, licensing dynamics were the main reason for Netflix's change, not pure product design. In 2012, most movie studios licensed their catalog to Netflix, while 7 years later they took away the licensing to compete with proprietary walled streaming platforms. Due to the smaller catalog, Netflix could not design that open searchable streaming library; they changed their design to make the best of the more limited library.
• myself248 2y ago
  I've heard this called the "Tyranny of the Marginal User". To keep the line going up, platforms have to appeal to wider and wider swaths of a population, eventually lapping at the shores of a population that really doesn't care or want this service. But if you can hook them with some dopamine in a 5-second video, or a quest to rediscover some neat thing that they saw two page-loads ago but is now mysteriously gone from the very same list it appeared in, then you've clawed one additional user into your metrics and the VCs give you a treat. These people don't care about the service and they're the worst users to cater to, but everyone caters to them because they're the only ones left. Hence, TikTokization.
  • jiggawatts 2y ago
    Thank you for that term! I finally know what to call these idiotic trends that I've learned to recognise but couldn't name. The one that grind my gears the most has been Microsoft breaking decades-old Windows paradigms to cater for Linux-developers-on-Windows, which is a very marginal, even actively disinterested group. All this at the expense of the 99.9% of their loyal user base. For example, VS Code had the opposite shortcut (literally with the arrow keys going in opposing directions) for "go back in search history" to every other editor ever made for Windows... but matching the Linux equivalent. Similarly, they recently broke "cls" to match the broken(!) behaviour of "clear" in Linux because of basically just one or two Linux users complaining in a GitHub Issue ticket. Windows users weren't listened to, because they're already users, not potential new users.
    • pas 1y ago
      oh, that's extra dumb, since there's no canonical[1] Linux desktop. that said they should offer shortcut presets, like JetBrains products. changing the default is just whack. [1] oh, what the hell!? pun unintended, but now at least the name makes sense
  • boramalper 2y ago
    The Tyranny of the Marginal User: why consumer software gets worse, not better, over time https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi...
• fergie 2y ago
  OP is dunking on Tiktok, but the comments and quality of dialog on Tiktok are far better than any other social network, even with more than a billion users.
• mattskr 2y ago
  I just want to pile in that the old netflix layout was top tier. I LOVED it and because of it, stumbled onto tons of awesome movies I never heard of at the time and were actually interesting. Their algorithm back then was the best. I never had a problem finding movies to ACTUALLY WATCH. The whole reason I quit my subscription a few years ago was for the fact I end up burning up time "looking" for something to watch. Then don't. I stopped paying for the "movie browsing simulator" a little after The Witcher 1st season. A few months ago, I got another month because I thought it might be better. Ha. No. In this case, it's less "faster horse" and more "quit with the stupid fucking song and dance, and give me the damn thing I paid for without all this extra stupid bullshit that makes the experience worse."
• jmull 2y ago
  If people can't find a sustainable business model around that thing you want, it's just not going to be widely available. It's hard to say for sure if Netflix could have/should have kept going in the direction they were going in 2012. But they didn't seem to think so. You can't necessarily count on businesses springing up to satisfy your personal interests and tastes. Especially large-scale businesses, which are always going to gravitate toward the center of large markets. It's great when it happens, but it's basically just luck when it does.
  • joshuaturner 2y ago
    The problem is with the definition of “sustainable business model.” Could you maintain a profitable business and continue steady growth? Sure. Could you become a unicorn and IPO within the next 5 years? Unlikely.
    • marcosdumay 2y ago
      Or, in other words, our entire society is focused on creating fake business that can only survive in a monopolized market (or can't even then). That's because the money is concentrated into a few dumb people with limited capacity to invest it. So they'll push it into a handful of companies that will destroy whatever sustainable companies that exist on the same market.
• OtherShrezzing 2y ago
  >The idea is to think outside the box and create entirely new markets instead of just new products in existing ones It's interesting that SV outwardly says it "wants to create entirely new markets instead of products in existing ones", meanwhile the actual experienced outcome for users is the same experience across multiple markets. SV is somehow failing on both of its metrics here. It's creating entirely homogeneous products across all existing markets.
  • ikanreed 2y ago
    By "create new markets" they've always meant "Become useless middlemen by displacing the existing bridge between makers and consumers" Usually their new bridge is modestly more convenient in some way, but opens the door to the worst kind of enshittification.
• jillesvangurp 2y ago
  Henry Ford's point wasn't that people didn't want faster horses but that they'd buy the car they never knew they needed - instead of a horse. With Spotify, the point is that lots of people pay for it and it's popular. So good for them. Individuals wanting something else does not mean that it's worth for Spotify to build that. It might be worth for someone else to invest in such a thing. But judging from the lack of successful things in this space, probably not.
• 1970-01-01 2y ago
  It comes down to less is better. You don't want a faster horse, you want less horses on the road so your horse isn't traffic, it's a horse. You don't want less TikTok, you want less crap using TikTok. Horses were the same, leaving crap all over the cities until Henry Ford's Model A. So we can solve this problem by inventing a lot better, much cleaner TikTok. In the meantime, sell manure shovels.
• LightBug1 2y ago
  Welcome to the world of restoration and restomods! Remember Google Reader? What if I want a better Google Reader?! * beats dead horse * ... sorry, horsey.
• MortyWaves 2y ago
  That Netflix screenshot looks fucking great: clear, usable, no distractions, more than 5 items on a page. What a mess "modern" UX/UI has turned into.
  • WorldPeas 2y ago
    truly the mcMaster-Carr of video
  • bonoboTP 1y ago
    I think there's psychological research that showing too many options leads to less engagement, supposedly for fear of making the wrong choice. If you give fewer options, people are more confident they picked something good.
• jerf 2y ago
  Sometimes you just have to do it yourself. I'm lucky enough to have had a CD collection before music streaming is a thing. Now my phone has enough capacity (since I still use phones that can take SD cards) to casually carry my entire collection around. I can play it in any order I want. I've even still got a streaming service I can do exploring on, since YouTube bundles one with Premium. I find it's a good thing I have my own collection though since it tracks my interests poorly. I've gotten back into buying my own video too. I don't consume a ton of video and I dropped Netflix streaming a while ago because the delta between me marking something for the queue and actually getting to it was becoming routinely larger than the amount of time Netflix would still have the thing I wanted to see. The problem is, I don't even see the second derivative on this trend turning, let alone the first. Metric-driven development, by its very nature, will take away every knob from you that you could conceivably use to drive their metrics lower. I think that's a reasonable approximation of the root cause of the reality observed in the OP. If you happen to agree with their metrics then hey, good times for you, but the odds of that are low since you're probably not looking to maximize the monetization they can extract from you as priority one. Therefore, the only option is, get off metric-driven-development platforms. There is no alternative and will be even less of one as time goes on. I suspect in the very long run this metric-driven development will eventually die off as all consumers come around to this realization one way or another and start turning to other alternatives, but it can easily be 5-10 years before there's enough of us for those "alternatives" to be able to survive in the market. Fortunately, MP3 players haven't gone anywhere. (Although it takes some searching to find ones that aren't also trying to match the streaming services and stick to old-school "play what you ask for and not anything else, unless you ask for shuffling or randomness explicitly".)
  • MortyWaves 2y ago
    Where do you buy videos from? Do you mean new films and shows? How, I thought practically all of it is locked down DRM only streaming? Or do you mean DVD/BluRay?
    • jerf 2y ago
      DVD and BluRay, yes.
• robertclaus 2y ago
  Is this the logical conclusion of the marginal user effect? If your business model depends on growth, you need to keep changing the product to attract new users even at the cost of quality to old ones that are unlikely to leave.
• mrbonner 2y ago
  I feel that it basically comes down to promotion driven development. Things are changed because they are justifications for someone promotion. Cut the bloat!
• fifticon 2y ago
  I hate the modern dark-pattern shop UIs, which tries to make it as difficult as possible to enumerate what is actually available. One example is when queries reply with 'what is most like' what you asked for, instead of honestly answering "no, even though movie X exists, we dont currently have it in our offering". Even though amazon prime is the poorest streaming option, I appreciate that they make it possible to exhaustively page through their entire offering, which I have done on a few occasions ("possible", because it is the usual user-intelligence-hostile ajax-javascript cursorless experience, where your browser is staggering in gigabytes as you approach the 3000-movie mark)
• dswalter 2y ago
  There's a fundamental reality that shapes both Netflix and Spotify's trajectory: content licensing. 2012 Netflix had access to vastly more of everyone else's library, so it was closer to an indexed search of what was available that one could watch and then getting that video onto your screen. Over time, other companies understood that they were underpricing their content and Netflix was reaping the benefits. Once external forces adjusted, the TV/film bidding wars began. Today, netflix doesn't have nearly as much content as they used to have. That risk (losing all content and facing extinction) is what pushed Netflix in the direction of being a content-producer, rather than a content aggregator. I agree with everyone's points on the influence of the median user in diluting the quality of the content Netflix produces, but that's not the only forced that pushed us here. Spotify faced a similar crossroads and decided to broaden beyond music once they started losing bidding wars for licensing. Being a faster horse wasn't an option available to either Netflix or Spotify; there is no path for a 'better 2012 version of netflix or spotify' in 2025. They each had to change species or die, and they chose to keep living.
  • esperent 2y ago
    > Spotify faced a similar crossroads and decided to broaden beyond music once they started losing bidding wars for licensing. I wasn't aware that Spotify lacked much in the way of mainstream western music. Are they having licensing issues?
    • barbazoo 2y ago
      If they do then it's not noticeable by the average user.
    • VanTheBrand 2y ago
      It’s less obvious than with Netflix because the songs don’t completely disappear. Spotify pays different rates for different songs depending on the label so there are certain songs they’d rather you not listen to and other content it’s much cheaper for them if you listen to so they push you to that content.
      • 2y ago
• buyucu 2y ago
  This is why I pirate movies and shows. The user experience is infinitely better than Netflix and Disney.
• anarticle 2y ago
  I'm not really sure the metaphor holds up, Netflix was a jetliner compared to a minivan. We still had movie rental stores in the late 00s.
• skybrian 2y ago
  Spotify doesn’t seem like a good example. I use Spotify to search for artists and listen to songs from their albums. I make my own playlists. If you basically want a better iTunes, it seems like it still works for that. (You do have to ignore the other features, but that doesn’t seem very hard.)
• karaterobot 2y ago
  > Overall, consistency, user control, and actual UX innovation are in decline. Everything is converging on TikTok You have given every product team a set of parameters and asked them to optimize the product around those parameters. Namely, how much time and attention the user spends staring at your app. Is anyone surprised that convergence has taken place, when everyone is after the same thing, with the same tools, in the same environment? The only question is: who is "you" in this scenario? Instinctively, it's the leadership team. But in one of my least popular takes, I tend to think the responsibility is ultimately "you", the user who refuses to stop scrolling. Tech leadership doesn't have vision or a moral compass, they take their direction from the metrics which ultimately measure your choices.
• Tistron 2y ago
  Nothing has ever felt better than my student days with DC++. The whole campus had a server we all used and I could search for stuff I liked and see what other people who had that on their disks also had, and explore that. I found a lot of music that way, as well as other stuff. Before that we had had a list of ftp servers which was also good once I wrote an indexer, but DC automated all that and made more people able to participate. I hate the Netflix interface enough that I prefer to watch movies other ways even though I have access to it.
• bryanhogan 2y ago
  Great read! I think what we must keep in mind with many modern products and services, especially popular ones, is that they are not becoming TikTok, they are becoming things competing for our attention in the most perverse ways possible. The potential to make these systems even more manipulative and exploitative is there, I see great potential for UX design that is even "worse" than what we already know.
• patapong 2y ago
  I am astonished by how much less delightful software has become. Computers used to feel like a magical tool, that would respond instantly and allow me to perform complicated transformations at the press of a button. Now, I feel like I am fighting against software most of the time, having to compete with someones vision for how I should be using their program, which is likely aimed at the least technically sophisticated user. Nothing wrong with allowing such users to use the software, but please retain the functionality and speed for the power users!
  • sureIy 2y ago
    Is this about software or is it about you? I loved my computer when I was a kid, now I only see flaws. I don't think software was flawless at the time, it's just that I became very keenly aware of its current issues because this is my field.
    • okwhateverdude 2y ago
      I think I am in the same boat as you. Knowing how the sausage is made only makes the flaws noticed even more offensive. But I do think the GP has a point about the intentional friction and bullshit introduced into lots of modern software that wasn't even a twinkling in some CEOs eye way back when. Software has become adversarial to the user. Psychology has been weaponized to induce behaviors in users. Instead of users feeling utility and choice in using the software, they feel burdened, controlled. Or at least, I do. I try to make smart choices about what software I use to maintain my own volition. These kinds of flaws are fundamentally different from the kinds of flaws in software from the past if only because of the order of magnitude increase of resources that can be mustered to accomplish it. And because they are exploitative.
      • the_snooze 2y ago
        I think the harsh practical reality is that a lot of end-user computing needs have been met for a long time: word processing, media playback, communications, etc. Unless you need live collaboration or some specialized package, most things you can do in modern Google Sheets you can do just as well in LibreOffice Calc or Excel 97. How does one build or maintain a viable software business in a world where most people's software needs have been met? It's to pivot away from delivering value towards extracting value. Hence all the push towards cloud-based services instead of stadalone local programs. Online connectivity allows the developer to arbitrarily change the balance of value between them and the user, which is where the gross adversarial feeling of modern computing comes from. The computer is no longer serving you exclusively.
• amiga386 2y ago
  If it didn't fuck about with things and act like it's here for you, why would you pay a recurring fee for it? "Recurring revenue stream" is an answer in search of problems, and it's ready to destroy all alternatives.
• stanisouce2 2y ago
  That quote is more about the blunders of asking people what they want and expecting deep and innovative insights. Maybe it has been misappropriated in a culture obsessed with new ideas... But nothing in human-centered design circles (where this quote ostensibly originated) declares that new is always better. I enjoyed your point and it would be nice to have the option for a more archival nerd UI to serve people like you and me. I'm sure if turning it on was buried in a configuration menu we wouldn't mind.
• hedora 2y ago
  I don't understand the draw of Spotify. There's no network effect that I can see (even if it is built into your car, the other services have good experiences in your car too), everyone complains about it, they pay less per stream to artists than their competitors, and their library isn't any bigger than the competition. (It was smaller the last time I compared.) On top of that, their recommendation algorithms are (were?) terrible compared to the other services (since then, they added more payola), and they're actively trying to burn down the last open corner of the internet (podcasts). Also, the pricing is comparable, even if the other options feel more premium. What am I missing?
  • dharmab 2y ago
    Spotify has a free tier. Apple Music and YouTube Music do not. Young people start on the free tier and don't want ti have to move their libraries/playlists. And young people share Spotify playlists, not Apple or Youtube playlists, because they know their friends have Spotify.
  • skerit 2y ago
    I unfortunately pay for Spotify. I also pay for Youtube premium, but I can't even switch to that because their music player is even worse than Spotify. I really miss the good old days of music players that were _packed_ with features. The players of current streaming services are so basic. And as long as I can't find a replacement that fits my needs I don't really want to bother switching.
  • tuesdaynight 2y ago
    I have used Tidal, Deezer and Amazon Music in the past, but I've always went back to Spotify. I prefer the UX, but not only that, the recommendations are WAY better for me than other streaming services. However, my music taste is very eclectic, so maybe that helps a lot to recommend something within my taste.
  • metabagel 2y ago
    My local music format public radio station provides song links to: Spotify, iTunes, and Amazon. https://www.kcrw.com/playlists https://www.kcrw.com/playlists
• stanisouce2025 2y ago
  That quote is more about the blunders of asking people what they want and expecting deep and innovative insights. Maybe it has been misappropriated in a culture obsessed with new ideas... But nothing in human-centered design circles (where this quote ostensibly originated) declares that new is always better. I enjoyed your point and it would be nice to have the option for a more archival nerd UI to serve people like you and me. I'm sure if turning it on was buried in a configuration menu we wouldn't mind.
• stanisouce2bag 2y ago
  That quote is more about the blunders of asking people what they want and expecting deep and innovative insights. Maybe it has been misappropriated in a culture obsessed with new ideas... But nothing in human-centered design circles (where this quote ostensibly originated) declares that new is always better. I enjoyed your point and it would be nice to have the option for a more archival nerd UI to serve people like you and me. I'm sure if turning it on was buried in a configuration menu we wouldn't mind.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• Wowfunhappy 2y ago
  All of the examples listed have something in common: they are services for accessing content you don't own. So it is in the provider's interest to find ways to satisfy you with less and/or cheaper content. The Netflix changes aren't attempts to make their product better. They are attempts to save money by obscuring the amount and/or quality of available content. By contrast, if you buy BluRays from one company and BluRay players from another company, everyones incentives are better aligned.
  • phh 2y ago
    > It is therefore in the provider's interest to make you satisfied with less and/or cheaper content. After getting annoyed by their interface that was showing 80% of content I have already seen, I've come to a realization: Their incentive is not even to make me watch crap. No! Their best outcome for them is for me to watch nothing and still pay. Showing me old shows gives me the warm feelings and make me associate them with Netflix, making me keep the subscription even Hypnodrones are corporate dreams
    • barbazoo 2y ago
      Personally I wouldn't even bother with old shows on netflix since they could go away, and do, all the time. I download and put on my local plex instance, especially with bangers like The Office, there's no harm done. Netflix et al are good for those high profile miniseries you want to watch once and then never again. The rest, download and enjoy without ads, without dark patterns, especially content that kids watch (youtube).
  • ryandrake 2y ago
    > It is therefore in the provider's interest to make you satisfied with less and/or cheaper content If I was a conspiracy theorist, I'd think that all these "content companies" are colluding in a mass "Taste Removal" campaign, deliberately getting users used to bland, vanilla, generic "content" so they can one day just shove AI slop at us all day and only people who were alive in the 90s would remember when movies and TV were great. The rest happily will watch Ow, My Balls and ads for Carl's Jr.
• WorldPeas 2y ago
  So many of the burrs on my experience with anything are that I still expect the paradigm I had with my discman as a kid to the nth degree, back then I would load my favorite songs onto a disc, then play them, or play an album on repeat. I-tunes lets me do this still, but it's trying to push more of its streaming features on me like when I search my library, it defaults to searching Apple's network music volume, that I'm not interested in. I fear that the iphone will continue to hamper one's efforts to download media until you are forced into more fiscally expedient platforms like Spotify, where my favorite PM dawn song was replaced by a "superior" remaster where the artist was much older and lost the tone of his voice. Sadly one of the consequences of convergence is that so much else in the phone is done right I'd probably still have to use it.
  • ryandrake 2y ago
    Yea, iTunes (renamed Apple Music) is getting bad. The only thing I care about is what I've cared about since 2000: Playing a bunch of MP3 files in my collection. That functionality is now relegated to "third tab from the left," shoved aside behind a glass case like a relic from a former era.
    • WorldPeas 2y ago
      Worse yet it's the only effective way to sync music to the iphone over a wired cable. I can tell they've abandoned their USB sync software because of how annoying the dialogs are when you plug your phone in and don't authenticate to start it, additionally that thay've (likely intentionally to push I-cloud) never added automatic usb photo sync from phone to computer. This probably all originated from when Apple shifted their convergence model from all around the desktop to all around the phone¹ [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9_Vh9h3Ohw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9_Vh9h3Ohw
      • ryandrake 2y ago
        The iPhone (and previously iPod), from day one, could never simply be mounted as an external USB (or networked) file system. You always had to do the ridiculous "sync" song and dance and use their proprietary software, instead of just copying files using the OS like every other external storage device. Maddening.
• ghusto 2y ago
  So happy to read this and all the comments in agreement. I thought it was just me. In my bombastic opinion, Spotify has the _worst_ goddamn user interface of anything I have ever used, including my dishwasher with a single button. Netflix is less frustrating, but that's likely because "here are some films" is more acceptable than "here are some songs, but fuck you if want to listen by album". Smashing content into my face isn't making me love you.
  • metabagel 2y ago
    To me, Spotify's UI is super counterintuitive.
• acyou 2y ago
  That quote is pretty dumb, I see it quoted a lot. It's arrogant, assuming, demeaning, elitist. And I don't think it's true. Who would say "a faster horse"? It doesn't make any sense, because people know/knew that horses are what they are. A better, more constructive approach is to proactively identify how emerging technology can fit people's needs. And for sure, you need to verify that there is an actual need for what you are building, and then go build it. Netflix and TikTok are not the "faster horse" here. Generative AI is clearly the "faster horse". It's a disruptive technology that will change the entire structure of society, much like the internal combustion engine. And no one said they wanted that either, that doesn't make people dumb, or user surveys pointless. Who is currently saying they want a "faster computer"? Henry Ford saying that would probably be like hearing Sam Altman say "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster computer". It's not true, it doesn't match reality.
  • JodieBenitez 2y ago
    > Who is currently saying they want a "faster computer"? well... I definitely want more performance per watt. And I stress "performance", because more MIPS are useless if wasted.
  • solumunus 2y ago
    I think you’re taking things a little too literally.
  • hooverd 2y ago
    I wonder if like cars, LLMs will be as equally destructive to our social fabric.
  • SirFatty 2y ago
    You should probably read the article... the author did not say that Netflix and TikTok are the faster horse, the opposite actually. You seem really focused on the quote for some reason.
    • acyou 2y ago
      The article says that 2015 Netflix and 2015 Spotify were better, my point is that 2025 Netflix and Spotify are better for the actual customers (the advertisers), but they are not transformatively better in the way that generative AI is.
• eadmund 2y ago
  > YouTube. YouTube: Once a video catalog with social discovery. Now? TikTok. I hate YouTube Shorts with a passion. They are low-effort engagement bait. They cannot be disabled. Even worse, my Google TV will not play them when my phone is connected to it, and my phone will not play them when it is connected to my TV. Both devices can play them fine, they just don’t want to play them when they are connected. There can be no good technical reason for this. It’s just delivering a bad experience because it can.
  • dcrazy 2y ago
    Many channels seem to use Shorts as a vehicle to get you to their long-form content. I don’t mind that as a discovery mechanism; it’s introduced me to some fun stuff. Other channels make Shorts-specific content, which I really dislike.
  • lern_too_spel 2y ago
    > They cannot be disabled. https://www.reddit.com/r/revancedapp/comments/156lw72/the_best_feature_hiding_shorts/ https://www.reddit.com/r/revancedapp/comments/156lw72/the_be...
  • barbazoo 2y ago
    > They cannot be disabled Chrome: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/unhook-remove-youtube-rec/khncfooichmfjbepaaaebmommgaepoid https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/unhook-remove-youtu... Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/youtube-recommended-videos/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-CA/firefox/addon/youtube-recom...
    • eadmund 2y ago
      I want to disable them in the phone and TV apps. I haven’t used YouTube in the browser much for almost a decade! It’s kind of surprising to me.
• draw_down 2y ago
  [dead]
• nicbou 2y ago
  I feel strongly like this about Google Maps. The underlying product is nothing short of miraculous, but the UI is infuriating. If I create a route, my markers disappear. Clicking on the map doesn't show businessses anymore. Why can't I navigate to another city and browse the map at the same time? Why hasn't Maps graduated to the equivalent of tabbed browsing? Every trip, I'm reminded of how disappointing Google Maps is. Simple things like trying to find a laptop-friendly cafe and getting random cafes represented by a close up picture of someone's cappuccino. Realising that I'm driving 10 kilometres to do a U-turn. Having no way to bypass a blocked road. The very clunky waypoint management. Aagh! I want quality of life improvements more than I want new features. It's weird that a company with so much resources can't create powerful tools.
• gokayburuc_dev 2y ago
  TLDR: The main problem here is that the systems are starting to look more and more alike every day. Systems that are oppressed by algorithms turn into a Hollywood porn star: they are just trying to show what they like the most. This makes the systems uniform by wiping out all other beautiful and valuable things. Instead of really making a system better, we're trying to make it look like the most popular one available. As a result, we have copies with silicone lips, silicone breasts, plenty of aesthetics, but cheap and soulless. Instead of improving existing systems, we corrupt them by copying them.
• sebastianz 2y ago
  Highwaymen still have those fast horses, up on the lawless mountain passes... ;)
• MarkusWandel 2y ago
  As others have said, the "faster horse" analogy only goes so far. Even more than a century after cars became practical, you can still go get a faster horse. The analogy would be "I want to go back to the pre-ensh*ttified, simple version of X that we used to have. But with an updated web experience, or smartphone app, there's no way to go back. I have at least three apps on my phone that I wish I could still have the older version of. But I can't.
• __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  Then we need start optimizing for horse-speed, and stop optimizing for "engagement". The first step is to get away from building ad-funded widgets. Until we do that we will always have to listen to somebody who cares less about what the user wants and more about what can be profitably done to that user.
• sambeau 2y ago
  Self driving cars, where you have to supervise and occasionally have to reign in from going off the path, are essentially faster horses. So they are finally here.
  • codexb 2y ago
    I've never thought about it this way, but it's funny to think that horses are largely self driving on roads.
• hinkley 2y ago
  That graph at the end is brutal. But perhaps not incorrect. Tubi has a better exploration system and catalog than Netflix does but it’s still not as good as Netflix used to be.
• pier25 2y ago
  Everything is converging on TikTok because it's unregulated addiction. The Chinese hit the sweet spot on how to hook people. Given everything we've seen with kids and teenagers exposed to phones, social media, etc this is the next tobacco. Thank god there are countries already banning phones from schools and there's talk of banning minor from social media.
• volumo 2y ago
  This is pretty much why we are taking this "faster horse" approach when building Volumo, our music download store for pro DJs (an alternative to Beatport - if you know, you know)[1]. Downloads, not streaming (you get FLAC files right into your hands); pay as you go instead of a subscription (why don't you pay a lump sum for this track you want, of which 75% will go straight to the author); gentle human curation instead of the ubiquitous "we make decisions for you" algorithms. [1] https://volumo.com https://volumo.com
• paulorlando 2y ago
  That carcinisation convergent evolution effect is real. But so is the reality that outside of network dependent companies like the Netflix example in the post, those faster horses do still exist, just in niches. In Kevin Kelly's book What Technology Wants he writes about going through a 100-year old catalog and then finding that there are people today who still make all the items (some now obscure) that were popularly sold back then. But the difference is that if you're talking about individual companies like Netflix, YouTube, LinkedIn, Substack in the post, you won't see that.
• mattmcegg 2y ago
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• hyperhopper 2y ago
  The diversity of mediums chart at the end doesn't make any sense. What are the multiple lines? And at the end if he is saying everything converges to TikTok, wouldn't the TikTok point on the graph be on the axis for 0 diversity?
• bastawhiz 2y ago
  I simply hate that good services get ruined because there's money to be made by providing a different service to a broader group of people. It's not quite enshittification, it's companies making something that serves a relatively small group of folks well into a thing that serves a very large group of people in the highest-ROI way possible. Companies no longer have a target user. The target user is whoever can be juiced for as many pennies or eyeball-seconds as possible. There's no persona for user stories, it's "literally whoever we can get this in front of for as long as possible". It's about the lowest common denominator. Which implies, these products are not "designed" anymore. "Designed" implies that the creator made choices to make the product better for a target user. But there's no target user. When your service has a billion users, it's not possible to design for _anyone_. Mouse traps aren't "designed" for the mice, they're built for the people who don't want mice around. Services aren't "designed" for a billion people to interact with, they're built for the owners to make as much money as possible.
• ehsankia 2y ago
  As bad as Netflix is, honestly the UX is the best amongst major streaming services. For me, the cardinal sin of a streaming service is, if I open your service every single day and watch the next episode of ONE show, then the next time I open your service, PLEASE HAVE MY SHOW AT THE TOP OF THE HOME PAGE. This is such a simple and obvious user journey, but the majority of streaming services, on purpose or not, fuck it up. The number of times I've opened a streaming service, scroll through the entire home page with the shitty tv remote, then had to type the name of my show manually in search. Makes me want to unsubscribe right then and there and just use Plex instead.
  • J_Shelby_J 2y ago
    They want you to start a new show so you have something in the queue when you finish the show you turned the tv on to watch.
• taneq 2y ago
  On trips to remote sites I never miss an opportunity to explain to the younger guys that "when I was younger Spotify was called MP3s and it was made of files that you had on your device!" and then proceed to play late 90s EDM until we get back into mobile range.
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• kmeisthax 2y ago
  The "faster horses" comment is unfortunate, both because Henry Ford was a huge Nazi and because it's a dramatically wrong idea of what people actually wanted that only makes sense if you're already so car-brained[0] to think that the only alternative to a car is a horse. At least in cities, you had trains, trams, and omnibuses; not to mention walking was also an option. There's a tendency in consumer tech companies to look at TikTok as the ultimate goal: everyone wants a pipeline to pump entertainment slurry into, and the old versions of the product are just worse slurry pipelines. But this is wrong. Old Spotify and Netflix aren't "faster horses". They're the train connecting a walkable urban core that got replaced with a never-on-time bus route[1] while the government encouraged everyone to move into car-dependent suburban prisons. Like cars, entertainment slurry pipelines exist for the benefit of the pipeline owner, not the creator nor the viewer. Nobody asks for TikTok, it's just a global minima in the reward function[2] of "how do we most actively exploit creative industry". The platform owners want you to forget about the artists on their platforms so that those artists can't tell you to move to another platform. It's akin to one of the nightmare scenarios trotted out by copyright maximalists during the Napster Wars of the early 2000s, except the owning class now has significant economic interest in the platforms, so it's OK now. [0] I have a pet theory that cars were a fascist long-con to destroy cities and atomize society to avoid the creation of class solidarity and durable political movements against large business interests. [1] Remember when Netflix rented DVDs? And had almost everything, because physical media has really robust consumer protections? [2] If you think my "cars are fascist" theory is insane, wait until I talk about AI.
• jedberg 2y ago
  OPs specific complaints about Netflix and Spotify are mostly a result of their success. Back in 2012 Netflix had a lot of movies because Hollywood didn't value streaming and were willing to sell the streaming right for most of their content for tiny amounts of money. And there were no other streamer. Spotify is in a similar boat. The music companies didn't value streaming and were willing to sell their entire catalog to the one player in the ecosystem (or in the case of music, to everyone for the same low price) But also, personalization actually drives a ton of revenue. When I worked at Netflix, when the recommendation system went down and we defaulted to curated lists, streaming would drop 20%. And that was in 2013. I can only imagine what the drop is today when that system goes down. Personalization drives a ton of revenue, and TikTok is the best at it, so it's no surprise that OP sees everything "going to TikTok"
  • tobr 2y ago
    Weren’t the big record labels terrified that streaming would cannibalize CD sales? I think it was a pretty huge thing that Spotify got them onboard at all. I’m not sure how much that matters to your overall point but saying they ”didn’t value streaming” doesn’t seem quite right with how I remember the discussion at the time - they were afraid of it because they could see its value, and how that might disrupt their lucrative plastic disc business.
• yard2010 2y ago
  Enshitification ensues
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• zombiwoof 2y ago
  What if I still believe in leaches to fix my headache
• synergy7 2y ago
  I am not sure Netflix 2025 is a car. I would go with a carnival ride on a bunch of ponies analogy.
• jlcases 2y ago
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• greatgib 2y ago
  I just hate so so so much the Netflix of nowadays, they manage to keep me because of a few good movies/series and releasing new seasons of shows that I watched previously. But otherwise, this interface is so much bat shit! Incredible to me that anyone can pretend to Product manager of something so badly designed and unergonomic. The most important thing is "continue watching", that should be almost the first line, but no it is randomly spread at different levels. Some times you can't even find it, sometimes it lacks the movie that you were just watching and that reappears later. It is very hard to find something to watch because they still show you the hundred of things that you saw already, or that old crappy movie that anyone saw ten times on tv, or things that you are not interested anyway. And there is absolutely no way to filter to not be a frustrating experience. In addition you have the asshole dark patterns like showing multiple times the same movie/series in a given category when you scroll. My hypothesis is that they used to have a lot of great content, so that was their strength, and no they have very little valuable and recent content and as they don't want to be upfront about that, they use a lot of dark patterns to confuse you to still give the impression that they have an impressive catalog. But that has the consequence of the user being frustrated, impossible to find something proper to watch, but still having to spend hours browsing in the app as you might think that the good thing exist but it is just you that can't find it.
  • peeters 2y ago
    It feels to me like they poached some high-level product executive from an intrusive ad company, trained in the art of dark patterns, and pointed them at their paying customers. It's a truly offensive way of looking at your user base, as solely engagement metrics to be optimized. It's what happens when an entire business is built around gamifying one KPI.
  • kilroy123 2y ago
    Same. I gave up on netflix and just use Plex. Usually, I use this app on Android TV to play my plex library https://www.quasitv.app https://www.quasitv.app. Sooo much better.
  • boznz 2y ago
    I spent my last 3 months using Amazon Prime on my smart TV, opening the app, scrolling for 15 minutes through the same stuff as last time, turning off the TV and reading a book. I cancelled and now have 15 extra minutes reading time, though I do miss the cheap delivery it got me.
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• fragmede 2y ago
  https://youtu.be/vQDhzbTz-9k https://youtu.be/vQDhzbTz-9k Not quite the point of the article, but Kawasaki recently announced the Coreleo, a (faster?) robot horse you can ride and holy shit I want one. No chance this thing sees the light of day, and the video is a CGI render, but oh man.
• groby_b 2y ago
  If you want faster horses, breed your own horses. Ford wasn't interested in either your horse, or your transportation need. Ford was interested in what you'd buy. That means when there was ample competition, you'd likely get something that very much felt like a faster horse, because... you did want to go faster than your existing horse, and you didn't care the new thing wasn't horse-shaped. Fast-forward until meaningful local competition is gone, and you get the F150, the Bronco, and the Mustang. It isn't really what you want (for most people, I know some of you love yours, moving on), but given the other choices, general availability, and popular sentiment, it's close enough that enough people will say, "OK, fine, definitely not a horse any more, but still sorta works for me." You'll get bland pablum that's smeared out across the average opinion of a sufficient amount of people while maximizing total profit under the curve. That's the logical outcome of any mass production. IOW: If you care about what you need, support open source authors. Write open source. And be prepared to tinker to tailor it to your needs. Horses are individual, and need care and support more than your car does.
• keeptrying 2y ago
  With LLMs the ability to create your own experience whilst using services as "databases" is really possible. My crazy though is that this is where the internet will go. One of the big problems with SaaS is that the apps are tuned to increase company profit - not user agency. All that will flip. Agents are the first barrage in that direction but the movement is only just starting. One barrier is configuration (code at scale) - ie a way to communicate exactly what you want. Once we have that we compile from our needs (configuration) to an app thats exactly what we want backed by our accounts on amazon, uber, google, openai as databases and processing.
• freedomben 2y ago
  This gets especially interesting when you consider that horses are still better than motorized vehicles at accessing certain terrain. For example, a horse can trivially climb a steep hill in the wilderness with no road, or ford a river with no nearby bridges, that even rugged ATVs can't really handle. The vast majority of transportation needs are better served by motorized vehicles, but horses still have some unique advantages and in some areas are unbeatable. Now that said, some of the freaky AI robots with legs might finally render horses inferior, but those are pretty inaccessible to most people.
  • wpm 2y ago
    I can't wait for the day my hiking trails aren't festooned with piles of horseshit.
• nashashmi 2y ago
  Developer steps: 1. Make useful product for smart people 2. Change product to be useful for average people. 3. Change product to be handy for dumb people. 4. Let investors think even dumb people can rule the world. 5. Cash out.
• s3p 2y ago
  This is such a good article. No notes. I share the same annoyance with how often algorithms are used - if we could give power users an ability to say "yes, I know what I want" and bypass all the recommendations, that would be ideal.
• CivBase 2y ago
  Sometimes I want a faster horse. Problem is horses are no longer in high demand. It's a niche market now. I may have to pay a premium or put in some extra work to get the horse I want. It's just the way of things.
• wg0 2y ago
  Product Managers that have nothing better to do than A/B testing. And the curse of "AI" and extensive machine learning. As if machine learning can adequately represents a person's tastes and preferences.
• booleandilemma 2y ago
  Netflix and Spotify are designed this way because they're subscription services. They need to convince you they always have a lot of new stuff, all the time, so that you don't cancel your subscription. They don't want you to think they're some static libraries of content. They make their websites like interactive billboards.
• lakrikor1 2y ago
  Is Spotify TikTok-ifying itself? I don't use either app. I wonder if songs will get shorter now that video content is getting preferably shorter.
• squarefoot 2y ago
  Welcome to the web 3.0 mindset: changing for the sake of changing and having more bullet points on advertising, moving fast and breaking things because the innovation behind a fancy page can't be wrong even when it ruins the experience of most users. Thank you, Open Source, for giving me the tools and freedom of choice I can use to completely ignore or at least make less painful the experience.
• BrenBarn 2y ago
  Well, I see it sort of like, yes, people might want faster horses. And maybe they'd prefer cars to horses. But if your cars start poking me in the eye and flashing blinding lights at me, I'm going to consider going back to a horse. Part of the process of enshittification is changing the set of needs served by a product, and, almost invariably, adding new functionality that no one asked for and that they probably don't want. And usually that new functionality is a sort of Trojan horse (a faster Trojan horse?) that offers something superficially interesting but is really just a means of wedging some kind of revenue generation into the experience the user really wants to have. People often do want cars rather than faster horses, but they want the cars they want, not the ones that will make someone else the most money.
• ewgoforth 2y ago
  https://www.whats-on-netflix.com https://www.whats-on-netflix.com is a good way to search for stuff.
• derekzhouzhen 2y ago
  Me too, but you and I cannot afford a faster horse, or even the same horse we once had. The horse they use to offer was an illusion, a bait for the new Tiktok thing. Sooner or later, people will forget that horses once exist.
• fortran77 2y ago
  Quote Investigtator has a nice piece on the "faster horse" quote https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/28/ford-faster-horse/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/28/ford-faster-horse/
• dhosek 2y ago
  There seems to be some laws of (human) nature about these sorts of things at work here like how all programs eventually evolve into either Microsoft Excel or an operating system (or both) or how all basic cable channels eventually end up programming Law & Order reruns.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 2y ago
  For over 100 years, people have been focused on faster cars.
• jFriedensreich 2y ago
  Here is the thing: netflix and spotify are not in the "my X collection" business. They sell subscriptions to content and the apps reflect that. I am 100% in your/OPs boat but i would expect (niche and /or open source) apps to pop up that just make my collections of my content from other sources nice and the way nerds like us want. We have a right under EU data portability laws to do exactly that BUT companies break the laws to prohibit users taking control of their data. The only reason this is not changing is that we are not organised and there is no funded organisation suing the crap out of these companies until the final instance to give us our data.
• m463 2y ago
  I definitely want a plaid horse with a dashboard, a round steering wheel and turn-signal/drive-select stalks. and I want to use a buggy whip to smack the fingers of people reaching for their touchscreens to spring for the in-car-purchases and seat-warmer subscriptions
• somethingor 2y ago
  What frustrates me is that many people that claim to want a faster horse don’t actually use them where they are available Bandcamp to me is the ideal “horse” for music (and I’m praying it stays a horse) Those complaining about Chrome dominance but still not personally using Firefox is another example (even with all of Mozilla’s controversies, Firefox is still the “fastest horse” available imo) Not being satisfied with the horse selection is understandable, but actively furthering the obsolescence of the available horses is not (even if the individual impact is minimal)
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• soheil 2y ago
  You are the horse. Platforms realized they don't have to keep making faster horses or cars or whatnot if they just turn their users into zombie-like creatures who mindlessly click on what's presented to them albeit just to chase that next carrot of dopamine.
• curtisszmania 2y ago
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• Animats 2y ago
  Could we have more things that don't work like TikTok?
• physicsguy 2y ago
  I wouldn’t mind Spotify’s changes if they actually worked well. But the podcasts thing is a nightmare and doesn’t work well, and I have no interest in Audiobooks or courses as part of my subscription.
• _Algernon_ 2y ago
  The fastest horse will always be media piracy.
• murtio 2y ago
  All creative content-based products face a similar fate once they receive VC money or go public. In both cases, it places pressure on them to grow at a rate that is not sustainable for creative content. This is one of the main reasons why Ed Catmull of Pixar backed selling the company to Disney. He realized that even if Pixar produces a blockbuster every year and is a profitable company, the fact that it's publicly traded will require them to always deliver increasing growth year-over-year. Selling to Disney helped shield them from the fate that has befallen many other studios.
• kristianc 2y ago
  Netflix Revenue 2012 - $3.5bn Netflix Revenue 2024 - $39bn Apparently the market disagrees.
• yboris 2y ago
  For those with large video libraries on their local hard drive, please consider trying my MIT Open Source Video Hub App - with scrub-able thumbnail previews of all your videos. https://videohubapp.com/ https://videohubapp.com/ & https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App https://github.com/whyboris/Video-Hub-App
• yazaddaruvala 1y ago
  https://youtu.be/Be5HUxOYTOM?si=eOBjJW7lxvfG3xSs https://youtu.be/Be5HUxOYTOM?si=eOBjJW7lxvfG3xSs ?
• toobulkeh 1y ago
  Enshittification. The UX is not for you—it’s to maximize you.
• thewileyone 1y ago
  Agree. I want an advanced filtering system, not an algorithm curated list of movies based on what I've seen before. How many times does "Bright" have to keep appearing on my list before it goes away, even after I've watched it already???