– Resetting a password takes 15 seconds. Deleting your account takes 15 minutes, three support tickets, and a phone call during business hours. The friction is asymmetric: easy to start, hard to leave.
When a text editor requires a monthly fee to save files locally, or a smart car requires a subscription to activate the heated seats already installed in the vehicle, software has become cynical. It shifts from value creation to rent extraction. 3. Engagement Maximization (The Attention Trap)
When a product manager runs an A/B test and discovers that a confusing cancellation flow reduces churn by 15%, the data does not say, “This is unethical.” The data says, “This works.”
Publicly traded companies and venture-backed startups face immense pressure to show quarter-over-quarter growth. Once a software product reaches market saturation—meaning almost everyone who needs it already uses it—it can no longer grow by acquiring new users. To satisfy investors, the company must find ways to extract more revenue from its existing user base. This inevitably leads to aggressive monetization strategies, reduced privacy protections, and feature bloat. The Shift from Product to Ecosystem cynical software
Cynicism in software isn't just a bad attitude; it is often a defense mechanism born from a "deep emotional source" when the voice of experience is ignored
Assumes external APIs will slow down, crash, or return garbage. Logs the error and bubbles it up to the user interface.
These are not charities. They are businesses. But they operate on a different axiom: respect the user, and the user will respect you back. – Resetting a password takes 15 seconds
Next time someone tells you their software is going to "change the world," ask them if it can successfully handle a leap year first.
The shift happened around 2015. That was the year dark patterns became standard curriculum. That was the year "infinite scroll" was perfected—not to inform, but to addict. That was the year Facebook realized that anger gets 300% more comments than joy, so they tweaked the feed to show you more things that make you angry.
Cynical software doesn’t just waste time — it insults you. It implies you are either a fool (who will click the wrong thing) or a threat (who must be corralled). Over time, users internalize that hostility. We start mashing “Cancel” expecting a fight. We screenshot every transaction because we assume the software will betray us. When a text editor requires a monthly fee
Every unnecessary click, every forced CAPTCHA, every "verify your identity" loop adds a microsecond of friction. Over a billion users, that friction adds up to years of lost human life. We are spending our finite hours on earth proving to a Python script that we are not robots.
Supporting decentralized, community-driven tools (like Linux, Signal, or Mastodon) that have no financial incentive to exploit their users.