My biggest pet peeve is when people on sites like HN assume software should be tailor made for their objectives and not the company's objectives.
Sometimes the objectives align, but not always. And yes, the world would be a better place if they were better aligned, but we don't live in that world.
I'm sure X's motivation is something along the lines of forcing logins creates more users, or the downside of scraping outweighs the benefits.
I don't really understand this comment. The simplest way to put pressure on companies to align with their user's objectives is to complain loudly. It's not that HN "assumes" anything, it's just that people call shitty things as they are, in the hope that if enough people agree, it'll create enough pressure for the company to change course.
Will it work? Probably not. But not even trying would be self-defeating.
I don't think it's effective though because you're not actually addressing the reality on the ground. To pursuade someone you need to start with their assumptions.
If your argument doesn't even seem aware of them, then they won't listen.
I guess you could say "who cares, X is evil anyway, might as well try" but it just seems ineffective and frankly a little naive.
On the other hand, it is fair to be upset when the objectives seemingly used to align and you had put significant work into creating content for the company as well as providing bootstrapping network effects only to have them change the software against your previously aligned objectives.
This is the same as being mad at sports fans for complaining about the owners. No one would be anywhere near twitter, especially since it got covered in Elon’s ketamine cologne, if not for the users. Thinking the corporation profiting from those users should be free to change the deal on a whim is not a good look.
One of the problems is that many companies motives are so incredibly misaligned with society at large.
Google, Facebook, X are all explicitly designed to be addictive and provide as little value as possible. Because they want to give everything away for free in a way that keeps you on the site to maximise scraping your data so they can screw you over more later.
They are not even aligned at the most basic level. Everyone needs to stop using it. Or at least circumvent their measures.