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<h1>The Forgotten Story Of The Radium Girls, Whose Deaths Saved Thousands Of Lives</h1>
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<p>On April 10, 1917, an 18-year-old woman named Grace Fryer started work as a dial painter at the United States Radium Corporation (USRC) in Orange, New Jersey. It was four days after the US had joined World War I; with two soldier brothers, Grace wanted to do all she could to help the war effort. She had no idea that her new job would change her life — and workers’ rights — forever.</p>

<h2>The Ghost Girls</h2>

<p>With war declared, hundreds of working-class women flocked to the studio where they were employed to paint watches and military dials with the new element radium, which had been discovered by Marie Curie a little less than 20 years before. Dial painting was "the elite job for the poor working girls"; it paid more than three times the average factory job, and those lucky enough to land a position ranked in the top 5% of female workers nationally, giving the women financial freedom in a time of burgeoning female empowerment. Many of them were teenagers, with small hands perfect for the artistic work, and they spread the message of their new job’s appeal through their friend and family networks; often, whole sets of siblings worked alongside each other in the studio.</p>

<p>Radium’s luminosity was part of its allure, and the dial painters soon became known as the "ghost girls" — because by the time they finished their shifts, they themselves would glow in the dark. They made the most of the perk, wearing their good dresses to the plant so they’d shine in the dance halls at night, and even painting radium onto their teeth for a smile that would knock their suitors dead.<br/><br/>Grace and her colleagues obediently followed the technique they’d been taught for the painstaking handiwork of painting the tiny dials, some of which were only 3.5 centimeters wide. The girls were instructed to slip their paintbrushes between their lips to make a fine point — a practice called lip-pointing, or a "lip, dip, paint routine," as playwright Melanie Marnich later described it. Every time the girls raised the brushes to their mouths, they swallowed a little of the glowing green paint.</p>

<h2>Truth and Lies</h2>

<p>"The first thing we asked [was] ‘Does this stuff hurt you?’" Mae Cubberley, who instructed Grace in the technique, later remembered. "Naturally you don’t want to put anything in your mouth that is going to hurt you. Mr. Savoy [the manager] said that it wasn’t dangerous, that we didn’t need to be afraid."</p>

<p>But that wasn’t true. Ever since the glowing element had been discovered, it had been known to cause harm; Marie Curie herself had suffered radiation burns from handling it. People had died of radium poisoning before the first dial painter ever picked up her brush. That was why the men at the radium companies wore lead aprons in their laboratories and handled the radium with ivory-tipped tongs. Yet the dial painters were not afforded such protection, or even warned it might be necessary.</p>

<p>That was because, at that time, a <i>small</i> amount of radium — such as the girls were handling — was believed to be beneficial to health: People drank radium water as a tonic, and one could buy cosmetics, butter, milk, and toothpaste laced with the wonder element. Newspapers reported its use would "add years to our lives!"</p>

<p>But that belief was founded upon research conducted by the very same radium firms who had built their lucrative industry around it. They ignored all the danger signs; when asked, managers told the girls the substance would put roses in their cheeks.</p>

<h2>The First Death</h2>

<p>In 1922, one of Grace’s colleagues, Mollie Maggia, had to quit the studio because she was sick. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. Her trouble had started with an aching tooth: Her dentist pulled it, but then the next tooth started hurting and also had to be extracted. In the place of the missing teeth, agonizing ulcers sprouted as dark flowers, blooming red and yellow with blood and pus. They seeped constantly and made her breath foul. Then she suffered aching pains in her limbs that were so agonizing they eventually left her unable to walk. The doctor thought it was rheumatism; he sent her home with aspirin.</p>

<p>By May 1922, Mollie was desperate. At that point, she had lost most of her teeth and the mysterious infection had spread: Her entire lower jaw, the roof of her mouth, and even some of the bones of her ears were said to be "one large abscess." But worse was to come. When her dentist prodded delicately at her jawbone in her mouth, to his horror and shock, it broke against his fingers. He removed it, "not by an operation, but merely by putting his fingers in her mouth and lifting it out." Only days later, her entire lower jaw was removed in the same way.<br /><br />Mollie was literally falling apart. And she wasn’t the only one; by now, Grace Fryer, too, was having trouble with her jaw and suffering pains in her feet, and so were the other radium girls.<br /></p>

<p>On September 12, 1922, the strange infection that had plagued Mollie Maggia for less than a year spread to the tissues of her throat. The disease slowly ate its way through her jugular vein. At 5 p.m. that day, her mouth was flooded with blood as she hemorrhaged so fast that her nurse could not staunch it. She died at the age of 24. With her doctors flummoxed as to the cause of death, her death certificate, erroneously, said she’d died of syphilis, something her former company would later use against her.</p>

<p>As if by clockwork, one by one, Mollie’s former colleagues soon followed her to the grave.<br /></p>

<h2>The Cover-Up</h2>

<p>The young women's employer, USRC, denied any responsibility for the deaths for almost two years. After suffering a downturn in business because of what they saw as "gossip" that wouldn’t go away, in 1924 they finally commissioned an expert to look into the rumored link between the dial-painting profession and the women’s deaths.</p>

<p>Unlike the company’s own research into radium’s beneficence, this study was independent, and when the expert confirmed the link between the radium and the women’s illnesses, the president of the firm was outraged. Instead of accepting the findings, he paid for new studies that published the opposite conclusion; he also lied to the Department of Labor, which had begun investigating, about the verdict of the original report. Publicly, he denounced the women as trying to "palm off" their illnesses on the firm and decried their attempts to get some financial help for their mounting medical bills.<br /></p>

<h2>The Light That Does Not Lie</h2>

<p>With the report hushed up, the women's biggest challenge was proving the link between their mysterious illnesses and the radium that they’d been ingesting hundreds of times a day. Though they themselves discussed the fact that their work must be to blame, they were fighting against the widespread belief that radium was safe. In fact, it was only when the first male employee of the radium firm died that experts finally took up the charge. In 1925, a brilliant doctor named Harrison Martland devised tests that proved once and for all that radium had poisoned the women.</p>

<p>Martland also explained what was happening inside their bodies. As early as 1901, it had been evident that radium could harm humans dramatically when applied externally; Pierre Curie once remarked that he would not want to be in room with a kilo of pure radium because he believed it would burn all the skin off his body, destroy his eyesight, and "probably kill [him]." Martland discovered that when radium was used internally, even in tiny amounts, the damage was many thousands of times greater.</p>

<p>That ingested radium had subsequently settled in the women’s bodies and was now emitting constant, destructive radiation that "honeycombed" their bones. It was literally boring holes inside them <i>while they were alive</i>. It attacked the women all over their bodies: Grace Fryer’s spine was "crushed" and she had to wear a steel back brace; another girl’s jaw was eaten away to "a mere stump." The women’s legs shortened and spontaneously fractured, too.</p>

<p>Eerily, those damaged bones also began to glow from the radium embedded deep within them: the light that does not lie. Sometimes, the moment a woman realized she had radium poisoning was when she caught sight of herself in a mirror in the middle of the night — for a ghost girl was reflected there, shining with an unnatural luminosity that sealed her fate.</p>

<p>For Martland had also realized that the poisoning was fatal. And now that it was inside of them, there was no way of removing the radium from the girls’ beleaguered bones.</p>

<h2>The Fight</h2>

<p>Despite the radium industry’s attempts to discredit Martland’s pioneering work, it hadn’t reckoned with the courage and tenacity of the radium girls themselves. They started banding together to fight against the injustice. And there was an altruistic motive to their battle — after all, dial painters were still being employed all across the United States. "It is not for myself I care," Grace Fryer commented. "I am thinking more of the hundreds of girls to whom this may serve as an example."</p>

<p>It was Grace who led their fight, determined to find a lawyer even after countless attorneys turned her down, either disbelieving the women’s claims, running scared from the powerful radium corporations, or being unprepared to fight a legal battle that demanded the overturn of existing legislation. At that time, radium poisoning was not a compensable disease — it hadn’t even been discovered until the girls got sick — and the women were also stymied by the statute of limitations, which ruled that victims of occupational poisoning had to bring their legal cases within two years. Radium poisoning was insidious, so most girls did not start to sicken until at least five years after they started work; they were trapped in a vicious legal circle that could seemingly not be squared. But Grace was the daughter of a union delegate, and she was determined to hold a clearly guilty firm to account.</p>

<p>Eventually, in 1927, a smart young lawyer named Raymond Berry accepted their case, and Grace (along with four colleagues) found herself at the center of an internationally famous courtroom drama. By now, however, time was running out: The women had been given just four months to live, and the company seemed intent on dragging out the legal proceedings. As a consequence, Grace and her friends were forced to settle out of court — but they had raised the profile of radium poisoning, just as Grace had planned.<br /><br />The New Jersey radium girls’ case was front-page news, and it sent shockwaves across America. In Ottawa, Illinois, a dial painter by the name of Catherine Wolfe read the coverage with horror. "There were meetings at [our] plant that bordered on riots," she remembered. "The chill of fear was so depressing that we could scarcely work."<br /></p>

<p>Yet the Illinois firm, Radium Dial, took a leaf out of USRC’s book and denied responsibility. Although the firm’s medical tests proved that the Illinois women were showing clear symptoms of radium poisoning, it lied about the results. It even placed a full-page ad in the local paper: "If we at any time had reason to believe that any conditions of the work endangered the health of our employees, we would at once have suspended operations." Its actions to hush up the scandal went as far as interfering in the girls’ autopsies when the Illinois workers began to die: Company officials actually stole their radium-riddled bones in their callous cover-up.<br /></p>

<p>In 1938, Catherine Wolfe (Donohue after her marriage) developed a grapefruit-sized tumor that bulged on her hip. Like Mollie Maggia before her, she lost her teeth and had to pick pieces of her jawbone out of her mouth; she constantly held a patterned handkerchief to her jaw to absorb the ever-seeping pus. She had also seen her friends dying before her, and that rather steeled her spirit.</p>

<p>When Catherine started her fight for justice, it was the mid-1930s: America was in the grip of the Great Depression. Catherine and her friends were shunned by their community for suing one of the few firms left standing. Though close to death when her case went to court in 1938, Catherine ignored her doctors’ advice and instead gave evidence from her deathbed. In doing so, and with the help of her lawyer, Leonard Grossman (who worked pro bono), she finally won justice not only for herself, but for workers everywhere.<br /></p>

<h2>The Legacy</h2>

<p>The radium girls’ case was one of the first in which an employer was made responsible for the health of the company’s employees. It led to life-saving regulations and, ultimately, to the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which now operates nationally in the United States to protect workers. Before OSHA was set up, 14,000 people died on the job every year; today, it is just over 4,500. The women also left a legacy to science that has been termed “invaluable.”</p>

<p>But you won’t often read their names in the history books, for today the individual radium girls have largely been forgotten. Drawing on the women’s own words from their diaries, letters, and court testimonies, my new book, <i>The Radium Girls</i>, attempts to redress the balance — because it was through their strength, suffering, and sacrifice that workers’ rights were won. We all benefit from their courage.<br /></p>

<p>Grace Fryer and Catherine Donohue — to name just two — are women we need to honor and salute as fearless champions. They shine through history with all that they achieved in their too-short lives. And they shine in other ways, too. For radium has a half-life of 1,600 years...and it is still embedded in their bones. The ghost girls will be glowing in their graves for a good while yet.</p>
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title: The Forgotten Story Of The Radium Girls, Whose Deaths Saved Thousands Of Lives
url: https://www.buzzfeed.com/authorkatemoore/the-light-that-does-not-lie
hash_url: 0bdcd919935d2bc62634f2df3dedd06d

<p>On April 10, 1917, an 18-year-old woman named Grace Fryer started work as a dial painter at the United States Radium Corporation (USRC) in Orange, New Jersey. It was four days after the US had joined World War I; with two soldier brothers, Grace wanted to do all she could to help the war effort. She had no idea that her new job would change her life — and workers’ rights — forever.</p>

<h2>The Ghost Girls</h2><p>With war declared, hundreds of working-class women flocked to the studio where they were employed to paint watches and military dials with the new element radium, which had been discovered by Marie Curie a little less than 20 years before. Dial painting was "the elite job for the poor working girls"; it paid more than three times the average factory job, and those lucky enough to land a position ranked in the top 5% of female workers nationally, giving the women financial freedom in a time of burgeoning female empowerment. Many of them were teenagers, with small hands perfect for the artistic work, and they spread the message of their new job’s appeal through their friend and family networks; often, whole sets of siblings worked alongside each other in the studio.</p><p>Radium’s luminosity was part of its allure, and the dial painters soon became known as the "ghost girls" — because by the time they finished their shifts, they themselves would glow in the dark. They made the most of the perk, wearing their good dresses to the plant so they’d shine in the dance halls at night, and even painting radium onto their teeth for a smile that would knock their suitors dead.<br/><br/>Grace and her colleagues obediently followed the technique they’d been taught for the painstaking handiwork of painting the tiny dials, some of which were only 3.5 centimeters wide. The girls were instructed to slip their paintbrushes between their lips to make a fine point — a practice called lip-pointing, or a "lip, dip, paint routine," as playwright Melanie Marnich later described it. Every time the girls raised the brushes to their mouths, they swallowed a little of the glowing green paint.</p>

<h2>Truth and Lies</h2><p>"The first thing we asked [was] ‘Does this stuff hurt you?’" Mae Cubberley, who instructed Grace in the technique, later remembered. "Naturally you don’t want to put anything in your mouth that is going to hurt you. Mr. Savoy [the manager] said that it wasn’t dangerous, that we didn’t need to be afraid."</p><p>But that wasn’t true. Ever since the glowing element had been discovered, it had been known to cause harm; Marie Curie herself had suffered radiation burns from handling it. People had died of radium poisoning before the first dial painter ever picked up her brush. That was why the men at the radium companies wore lead aprons in their laboratories and handled the radium with ivory-tipped tongs. Yet the dial painters were not afforded such protection, or even warned it might be necessary.</p><p>That was because, at that time, a <i>small</i> amount of radium — such as the girls were handling — was believed to be beneficial to health: People drank radium water as a tonic, and one could buy cosmetics, butter, milk, and toothpaste laced with the wonder element. Newspapers reported its use would "add years to our lives!"</p><p>But that belief was founded upon research conducted by the very same radium firms who had built their lucrative industry around it. They ignored all the danger signs; when asked, managers told the girls the substance would put roses in their cheeks.</p>

<h2>The First Death</h2><p>In 1922, one of Grace’s colleagues, Mollie Maggia, had to quit the studio because she was sick. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. Her trouble had started with an aching tooth: Her dentist pulled it, but then the next tooth started hurting and also had to be extracted. In the place of the missing teeth, agonizing ulcers sprouted as dark flowers, blooming red and yellow with blood and pus. They seeped constantly and made her breath foul. Then she suffered aching pains in her limbs that were so agonizing they eventually left her unable to walk. The doctor thought it was rheumatism; he sent her home with aspirin.</p><p>By May 1922, Mollie was desperate. At that point, she had lost most of her teeth and the mysterious infection had spread: Her entire lower jaw, the roof of her mouth, and even some of the bones of her ears were said to be "one large abscess." But worse was to come. When her dentist prodded delicately at her jawbone in her mouth, to his horror and shock, it broke against his fingers. He removed it, "not by an operation, but merely by putting his fingers in her mouth and lifting it out." Only days later, her entire lower jaw was removed in the same way.<br /><br />Mollie was literally falling apart. And she wasn’t the only one; by now, Grace Fryer, too, was having trouble with her jaw and suffering pains in her feet, and so were the other radium girls.<br /></p>

<p>On September 12, 1922, the strange infection that had plagued Mollie Maggia for less than a year spread to the tissues of her throat. The disease slowly ate its way through her jugular vein. At 5 p.m. that day, her mouth was flooded with blood as she hemorrhaged so fast that her nurse could not staunch it. She died at the age of 24. With her doctors flummoxed as to the cause of death, her death certificate, erroneously, said she’d died of syphilis, something her former company would later use against her.</p><p>As if by clockwork, one by one, Mollie’s former colleagues soon followed her to the grave.<br /></p><h2>The Cover-Up</h2><p>The young women's employer, USRC, denied any responsibility for the deaths for almost two years. After suffering a downturn in business because of what they saw as "gossip" that wouldn’t go away, in 1924 they finally commissioned an expert to look into the rumored link between the dial-painting profession and the women’s deaths.</p>

<p>Unlike the company’s own research into radium’s beneficence, this study was independent, and when the expert confirmed the link between the radium and the women’s illnesses, the president of the firm was outraged. Instead of accepting the findings, he paid for new studies that published the opposite conclusion; he also lied to the Department of Labor, which had begun investigating, about the verdict of the original report. Publicly, he denounced the women as trying to "palm off" their illnesses on the firm and decried their attempts to get some financial help for their mounting medical bills.<br /></p><h2>The Light That Does Not Lie</h2><p>With the report hushed up, the women's biggest challenge was proving the link between their mysterious illnesses and the radium that they’d been ingesting hundreds of times a day. Though they themselves discussed the fact that their work must be to blame, they were fighting against the widespread belief that radium was safe. In fact, it was only when the first male employee of the radium firm died that experts finally took up the charge. In 1925, a brilliant doctor named Harrison Martland devised tests that proved once and for all that radium had poisoned the women.</p>

<p>Martland also explained what was happening inside their bodies. As early as 1901, it had been evident that radium could harm humans dramatically when applied externally; Pierre Curie once remarked that he would not want to be in room with a kilo of pure radium because he believed it would burn all the skin off his body, destroy his eyesight, and "probably kill [him]." Martland discovered that when radium was used internally, even in tiny amounts, the damage was many thousands of times greater.</p><p>That ingested radium had subsequently settled in the women’s bodies and was now emitting constant, destructive radiation that "honeycombed" their bones. It was literally boring holes inside them <i>while they were alive</i>. It attacked the women all over their bodies: Grace Fryer’s spine was "crushed" and she had to wear a steel back brace; another girl’s jaw was eaten away to "a mere stump." The women’s legs shortened and spontaneously fractured, too.</p>

<p>Eerily, those damaged bones also began to glow from the radium embedded deep within them: the light that does not lie. Sometimes, the moment a woman realized she had radium poisoning was when she caught sight of herself in a mirror in the middle of the night — for a ghost girl was reflected there, shining with an unnatural luminosity that sealed her fate.</p><p>For Martland had also realized that the poisoning was fatal. And now that it was inside of them, there was no way of removing the radium from the girls’ beleaguered bones.</p>

<h2>The Fight</h2><p>Despite the radium industry’s attempts to discredit Martland’s pioneering work, it hadn’t reckoned with the courage and tenacity of the radium girls themselves. They started banding together to fight against the injustice. And there was an altruistic motive to their battle — after all, dial painters were still being employed all across the United States. "It is not for myself I care," Grace Fryer commented. "I am thinking more of the hundreds of girls to whom this may serve as an example."</p><p>It was Grace who led their fight, determined to find a lawyer even after countless attorneys turned her down, either disbelieving the women’s claims, running scared from the powerful radium corporations, or being unprepared to fight a legal battle that demanded the overturn of existing legislation. At that time, radium poisoning was not a compensable disease — it hadn’t even been discovered until the girls got sick — and the women were also stymied by the statute of limitations, which ruled that victims of occupational poisoning had to bring their legal cases within two years. Radium poisoning was insidious, so most girls did not start to sicken until at least five years after they started work; they were trapped in a vicious legal circle that could seemingly not be squared. But Grace was the daughter of a union delegate, and she was determined to hold a clearly guilty firm to account.</p>

<p>Eventually, in 1927, a smart young lawyer named Raymond Berry accepted their case, and Grace (along with four colleagues) found herself at the center of an internationally famous courtroom drama. By now, however, time was running out: The women had been given just four months to live, and the company seemed intent on dragging out the legal proceedings. As a consequence, Grace and her friends were forced to settle out of court — but they had raised the profile of radium poisoning, just as Grace had planned.<br /><br />The New Jersey radium girls’ case was front-page news, and it sent shockwaves across America. In Ottawa, Illinois, a dial painter by the name of Catherine Wolfe read the coverage with horror. "There were meetings at [our] plant that bordered on riots," she remembered. "The chill of fear was so depressing that we could scarcely work."<br /></p><p>Yet the Illinois firm, Radium Dial, took a leaf out of USRC’s book and denied responsibility. Although the firm’s medical tests proved that the Illinois women were showing clear symptoms of radium poisoning, it lied about the results. It even placed a full-page ad in the local paper: "If we at any time had reason to believe that any conditions of the work endangered the health of our employees, we would at once have suspended operations." Its actions to hush up the scandal went as far as interfering in the girls’ autopsies when the Illinois workers began to die: Company officials actually stole their radium-riddled bones in their callous cover-up.<br /></p>

<p>In 1938, Catherine Wolfe (Donohue after her marriage) developed a grapefruit-sized tumor that bulged on her hip. Like Mollie Maggia before her, she lost her teeth and had to pick pieces of her jawbone out of her mouth; she constantly held a patterned handkerchief to her jaw to absorb the ever-seeping pus. She had also seen her friends dying before her, and that rather steeled her spirit.</p><p>When Catherine started her fight for justice, it was the mid-1930s: America was in the grip of the Great Depression. Catherine and her friends were shunned by their community for suing one of the few firms left standing. Though close to death when her case went to court in 1938, Catherine ignored her doctors’ advice and instead gave evidence from her deathbed. In doing so, and with the help of her lawyer, Leonard Grossman (who worked pro bono), she finally won justice not only for herself, but for workers everywhere.<br /></p>

<h2>The Legacy</h2><p>The radium girls’ case was one of the first in which an employer was made responsible for the health of the company’s employees. It led to life-saving regulations and, ultimately, to the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which now operates nationally in the United States to protect workers. Before OSHA was set up, 14,000 people died on the job every year; today, it is just over 4,500. The women also left a legacy to science that has been termed “invaluable.”</p><p>But you won’t often read their names in the history books, for today the individual radium girls have largely been forgotten. Drawing on the women’s own words from their diaries, letters, and court testimonies, my new book, <i>The Radium Girls</i>, attempts to redress the balance — because it was through their strength, suffering, and sacrifice that workers’ rights were won. We all benefit from their courage.<br /></p><p>Grace Fryer and Catherine Donohue — to name just two — are women we need to honor and salute as fearless champions. They shine through history with all that they achieved in their too-short lives. And they shine in other ways, too. For radium has a half-life of 1,600 years...and it is still embedded in their bones. The ghost girls will be glowing in their graves for a good while yet.</p>


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<h1>RFC8890: The Internet is for End Users</h1>
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<p class="intro">The <a href="https://iab.org/">Internet Architecture Board</a> (IAB) has published <a href="https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8890.html">RFC8890, <em>The Internet is for End Users</em></a>, arguing that the <a href="https://ietf.org/">Internet Engineering Task Force</a> (IETF) should ground its decisions in what’s good for people who use the Internet, and that it should take positive steps to achieve that.</p>

<p class="intro">Why does this need to be said? Is it going too far? Who else could they favour, and why should you care? As author of the RFC and a member of the IAB that passed it, here are my thoughts.</p>

<h3 id="how-the-internet-is-made">How the Internet is made</h3>

<p>The IETF plays a central role in the design and operation of the Internet. Formed in the 1980s by the engineers who created several of the Internet’s core technologies, it is the primary venue for documenting the technical design of the Internet, and has overseen development of protocols like TCP, IP, DNS and HTTP.</p>

<p>Companies, governments and other organisations don’t officially participate in the IETF; people only represent themselves. There isn’t even a concept of membership. Instead, decisions about specifications are made by ‘rough consensus’ — instead of formal voting, the IETF tries to find the best solution for each issue, based upon the ideas, comments and concerns brought to it.</p>

<p>‘Best' doesn't mean the choice that has the most companies supporting it; it’s the one that has the best technical arguments behind it. Working Group chairs measure that consensus; if someone thinks they got it wrong, they can appeal it through a chain of authorities selected for their experience.</p>

<p>Or, in the words of the unofficial IETF credo: ‘We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code.’</p>

<h3 id="technical-or-political-both">Technical or political? Both</h3>

<p>Naturally, most IETF decisions are about technical details; what bytes should go where, how a server reacts to a client, and so on. Because of this, participants often tell themselves that their decisions aren't ever political; that any such concerns are on ‘layer 8’ — referring to the stack of seven abstractions commonly used for network protocols — and therefore nothing to be concerned about.</p>

<p class="callout">“[T]he running code that results from our process (when things work well) inevitably has an impact beyond technical considerations, because the underlying decisions afford some uses while discouraging others.”<br/>
— <em><a href="https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8890.html">The Internet is for End Users</a></em></p>

<p>However, the barrier between the bits on the wire and political matters has turned out to be leaky, like <a href="https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-abstractions/">most abstractions are</a>. Sometimes the ability to send information (or the prevention of it) has real-world consequences that take power from some people and give it to others. Likewise with the ability to see what other people are saying, and to control the format in which they speak.</p>

<p>So, in a world that is increasingly intertwined with the Internet, it’s becoming more difficult to maintain the position that the design of Internet protocols doesn't have a political dimension. All decisions have the possibility of bias; of advantaging or disadvantaging different parties.</p>

<p>For example, the recent standardisation of <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8484">DNS-over-HTTPS</a> (DoH) pitted advocates for dissidents and protestors against network operators who use DNS for centralised network management, and child safety advocates who promote DNS-based filtering solutions. If the IETF were to only decide upon technical merit, how would it balance these interests?</p>

<p>Another example is the <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tls-esni">Encrypted Client Hello proposal</a>, which closes a loophole that shares the identity of HTTPS sites you visit with anyone listening. China has <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/china-is-now-blocking-all-encrypted-https-traffic-using-tls-1-3-and-esni/">reportedly started blocking connections that use it</a>, so in a purely technical sense, it will not work well because some networks block it. Should the IETF stop working on it?</p>

<p>Yet another example: how should the IETF handle a proposal to allow networks to decrypt or intermediate HTTPS connections? Is that OK if it’s merely technically sound? What if the user agrees to it, and what does ‘consent’ mean? Many such proposals have been made, but not approved. Why?</p>

<p>If the IETF’s decisions affect the design of the Internet, and the Internet is political, the IETF’s decisions are sometimes political too. However, its decision-making processes presume that there is a technically correct answer to each problem. When that decision affects people and power in the actual world, rough consensus and running code are insufficient.</p>

<p>Over the years, these questions have become increasingly urgent, because it isn’t viable to make decisions that have political outcomes but explain them using only technical arguments. That endangers the legitimacy of the IETF’s decisions, because they can be viewed as arbitrary, especially by those on the losing side.</p>

<p>Many rule-making systems — whether they be courts, legislatures or standards bodies — establish legitimacy by taking a principled approach. A community that agrees to principles that are informed by shared values can use them to navigate hard decisions. It's reasonable, then, to consider the principles that the IETF uses to guide development of the Internet.</p>

<h3 id="the-internets-principles">The Internet’s principles</h3>

<p>The Internet as we know it is a product of the times in which it grew up. The rule of law and liberal values of equality, reason, liberty, rights, and property were all dominant in the political landscape of post-war America and Europe, where most early Internet development took place.</p>

<p class="callout">“The IETF community wants the Internet to succeed because we believe that the existence of the Internet, and its influence on economics, communication, and education, will help us to build a better human society.”<br/>
— <em><a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3935">A Mission Statement<br/>
for the IETF</a></em></p>

<p>The Internet has implicitly embedded those values. You don’t need a license (or even to disclose your identity) to use it, and its technical underpinnings make it difficult to impose that requirement. Anyone can publish, and as a result it takes significant effort for a government to restrict the rights to speech and free assembly on it — again due in part to the way it is designed. There isn’t any central authority that decides what networks can or can’t attach to the Internet. You can create a new Internet application without getting permission first (just like Tim Berners-Lee did so long ago when he created the Web). Such openness is often cited as critical to the Internet’s success.</p>

<p>However, implicit values can drift, as new people get involved in the work, and as new challenges are faced. This is especially true when the resulting decisions can have profound effects on both profits and societies. So, over the years, the IETF community has made progress in documenting explicit principles that can guide decision-making.</p>

<p>For example, <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7258">RFC7258</a> <em>Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack</em> established IETF consensus that it’s bad for the Internet to allow widespread, covert monitoring, and that therefore the IETF would design its protocols to mitigate this risk —a technical argument with both political motivation and ramifications.</p>

<p>Likewise, <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6973">RFC6973</a> documents <em>Privacy Considerations for Internet Protocols</em>, and <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8752">RFC8752</a> reports on an IAB workshop that explored the power dynamics between news publishers and large online platforms.</p>

<p>Or, consider the <a href="http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/endtoend/endtoend.pdf">end-to-end principle</a>, which states that features for applications should reside in the end nodes (for example, your computer or phone) rather than in the network.</p>

<p>The IETF community will (I hope) continue to document and explore such principles, informed by shared values. RFC8890 makes a small contribution to this, by asking the IETF community to favour end users of the Internet — in other words, actual people — over other stakeholders that ask for their needs to be met, when there’s a conflict.</p>

<h3 id="we-cant-just-stick-to-the-technology">We can’t just stick to the technology</h3>

<p>If the IETF didn’t have any underlying principles, it would just focus on technology. A few detractors of <em>The Internet is for End Users</em> have said that’s exactly what it should do. That means that it would publish any proposal, no matter what its effects, provided that it was technically sufficient.</p>

<p>Some standards bodies already operate in that fashion; as long as you can get a few people (or more often, companies) together and agree on something, you can get it published. The IETF does not; it often declines to adopt proposals.</p>

<p class="callout">“When the IETF takes ownership of a protocol or function, it accepts the responsibility for all aspects of the protocol, even though some aspects may rarely or never be seen on the Internet.”<br/>
— <em><a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3935">A Mission Statement<br/>
for the IETF</a></em></p>

<p>That ability to refuse is meaningful to many people inside and outside the organisation; the IETF standardising something implies that it is good for the Internet, and has been reviewed not only for technical suitability but also adherence to the principles that inform the Internet’s design. In other words, the IETF is a quality filter; if a specification achieves consensus there, it gets deployed more broadly and easily (although it’s not a guarantee of success by any means) because people know it’s had that scrutiny.</p>

<p>Abdicating that role just to avoid thinking about and applying principles would not be good for the Internet. While it might gain a few participants eager to take advantage, it would lose many — including many of those who are still invested in the Internet as a force for good in the world.</p>

<p>Doing so would also affect the legitimacy of the IETF’s role in Internet governance in many eyes. There is a long history of <a href="https://thebulletin.org">scientists</a> and <a href="http://www.apple.com/au/">engineers</a> being concerned with how their work affects the world, and its potential for misuse. The IETF has continued this tradition, and should do so openly.</p>

<h3 id="getting-comfortable-with-the-ietfs-power">Getting comfortable with the IETF’s power</h3>

<p>If the IETF is making decisions based upon what it thinks is good for users, is it setting itself up as being some sort of governing body, taking power away from governments and other institutions? Isn’t it dangerous to leave such important matters in the hands of the geeks who show up, and who don’t have any democratic legitimacy?</p>

<p>First of all, a reality check. IETF decisions are only about documents; they don’t control the Internet. Other parties like equipment and software vendors, end users, platform and network operators and ultimately governments have a lot more say in what actually happens on the Internet from day to day.</p>

<p>What the IETF has is a proven ability to design protocols that work at scale, the ability to steer a proposal to align with its principles, and a reputation that gives its documents a certain amount of gravitas. These draw those parties to the IETF as a venue for standardisation, and their power flows into the specifications it endorses — especially when a protocol has momentum, like HTTP or IP. It doesn’t work the other way around; if an IETF standard doesn’t catch on with implementers and users, it gets ignored (and many have).</p>

<p><em>The Internet is for End Users</em> argues that this soft power should be explicitly acknowledged, so that participants are more conscious of the real-world ramifications of their decisions.</p>

<p>DNS over HTTPS is an interesting case study. It got the IETF <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2019-05-14/debates/E84CBBAE-E005-46E0-B7E5-845882DB1ED8/InternetEncryption">mentioned in the UK Parliament</a> by Baroness Thornton, a child safety advocate concerned about DoH’s use to bypass DNS-based controls mandated by UK law:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>’[T]here is a fundamental and very concerning lack of accountability when obscure technical groups, peopled largely by the employees of the big internet companies, take decisions that have major public policy implications with enormous consequences for all of us…’</p>
</blockquote>

<p>However, DoH was designed, contributed and ultimately deployed by participants from Web browsers, not the IETF, who cannot stop vendors from deploying a protocol it doesn’t approve of (as is often said, ‘there are no standards police.’). The IETF’s contribution was putting the specification through its process to assess its technical suitability and adherence to established principles.</p>

<p>Did the IETF create a better internet when it approved DoH? There’s a lot of disagreement about that, but what has upset many is that DoH was a surprise — the IETF standardised it without consulting some who it was likely to affect. Here, the IETF could have done better. <em>The Internet is for End Users</em> argues that such consultation is important, to assure that the people writing and reviewing the protocols understand how they will be used, and how they will impact users.</p>

<p>In the case of DoH, better communication between the technical community (not just big tech companies) and policymakers would clarified that relying on DNS to impose filtering was a bad assumption, in light of the principles underlying the design of the Internet.</p>

<p class="callout">“From its inception, the Internet has been, and is expected to remain, an evolving system whose participants regularly factor new requirements and technology into its design and implementation. Users of the Internet and providers of the equipment, software, and services that support it should anticipate and embrace this evolution as a major tenet of Internet philosophy.”<br/>
— <em><a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2026">The Internet Standards Process</a></em></p>

<p>However, that consultation does not translate to giving other parties a veto over Internet protocols. The UK Government or any other external authority should not be able to stop the IETF from creating a particular standard, or to hold it directly accountable; that would be a radical break from how the Internet has been developed for over thirty years. Because of the global nature of the Internet, it wouldn’t be possible to pursue a bilateral or regional style of governance; decisions would have to be sanctioned by every government where the Internet operates. That’s difficult to achieve even for vague statements of shared goals; doing it for the details of network protocols is impractical.</p>

<p>Who, then, is the IETF accountable to? Besides the internal rules which assure that the standards process runs in a way that’s accountable to the technical community, ultimately the IETF is accountable to the Internet; if it strays too far from what vendors, networks, users, and governments want to do, it will lose relevance. As with any platform, the Internet is a beneficiary of the network effect, and if the IETF leads it in a direction that’s unacceptable in too many places, the Internet might fragment into several networks — a risk currently on many people’s minds.</p>

<h3 id="finding-whats-best-for-end-users">Finding what’s best for end users</h3>

<p>There are also bound to be situations where what is best for end users is not obvious. Some will claim that giving other parties power — to filter, to monitor, to block — is in the interest of end users. How will the IETF make those decisions?</p>

<p>Unsurprisingly, this has already happened; it <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2804">refused to standardise wiretapping technology</a>, for example. In doing so, it applied technical reasoning informed by principles and the global nature of the Internet; designing Internet standards to suit the laws of one or a few countries isn’t appropriate.</p>

<p>That is echoed by <em>The Internet is for End Users</em>, which says:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[W]hen a decision improves the Internet for end users in one jurisdiction, but at the cost of potential harm to others elsewhere, that is not a good tradeoff. As such, we effectively design the Internet for the pessimal environment.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Even with careful thought, technical acumen and broad consultation, the IETF is bound to get some decisions wrong. That’s OK. RFC stands for Request for Comments, and in that spirit, sometimes the comments — evidenced by adoption and deployment as well — tell us to revise our specifications. That spirit of humility is still very much alive in the IETF community.</p>

<h3 id="next-steps">Next steps</h3>

<p>The Internet has been with us for almost 40 years and has contributed to profound changes in society. It currently faces serious challenges — issues that require input from policymakers, civil society, ordinary citizens, businesses and technologists.</p>

<p>It’s past time for technologists to both become more involved in discussions about how to meet those challenges, and to consider broader views of how the technology they create fits into society. Without good communication, policymakers are prone to making rules that doesn’t work with the technology, and technologists are prone to creating technology naïve to its policy implications.</p>

<p>So at its heart, <em>The Internet is for End Users</em> is a call for IETF participants to stop pretending that they can ignore the non-technical consequences of their decisions, a call for broader consultation when making them, and one for continued focus on the end user. Ultimately, end user impact is as least as important as the technical considerations of a proposal, and judging that impact requires a more serious effort to understand and incorporate other non-technical views.</p>

<p><em>The Internet is for End Users</em> is an IAB document; it doesn't have IETF consensus. As such, it doesn’t bind IETF decisions, but it is considered persuasive because the IAB has a mandate to consider issues affecting the Internet architecture.</p>

<p>On its own, then, it has limited effect. I view it as a small contribution to a larger body of principled thought that can help inform decisions about the evolution of the Internet. It’s up to all of us to apply those principles and develop them further.</p>

<p><em>Thanks to Martin Thomson and Eric Rescorla for reviewing this article.</em></p>
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title: RFC8890: The Internet is for End Users
url: https://www.mnot.net/blog/2020/08/28/for_the_users
hash_url: 0ca66318c85095c1406e42bb932f5e60

<p class="intro">The <a href="https://iab.org/">Internet Architecture Board</a> (IAB) has published <a href="https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8890.html">RFC8890, <em>The Internet is for End Users</em></a>, arguing that the <a href="https://ietf.org/">Internet Engineering Task Force</a> (IETF) should ground its decisions in what’s good for people who use the Internet, and that it should take positive steps to achieve that.</p>

<p class="intro">Why does this need to be said? Is it going too far? Who else could they favour, and why should you care? As author of the RFC and a member of the IAB that passed it, here are my thoughts.</p>

<h3 id="how-the-internet-is-made">How the Internet is made</h3>

<p>The IETF plays a central role in the design and operation of the Internet. Formed in the 1980s by the engineers who created several of the Internet’s core technologies, it is the primary venue for documenting the technical design of the Internet, and has overseen development of protocols like TCP, IP, DNS and HTTP.</p>

<p>Companies, governments and other organisations don’t officially participate in the IETF; people only represent themselves. There isn’t even a concept of membership. Instead, decisions about specifications are made by ‘rough consensus’ — instead of formal voting, the IETF tries to find the best solution for each issue, based upon the ideas, comments and concerns brought to it.</p>

<p>‘Best' doesn't mean the choice that has the most companies supporting it; it’s the one that has the best technical arguments behind it. Working Group chairs measure that consensus; if someone thinks they got it wrong, they can appeal it through a chain of authorities selected for their experience.</p>

<p>Or, in the words of the unofficial IETF credo: ‘We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code.’</p>

<h3 id="technical-or-political-both">Technical or political? Both</h3>

<p>Naturally, most IETF decisions are about technical details; what bytes should go where, how a server reacts to a client, and so on. Because of this, participants often tell themselves that their decisions aren't ever political; that any such concerns are on ‘layer 8’ — referring to the stack of seven abstractions commonly used for network protocols — and therefore nothing to be concerned about.</p>

<p class="callout">“[T]he running code that results from our process (when things work well) inevitably has an impact beyond technical considerations, because the underlying decisions afford some uses while discouraging others.”<br/>
— <em><a href="https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8890.html">The Internet is for End Users</a></em></p>

<p>However, the barrier between the bits on the wire and political matters has turned out to be leaky, like <a href="https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-abstractions/">most abstractions are</a>. Sometimes the ability to send information (or the prevention of it) has real-world consequences that take power from some people and give it to others. Likewise with the ability to see what other people are saying, and to control the format in which they speak.</p>

<p>So, in a world that is increasingly intertwined with the Internet, it’s becoming more difficult to maintain the position that the design of Internet protocols doesn't have a political dimension. All decisions have the possibility of bias; of advantaging or disadvantaging different parties.</p>

<p>For example, the recent standardisation of <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8484">DNS-over-HTTPS</a> (DoH) pitted advocates for dissidents and protestors against network operators who use DNS for centralised network management, and child safety advocates who promote DNS-based filtering solutions. If the IETF were to only decide upon technical merit, how would it balance these interests?</p>

<p>Another example is the <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tls-esni">Encrypted Client Hello proposal</a>, which closes a loophole that shares the identity of HTTPS sites you visit with anyone listening. China has <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/china-is-now-blocking-all-encrypted-https-traffic-using-tls-1-3-and-esni/">reportedly started blocking connections that use it</a>, so in a purely technical sense, it will not work well because some networks block it. Should the IETF stop working on it?</p>

<p>Yet another example: how should the IETF handle a proposal to allow networks to decrypt or intermediate HTTPS connections? Is that OK if it’s merely technically sound? What if the user agrees to it, and what does ‘consent’ mean? Many such proposals have been made, but not approved. Why?</p>

<p>If the IETF’s decisions affect the design of the Internet, and the Internet is political, the IETF’s decisions are sometimes political too. However, its decision-making processes presume that there is a technically correct answer to each problem. When that decision affects people and power in the actual world, rough consensus and running code are insufficient.</p>

<p>Over the years, these questions have become increasingly urgent, because it isn’t viable to make decisions that have political outcomes but explain them using only technical arguments. That endangers the legitimacy of the IETF’s decisions, because they can be viewed as arbitrary, especially by those on the losing side.</p>

<p>Many rule-making systems — whether they be courts, legislatures or standards bodies — establish legitimacy by taking a principled approach. A community that agrees to principles that are informed by shared values can use them to navigate hard decisions. It's reasonable, then, to consider the principles that the IETF uses to guide development of the Internet.</p>

<h3 id="the-internets-principles">The Internet’s principles</h3>

<p>The Internet as we know it is a product of the times in which it grew up. The rule of law and liberal values of equality, reason, liberty, rights, and property were all dominant in the political landscape of post-war America and Europe, where most early Internet development took place.</p>

<p class="callout">“The IETF community wants the Internet to succeed because we believe that the existence of the Internet, and its influence on economics, communication, and education, will help us to build a better human society.”<br/>
— <em><a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3935">A Mission Statement<br/>
for the IETF</a></em></p>

<p>The Internet has implicitly embedded those values. You don’t need a license (or even to disclose your identity) to use it, and its technical underpinnings make it difficult to impose that requirement. Anyone can publish, and as a result it takes significant effort for a government to restrict the rights to speech and free assembly on it — again due in part to the way it is designed. There isn’t any central authority that decides what networks can or can’t attach to the Internet. You can create a new Internet application without getting permission first (just like Tim Berners-Lee did so long ago when he created the Web). Such openness is often cited as critical to the Internet’s success.</p>

<p>However, implicit values can drift, as new people get involved in the work, and as new challenges are faced. This is especially true when the resulting decisions can have profound effects on both profits and societies. So, over the years, the IETF community has made progress in documenting explicit principles that can guide decision-making.</p>

<p>For example, <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7258">RFC7258</a> <em>Pervasive Monitoring Is an Attack</em> established IETF consensus that it’s bad for the Internet to allow widespread, covert monitoring, and that therefore the IETF would design its protocols to mitigate this risk —a technical argument with both political motivation and ramifications.</p>

<p>Likewise, <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6973">RFC6973</a> documents <em>Privacy Considerations for Internet Protocols</em>, and <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8752">RFC8752</a> reports on an IAB workshop that explored the power dynamics between news publishers and large online platforms.</p>

<p>Or, consider the <a href="http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/endtoend/endtoend.pdf">end-to-end principle</a>, which states that features for applications should reside in the end nodes (for example, your computer or phone) rather than in the network.</p>

<p>The IETF community will (I hope) continue to document and explore such principles, informed by shared values. RFC8890 makes a small contribution to this, by asking the IETF community to favour end users of the Internet — in other words, actual people — over other stakeholders that ask for their needs to be met, when there’s a conflict.</p>

<h3 id="we-cant-just-stick-to-the-technology">We can’t just stick to the technology</h3>

<p>If the IETF didn’t have any underlying principles, it would just focus on technology. A few detractors of <em>The Internet is for End Users</em> have said that’s exactly what it should do. That means that it would publish any proposal, no matter what its effects, provided that it was technically sufficient.</p>

<p>Some standards bodies already operate in that fashion; as long as you can get a few people (or more often, companies) together and agree on something, you can get it published. The IETF does not; it often declines to adopt proposals.</p>

<p class="callout">“When the IETF takes ownership of a protocol or function, it accepts the responsibility for all aspects of the protocol, even though some aspects may rarely or never be seen on the Internet.”<br/>
— <em><a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3935">A Mission Statement<br/>
for the IETF</a></em></p>

<p>That ability to refuse is meaningful to many people inside and outside the organisation; the IETF standardising something implies that it is good for the Internet, and has been reviewed not only for technical suitability but also adherence to the principles that inform the Internet’s design. In other words, the IETF is a quality filter; if a specification achieves consensus there, it gets deployed more broadly and easily (although it’s not a guarantee of success by any means) because people know it’s had that scrutiny.</p>

<p>Abdicating that role just to avoid thinking about and applying principles would not be good for the Internet. While it might gain a few participants eager to take advantage, it would lose many — including many of those who are still invested in the Internet as a force for good in the world.</p>

<p>Doing so would also affect the legitimacy of the IETF’s role in Internet governance in many eyes. There is a long history of <a href="https://thebulletin.org">scientists</a> and <a href="http://www.apple.com/au/">engineers</a> being concerned with how their work affects the world, and its potential for misuse. The IETF has continued this tradition, and should do so openly.</p>

<h3 id="getting-comfortable-with-the-ietfs-power">Getting comfortable with the IETF’s power</h3>

<p>If the IETF is making decisions based upon what it thinks is good for users, is it setting itself up as being some sort of governing body, taking power away from governments and other institutions? Isn’t it dangerous to leave such important matters in the hands of the geeks who show up, and who don’t have any democratic legitimacy?</p>

<p>First of all, a reality check. IETF decisions are only about documents; they don’t control the Internet. Other parties like equipment and software vendors, end users, platform and network operators and ultimately governments have a lot more say in what actually happens on the Internet from day to day.</p>

<p>What the IETF has is a proven ability to design protocols that work at scale, the ability to steer a proposal to align with its principles, and a reputation that gives its documents a certain amount of gravitas. These draw those parties to the IETF as a venue for standardisation, and their power flows into the specifications it endorses — especially when a protocol has momentum, like HTTP or IP. It doesn’t work the other way around; if an IETF standard doesn’t catch on with implementers and users, it gets ignored (and many have).</p>

<p><em>The Internet is for End Users</em> argues that this soft power should be explicitly acknowledged, so that participants are more conscious of the real-world ramifications of their decisions.</p>

<p>DNS over HTTPS is an interesting case study. It got the IETF <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2019-05-14/debates/E84CBBAE-E005-46E0-B7E5-845882DB1ED8/InternetEncryption">mentioned in the UK Parliament</a> by Baroness Thornton, a child safety advocate concerned about DoH’s use to bypass DNS-based controls mandated by UK law:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>’[T]here is a fundamental and very concerning lack of accountability when obscure technical groups, peopled largely by the employees of the big internet companies, take decisions that have major public policy implications with enormous consequences for all of us…’</p>
</blockquote>

<p>However, DoH was designed, contributed and ultimately deployed by participants from Web browsers, not the IETF, who cannot stop vendors from deploying a protocol it doesn’t approve of (as is often said, ‘there are no standards police.’). The IETF’s contribution was putting the specification through its process to assess its technical suitability and adherence to established principles.</p>

<p>Did the IETF create a better internet when it approved DoH? There’s a lot of disagreement about that, but what has upset many is that DoH was a surprise — the IETF standardised it without consulting some who it was likely to affect. Here, the IETF could have done better. <em>The Internet is for End Users</em> argues that such consultation is important, to assure that the people writing and reviewing the protocols understand how they will be used, and how they will impact users.</p>

<p>In the case of DoH, better communication between the technical community (not just big tech companies) and policymakers would clarified that relying on DNS to impose filtering was a bad assumption, in light of the principles underlying the design of the Internet.</p>

<p class="callout">“From its inception, the Internet has been, and is expected to remain, an evolving system whose participants regularly factor new requirements and technology into its design and implementation. Users of the Internet and providers of the equipment, software, and services that support it should anticipate and embrace this evolution as a major tenet of Internet philosophy.”<br/>
— <em><a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2026">The Internet Standards Process</a></em></p>

<p>However, that consultation does not translate to giving other parties a veto over Internet protocols. The UK Government or any other external authority should not be able to stop the IETF from creating a particular standard, or to hold it directly accountable; that would be a radical break from how the Internet has been developed for over thirty years. Because of the global nature of the Internet, it wouldn’t be possible to pursue a bilateral or regional style of governance; decisions would have to be sanctioned by every government where the Internet operates. That’s difficult to achieve even for vague statements of shared goals; doing it for the details of network protocols is impractical.</p>

<p>Who, then, is the IETF accountable to? Besides the internal rules which assure that the standards process runs in a way that’s accountable to the technical community, ultimately the IETF is accountable to the Internet; if it strays too far from what vendors, networks, users, and governments want to do, it will lose relevance. As with any platform, the Internet is a beneficiary of the network effect, and if the IETF leads it in a direction that’s unacceptable in too many places, the Internet might fragment into several networks — a risk currently on many people’s minds.</p>

<h3 id="finding-whats-best-for-end-users">Finding what’s best for end users</h3>

<p>There are also bound to be situations where what is best for end users is not obvious. Some will claim that giving other parties power — to filter, to monitor, to block — is in the interest of end users. How will the IETF make those decisions?</p>

<p>Unsurprisingly, this has already happened; it <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2804">refused to standardise wiretapping technology</a>, for example. In doing so, it applied technical reasoning informed by principles and the global nature of the Internet; designing Internet standards to suit the laws of one or a few countries isn’t appropriate.</p>

<p>That is echoed by <em>The Internet is for End Users</em>, which says:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[W]hen a decision improves the Internet for end users in one jurisdiction, but at the cost of potential harm to others elsewhere, that is not a good tradeoff. As such, we effectively design the Internet for the pessimal environment.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Even with careful thought, technical acumen and broad consultation, the IETF is bound to get some decisions wrong. That’s OK. RFC stands for Request for Comments, and in that spirit, sometimes the comments — evidenced by adoption and deployment as well — tell us to revise our specifications. That spirit of humility is still very much alive in the IETF community.</p>

<h3 id="next-steps">Next steps</h3>

<p>The Internet has been with us for almost 40 years and has contributed to profound changes in society. It currently faces serious challenges — issues that require input from policymakers, civil society, ordinary citizens, businesses and technologists.</p>

<p>It’s past time for technologists to both become more involved in discussions about how to meet those challenges, and to consider broader views of how the technology they create fits into society. Without good communication, policymakers are prone to making rules that doesn’t work with the technology, and technologists are prone to creating technology naïve to its policy implications.</p>

<p>So at its heart, <em>The Internet is for End Users</em> is a call for IETF participants to stop pretending that they can ignore the non-technical consequences of their decisions, a call for broader consultation when making them, and one for continued focus on the end user. Ultimately, end user impact is as least as important as the technical considerations of a proposal, and judging that impact requires a more serious effort to understand and incorporate other non-technical views.</p>

<p><em>The Internet is for End Users</em> is an IAB document; it doesn't have IETF consensus. As such, it doesn’t bind IETF decisions, but it is considered persuasive because the IAB has a mandate to consider issues affecting the Internet architecture.</p>

<p>On its own, then, it has limited effect. I view it as a small contribution to a larger body of principled thought that can help inform decisions about the evolution of the Internet. It’s up to all of us to apply those principles and develop them further.</p>

<p><em>Thanks to Martin Thomson and Eric Rescorla for reviewing this article.</em></p>

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<p>Since its launch in 2005, Google Analytics (GA) has become so widely used that it now appears on 86% of the top 100,000 websites in the United States. How did it become so popular? For two main reasons: its convenience and its cost. Once you’ve signed up (for free), you can install it by pasting a script tag and four lines of JavaScript into your site’s <span class="small-caps lowercase">HTML</span>. You now have the power to track whenever anyone visits your website, where they came from (both virtually and geographically), what pages they looked at, and for how long they stuck around. But this power doesn’t come for free: you may not be spending any money, but your users are paying in other ways.</p>

<p><picture>
<source srcset="https://iainbean.com/they-know-what-you-clicked-last-summer_200.webp 200w,https://iainbean.com/they-know-what-you-clicked-last-summer_400.webp 400w,https://iainbean.com/they-know-what-you-clicked-last-summer_800.webp 800w," type="image/webp" sizes="calc(100vw - 2rem)">
<img src="https://iainbean.com/images/posts/they-know-what-you-clicked-last-summer.jpg" srcset="https://iainbean.com/they-know-what-you-clicked-last-summer_200.jpg 200w,https://iainbean.com/they-know-what-you-clicked-last-summer_400.jpg 400w,https://iainbean.com/they-know-what-you-clicked-last-summer_800.jpg 800w," alt="Graph showing percentage of global page loads tracked by certain companies: Google 64.4%, Facebook 28.8%, Comscore 12.2%, Twitter 11%, Amazon 10.5%, Yandex 8%, Criteo 6.5%, New Relic 5.9%" falsefalsefalsefalse=""/>
</source></picture></p>
<p>Of course, Google isn’t the only company involved in the analytics business, but they collect more data from more users than anyone else. According to this graphic from 2017, Google were tracking 64.4% of all page loads across the whole web; three years later, that figure is now probably even higher.</p>
<p>After recently deciding to remove all the client-side JavaScript from my own website, I had a decision to make: either stop tracking visitor numbers entirely, or look for an alternative to GA. Fortunately, there are a number of other ways to measure the popularity of my site that have far less (or even zero) impact on end users. In this post, I’ll cover the main problems with GA and explore some alternatives.</p>
<h2>The downsides</h2>
<p>Let’s look at some of the frequently mentioned downsides of using GA and determine their impact:</p>
<h3>It’s not accurate</h3>
<p>A quick search gives me a figure from 2018 of 27% of web users using an ad blocker. A more recent study suggests that this figure is 40% on desktop and 22% on mobile. Some ad blockers such as uBlock origin block all tracking JS by default (including GA) and even those that don’t block GA by default can often be configured to do so. There are now also privacy controls built into browsers like Safari and Firefox which break certain tracking features by disabling <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/cross-site-tracking-lets-unpack-that/">cross-site-tracking cookies</a> (these are what allow ads to follow you around the web after you’ve looked at a product). What does this mean for your analytics numbers? It means you’re going to miss a significant amount of visitors and if your site is one with a tech-savvy audience (e.g. a blog about web development), that number is probably even higher.</p>
<p>This one is a definite <strong>yes</strong>: the numbers you get from GA are wrong and it’s difficult to say exactly how wrong they are.</p>
<h3>It’s bad for performance</h3>
<p>If you’re using the method currently recommended by Google to install GA on your site, each of your users will be downloading the gtag.js library which is 34.72kB of (compressed) JavaScript <em>and</em> analytics.js which is 18.4kB. For comparison, that’s larger than many popular JavaScript libraries including Vue (22.8kB) or jQuery (30.4kB), and over twice as large as the previously recommended method of loading analytics.js on its own.</p>
<p>I’ve seen it argued that this isn’t a big deal because of the way browsers cache files between requests. To confirm whether this assumption is correct, I opened a new incognito window in Chrome, opened the network tab and then navigated to five different websites which I knew used GA: while gtag.js appeared as a 34.72kB download on the first site, and analytics.js showed up as being 18.4kB, for the next four sites both files showed up as '(disk cache)', meaning the locally downloaded version was being used instead. However, Google sets a <code>Cache-Control max-age</code> header of only two hours for analytics.js and only fifteen minutes for gtag.js, meaning that after that time the version in the cache is invalid and the file must be downloaded again.</p>
<p>There was a time when websites using Google Analytics were unable to score 100/100 on Google’s own PageSpeed benchmark (the predecessor to Lighthouse) because of this short cache period, leading certain performance-minded developers to host the analytics.js library on their own server with a longer cache period. However, this negates the benefit mentioned above, where the file can be cached between different sites.</p>
<p>I’ll mark this one as a <strong>yes, but with the caveat that for some visitors it won’t be an issue</strong>: you’re still forcing those visitors without a cached version to download multiple libraries which provide them with zero perceptible benefits. It’s also worth mentioning that GA often isn’t the only third-party tracking JavaScript installed on a site. A <a href="https://www.pingdom.com/blog/trackers-impact-performance/">2018 study by Pingdom</a>, showed that the average news site loads over <strong>40 trackers</strong> and the impact of all those trackers is an increase in the average page load time of <strong>6.77 seconds</strong>.</p>
<h3>It’s bad for privacy</h3>
<p>By default, GA harvests a wide variety of data from users, including IP addresses, regardless of whether you have your users’ permission to do so. Efforts by governments, like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (<span class="small-caps lowercase">GDPR</span>), have attempted to reduce this kind of harvesting of personal information without good reason; but big tech companies are always looking for loopholes which allow them to carry on these practices. If you’ve ever been overwhelmed by the options on a cookie consent dialog, that’s intentional — these are usually designed to either trick you or bore you into sharing more data than you’re comfortable doing, with as many third parties as possible.</p>
<p>Here’s an excerpt from ‘How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services’:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Google uses the information shared by sites and apps to deliver our services, maintain and improve them, develop new services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, protect against fraud and abuse, and personalize content and ads you see on Google and on our partners’ sites and apps.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When you install GA on your site, you’re basically giving Google free rein to use any data they collect for whatever purpose they choose. One of these purposes Google is somewhat open about is 'Ad personalization' — this is where data collected from multiple sources is combined to build an ‘ad profile’ containing your demographic data and interests. This is then used ‘to make your ads more useful for you’. These personalised, ‘more useful’ ads are shown with the aim of increasing conversions (i.e. clicks and sales), based on the idea you’re more likely to engage with something that’s relevant to your interests. A higher conversion rate means Google can charge higher fees to advertisers for the same ad space.</p>
<p>This is another definite <strong>yes</strong>: the negative impact on privacy caused by GA is undeniable and is something you should be open with your visitors about. The Google Analytics Terms of Service include the following line: “You must post a Privacy Policy and that Privacy Policy must provide notice of Your use of cookies…” — if you’re using GA without making this clear in your privacy policy (you <em>do</em> have a privacy policy, right?), you’re not only violating GA’s terms and privacy regulations, but also your users’ trust.</p>
<h2>The alternatives</h2>
<h3>Minimal Analytics</h3>
<p>When Google Analytics runs in the browser it sends tracking events to an <span class="small-caps lowercase">API</span>. This means that you don’t have to use Google’s JavaScript: you can instead write your own or use one of many existing GA-compatible libraries to track only the things you need. A great example of this is the <a href="https://minimalanalytics.com/">Minimal Google Analytics Snippet</a>, a 1.5kB library that is small enough to paste directly into your website’s HTML with no external dependencies. For websites without complex requirements such as AdWords, this is just as effective (if not more effective, as it should load quicker) as gtag.js or analytics.js, but at a fraction of the size.</p>
<p>This mostly solves the potential performance issue, however, even though we’re not using Google’s JavaScript, we’re still sending data to their servers. This does nothing to fix the privacy issue and most ad blockers will be smart enough to intercept these requests.</p>
<h3>Client-side alternatives</h3>
<p>If you want the features of GA but want to make a more ethical choice, there are plenty of offerings which claim to offer better privacy than GA. I won’t cover all of the available options here, but I will recommend <a href="https://nts.strzibny.name/privacy-oriented-alternatives-to-google-analytics/">this post by Josef Strzibny</a> in which he covers both open source and hosted alternatives. These generally have much smaller file sizes and collect far less data than GA, but are still liable to be blocked by ad-blockers.</p>
<p><picture>
<source srcset="https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_200.webp 200w,https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_400.webp 400w,https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_800.webp 800w,https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_1000.webp 1000w,https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_1600.webp 1600w," type="image/webp" sizes="calc(100vw - 2rem)">
<img src="https://iainbean.com/images/posts/plausible-analytics.png" srcset="https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_200.png 200w,https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_400.png 400w,https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_800.png 800w,https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_1000.png 1000w,https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_1600.png 1600w," alt="A graph from Plausible analytics, showing the number of visitors during each hour of a single day" falsefalsefalsefalse=""/>
</source></picture></p>
<p>I’ve recently replaced GA with <a href="https://plausible.io/">Plausible</a> on <a href="https://component.gallery/">the Component Gallery</a>: it’s open source, lightweight (835 bytes), it captures the bare minimum of data, and it even comes with a 30 day free trial (after that, it costs $6 a month or $4 if paying annually). I can’t say whether it’s the best privacy-focused client-side analytics service because I haven’t tried them all, but I’d tend to favour those services that have made their code open source over those which haven’t. Open source analytics programs have the benefit that you can choose to host the program yourself without paying a subscription fee. You can also inspect the source code to get a better idea of how much data they’re collecting.</p>
<p>For hosted services I’d be more inclined to choose a service which charges a fee. While no company should be taken at their word without a healthy pinch of scepticism, it’s easier to understand the business model of a service which charges a subscription fee than one that gives it away for free — with a free service, you could be paying with your users’ data. That said, it’s unlikely that any service is doing anything with data on the scale of Google. If you’re strongly against paying a subscription fee for analytics, <a href="https://www.goatcounter.com">GoatCounter</a> offers a free tier (donations recommended, non-commercial use) for up to 100,000 pageviews per month.</p>
<h3>Other sources of analytics data</h3>
<p>Even without client-side analytics, users leave a trail when using the internet: if you make a search using Google, or click a link in a tweet, those platforms are recording that action. No single tool can give you a definitive measurement of how users arrive on your website, but there are still ways you can build up a picture from data that already exists: sites including Google search and Twitter provide a subset of the data they collect for you to use for your own purposes.</p>
<p><picture>
<source srcset="https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_200.webp 200w,https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_400.webp 400w,https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_800.webp 800w,https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_1000.webp 1000w,https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_1600.webp 1600w," type="image/webp" sizes="calc(100vw - 2rem)">
<img src="https://iainbean.com/images/posts/google-search-console.png" srcset="https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_200.png 200w,https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_400.png 400w,https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_800.png 800w,https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_1000.png 1000w,https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_1600.png 1600w," alt="A graph from Google Search console showing the number of clicks and impressions for the last 3 months" falsefalsefalsefalse=""/>
</source></picture></p>
<p><strong>Google Search Console</strong> (shown above) allows you to track the terms used when visitors see your website in search results as well as the proportion of users who saw those links and went on to click them. It also lets you know which pages have been successfully crawled and which caused crawler errors. Unlike with GA, Google already has this data, so I personally don’t see this as anywhere near as harmful as actively collecting more data on Google’s behalf.</p>
<p>Google Search Console isn’t a replacement for analytics, in fact Google push you to link it with your GA account so the datasets from each platform can be combined. But if you don’t want to feed more data into Google’s ad revenue generating machine, using Search Console on its own may be enough to give you a good idea of how users are arriving on your site and what they’re looking for.</p>
<h3>Netlify analytics</h3>
<p>If you’re hosting your website on Netlify you can enable <a href="https://www.netlify.com/products/analytics/">Netlify Analytics</a> for $9 per site, per month. That might sound steep for a service you can get elsewhere for free, but Netlify’s server-side tracking is an entirely different offering from the client-side services previously mentioned:</p>
<ol>
<li>It doesn’t impact <strong>privacy</strong>. If you’ve ever explored the GA sidebar, you’ll have seen that GA collects a baffling array of location, demographic and acquisition data from your site users. GA can collect this because it runs custom JavaScript in the client’s browser. Netlify Analytics data is compiled from server request logs: it can’t use anything other than the data provided to it by regular HTTP requests from the browser.</li>
<li>It doesn’t impact <strong>performance</strong>. All client-side analytics libraries mean forcing extra JavaScript on users when there’s no benefit to them, whereas code running only on the server will have zero impact on users.</li>
</ol>
<p>Compared to GA, the set of features is fairly minimal, but for small sites like my own personal blog, I’ve found it refreshingly simple to find the information I want. All the data for your site is shown on a single dashboard screen including graphs of visitor numbers over time, a list of top pages, and something I’ve found especially useful: a list of resources which returned the most 404 errors (something that server-side analytics is able to handle far better than client-side analytics).</p>
<p><picture>
<source srcset="https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_200.webp 200w,https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_400.webp 400w,https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_800.webp 800w,https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_1000.webp 1000w,https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_1600.webp 1600w," type="image/webp" sizes="calc(100vw - 2rem)">
<img src="https://iainbean.com/images/posts/netlify-analytics-not-found.png" srcset="https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_200.png 200w,https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_400.png 400w,https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_800.png 800w,https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_1000.png 1000w,https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_1600.png 1600w," alt="A screenshot from Netlify Analytics showing a list of resources and the number of 404 errors caused by each" falsefalsefalsefalse=""/>
</source></picture></p>
<p>There are some issues worth pointing out, perhaps the biggest of which is Netlify’s accuracy: compared to GA which seems to generally underestimate visitor numbers, because Netlify uses raw access logs it treats traffic from bots and aggregators (which don’t tend to run JavaScript) the same as genuine users, meaning your visitor numbers are artificially inflated with non-human visitors. While I appreciate how clean and free of configuration Netlify Analytics is, there are some glaring omissions: firstly, I’d like an option to filter out known bots based on user-agent string; I’d also like to see a method for viewing or exporting data older than 30 days — the lack of historical data makes it hard to do any serious data analysis.</p>
<p>If you aren’t using Netlify, there are other server-side analytics but most require some form of subscription fee. If you’re not afraid of some manual set up you could try <a href="https://awstats.sourceforge.io/">AWStats</a>, an open-source program written in Perl, which parses your server log files and builds an interface which you can use to explore your data.</p>
<h2>What if I don’t have a choice?</h2>
<p>Google Analytics is now so common that for many it’s become synonymous with the word, ‘analytics’. If you build websites for clients, chances are they will expect to be able to log in to ‘analytics’ using their Google account and see the familiar reporting interface. You may have other, more pressing battles you’d rather fight with a client: maybe they insist on using animated <span class="small-caps lowercase">GIF</span>s everywhere, or have a brand palette with <em>only</em> inaccessible colour combinations.</p>
<p>I’m not saying this data can’t be used for good: there are plenty of "top 10 benefits of Google Analytics" articles out there explaining how you can use GA data to make targeted improvements to your site. For example, you could try to improve the content on your most visited pages, or if the majority of your visitors are on mobile devices, you can focus your design on smaller screen sizes. If you’ve got to have it, at least use it to make your site better, but if you aren’t using it to drive improvements to your site, you’re better off without it.</p>
<p>I've found that for my own blog, a combination of Google Search Console, Twitter analytics and Netlify analytics provide me with enough information that I haven’t needed to look further. I’m lucky enough to be able to afford the $9/month fee but I understand that many people, including clients, will be hesitant to pay for something they can get for free elsewhere. It isn’t up to me to tell you whether the privacy of your website users is worth money out of your pocket, but I’d encourage you to ask yourself that question.</p>
<p>Google don’t give away analytics for free as an act of kindness: they’re still, primarily, an advertising company and the more data they can feed into their ad-targeting algorithms, the more money they can make from selling ads. By giving up your users’ data <em>voluntarily</em>, you’re doing Google a favour, but doing your users a disservice.</p>
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title: Google Analytics: A luxury your users are paying for
url: https://iainbean.com/posts/2020/google-analytics-a-luxury-your-users-are-paying-for/
hash_url: 26ba07320555beed0e2fce554ab4ceae

<p>Since its launch in 2005, Google Analytics (GA) has become so widely used that it now appears on 86% of the top 100,000 websites in the United States. How did it become so popular? For two main reasons: its convenience and its cost. Once you’ve signed up (for free), you can install it by pasting a script tag and four lines of JavaScript into your site’s <span class="small-caps lowercase">HTML</span>. You now have the power to track whenever anyone visits your website, where they came from (both virtually and geographically), what pages they looked at, and for how long they stuck around. But this power doesn’t come for free: you may not be spending any money, but your users are paying in other ways.</p>
<p><picture>
<source srcset="https://iainbean.com/they-know-what-you-clicked-last-summer_200.webp 200w,https://iainbean.com/they-know-what-you-clicked-last-summer_400.webp 400w,https://iainbean.com/they-know-what-you-clicked-last-summer_800.webp 800w," type="image/webp" sizes="calc(100vw - 2rem)">
<img src="https://iainbean.com/images/posts/they-know-what-you-clicked-last-summer.jpg" srcset="https://iainbean.com/they-know-what-you-clicked-last-summer_200.jpg 200w,https://iainbean.com/they-know-what-you-clicked-last-summer_400.jpg 400w,https://iainbean.com/they-know-what-you-clicked-last-summer_800.jpg 800w," alt="Graph showing percentage of global page loads tracked by certain companies: Google 64.4%, Facebook 28.8%, Comscore 12.2%, Twitter 11%, Amazon 10.5%, Yandex 8%, Criteo 6.5%, New Relic 5.9%" falsefalsefalsefalse=""/>
</source></picture></p>
<p>Of course, Google isn’t the only company involved in the analytics business, but they collect more data from more users than anyone else. According to this graphic from 2017, Google were tracking 64.4% of all page loads across the whole web; three years later, that figure is now probably even higher.</p>
<p>After recently deciding to remove all the client-side JavaScript from my own website, I had a decision to make: either stop tracking visitor numbers entirely, or look for an alternative to GA. Fortunately, there are a number of other ways to measure the popularity of my site that have far less (or even zero) impact on end users. In this post, I’ll cover the main problems with GA and explore some alternatives.</p>
<h2>The downsides</h2>
<p>Let’s look at some of the frequently mentioned downsides of using GA and determine their impact:</p>
<h3>It’s not accurate</h3>
<p>A quick search gives me a figure from 2018 of 27% of web users using an ad blocker. A more recent study suggests that this figure is 40% on desktop and 22% on mobile. Some ad blockers such as uBlock origin block all tracking JS by default (including GA) and even those that don’t block GA by default can often be configured to do so. There are now also privacy controls built into browsers like Safari and Firefox which break certain tracking features by disabling <a href="https://blog.mozilla.org/firefox/cross-site-tracking-lets-unpack-that/">cross-site-tracking cookies</a> (these are what allow ads to follow you around the web after you’ve looked at a product). What does this mean for your analytics numbers? It means you’re going to miss a significant amount of visitors and if your site is one with a tech-savvy audience (e.g. a blog about web development), that number is probably even higher.</p>
<p>This one is a definite <strong>yes</strong>: the numbers you get from GA are wrong and it’s difficult to say exactly how wrong they are.</p>
<h3>It’s bad for performance</h3>
<p>If you’re using the method currently recommended by Google to install GA on your site, each of your users will be downloading the gtag.js library which is 34.72kB of (compressed) JavaScript <em>and</em> analytics.js which is 18.4kB. For comparison, that’s larger than many popular JavaScript libraries including Vue (22.8kB) or jQuery (30.4kB), and over twice as large as the previously recommended method of loading analytics.js on its own.</p>
<p>I’ve seen it argued that this isn’t a big deal because of the way browsers cache files between requests. To confirm whether this assumption is correct, I opened a new incognito window in Chrome, opened the network tab and then navigated to five different websites which I knew used GA: while gtag.js appeared as a 34.72kB download on the first site, and analytics.js showed up as being 18.4kB, for the next four sites both files showed up as '(disk cache)', meaning the locally downloaded version was being used instead. However, Google sets a <code>Cache-Control max-age</code> header of only two hours for analytics.js and only fifteen minutes for gtag.js, meaning that after that time the version in the cache is invalid and the file must be downloaded again.</p>
<p>There was a time when websites using Google Analytics were unable to score 100/100 on Google’s own PageSpeed benchmark (the predecessor to Lighthouse) because of this short cache period, leading certain performance-minded developers to host the analytics.js library on their own server with a longer cache period. However, this negates the benefit mentioned above, where the file can be cached between different sites.</p>
<p>I’ll mark this one as a <strong>yes, but with the caveat that for some visitors it won’t be an issue</strong>: you’re still forcing those visitors without a cached version to download multiple libraries which provide them with zero perceptible benefits. It’s also worth mentioning that GA often isn’t the only third-party tracking JavaScript installed on a site. A <a href="https://www.pingdom.com/blog/trackers-impact-performance/">2018 study by Pingdom</a>, showed that the average news site loads over <strong>40 trackers</strong> and the impact of all those trackers is an increase in the average page load time of <strong>6.77 seconds</strong>.</p>
<h3>It’s bad for privacy</h3>
<p>By default, GA harvests a wide variety of data from users, including IP addresses, regardless of whether you have your users’ permission to do so. Efforts by governments, like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (<span class="small-caps lowercase">GDPR</span>), have attempted to reduce this kind of harvesting of personal information without good reason; but big tech companies are always looking for loopholes which allow them to carry on these practices. If you’ve ever been overwhelmed by the options on a cookie consent dialog, that’s intentional — these are usually designed to either trick you or bore you into sharing more data than you’re comfortable doing, with as many third parties as possible.</p>
<p>Here’s an excerpt from ‘How Google uses information from sites or apps that use our services’:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Google uses the information shared by sites and apps to deliver our services, maintain and improve them, develop new services, measure the effectiveness of advertising, protect against fraud and abuse, and personalize content and ads you see on Google and on our partners’ sites and apps.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>When you install GA on your site, you’re basically giving Google free rein to use any data they collect for whatever purpose they choose. One of these purposes Google is somewhat open about is 'Ad personalization' — this is where data collected from multiple sources is combined to build an ‘ad profile’ containing your demographic data and interests. This is then used ‘to make your ads more useful for you’. These personalised, ‘more useful’ ads are shown with the aim of increasing conversions (i.e. clicks and sales), based on the idea you’re more likely to engage with something that’s relevant to your interests. A higher conversion rate means Google can charge higher fees to advertisers for the same ad space.</p>
<p>This is another definite <strong>yes</strong>: the negative impact on privacy caused by GA is undeniable and is something you should be open with your visitors about. The Google Analytics Terms of Service include the following line: “You must post a Privacy Policy and that Privacy Policy must provide notice of Your use of cookies…” — if you’re using GA without making this clear in your privacy policy (you <em>do</em> have a privacy policy, right?), you’re not only violating GA’s terms and privacy regulations, but also your users’ trust.</p>
<h2>The alternatives</h2>
<h3>Minimal Analytics</h3>
<p>When Google Analytics runs in the browser it sends tracking events to an <span class="small-caps lowercase">API</span>. This means that you don’t have to use Google’s JavaScript: you can instead write your own or use one of many existing GA-compatible libraries to track only the things you need. A great example of this is the <a href="https://minimalanalytics.com/">Minimal Google Analytics Snippet</a>, a 1.5kB library that is small enough to paste directly into your website’s HTML with no external dependencies. For websites without complex requirements such as AdWords, this is just as effective (if not more effective, as it should load quicker) as gtag.js or analytics.js, but at a fraction of the size.</p>
<p>This mostly solves the potential performance issue, however, even though we’re not using Google’s JavaScript, we’re still sending data to their servers. This does nothing to fix the privacy issue and most ad blockers will be smart enough to intercept these requests.</p>
<h3>Client-side alternatives</h3>
<p>If you want the features of GA but want to make a more ethical choice, there are plenty of offerings which claim to offer better privacy than GA. I won’t cover all of the available options here, but I will recommend <a href="https://nts.strzibny.name/privacy-oriented-alternatives-to-google-analytics/">this post by Josef Strzibny</a> in which he covers both open source and hosted alternatives. These generally have much smaller file sizes and collect far less data than GA, but are still liable to be blocked by ad-blockers.</p>
<p><picture>
<source srcset="https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_200.webp 200w,https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_400.webp 400w,https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_800.webp 800w,https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_1000.webp 1000w,https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_1600.webp 1600w," type="image/webp" sizes="calc(100vw - 2rem)">
<img src="https://iainbean.com/images/posts/plausible-analytics.png" srcset="https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_200.png 200w,https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_400.png 400w,https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_800.png 800w,https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_1000.png 1000w,https://iainbean.com/plausible-analytics_1600.png 1600w," alt="A graph from Plausible analytics, showing the number of visitors during each hour of a single day" falsefalsefalsefalse=""/>
</source></picture></p>
<p>I’ve recently replaced GA with <a href="https://plausible.io/">Plausible</a> on <a href="https://component.gallery/">the Component Gallery</a>: it’s open source, lightweight (835 bytes), it captures the bare minimum of data, and it even comes with a 30 day free trial (after that, it costs $6 a month or $4 if paying annually). I can’t say whether it’s the best privacy-focused client-side analytics service because I haven’t tried them all, but I’d tend to favour those services that have made their code open source over those which haven’t. Open source analytics programs have the benefit that you can choose to host the program yourself without paying a subscription fee. You can also inspect the source code to get a better idea of how much data they’re collecting.</p>
<p>For hosted services I’d be more inclined to choose a service which charges a fee. While no company should be taken at their word without a healthy pinch of scepticism, it’s easier to understand the business model of a service which charges a subscription fee than one that gives it away for free — with a free service, you could be paying with your users’ data. That said, it’s unlikely that any service is doing anything with data on the scale of Google. If you’re strongly against paying a subscription fee for analytics, <a href="https://www.goatcounter.com">GoatCounter</a> offers a free tier (donations recommended, non-commercial use) for up to 100,000 pageviews per month.</p>
<h3>Other sources of analytics data</h3>
<p>Even without client-side analytics, users leave a trail when using the internet: if you make a search using Google, or click a link in a tweet, those platforms are recording that action. No single tool can give you a definitive measurement of how users arrive on your website, but there are still ways you can build up a picture from data that already exists: sites including Google search and Twitter provide a subset of the data they collect for you to use for your own purposes.</p>
<p><picture>
<source srcset="https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_200.webp 200w,https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_400.webp 400w,https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_800.webp 800w,https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_1000.webp 1000w,https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_1600.webp 1600w," type="image/webp" sizes="calc(100vw - 2rem)">
<img src="https://iainbean.com/images/posts/google-search-console.png" srcset="https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_200.png 200w,https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_400.png 400w,https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_800.png 800w,https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_1000.png 1000w,https://iainbean.com/google-search-console_1600.png 1600w," alt="A graph from Google Search console showing the number of clicks and impressions for the last 3 months" falsefalsefalsefalse=""/>
</source></picture></p>
<p><strong>Google Search Console</strong> (shown above) allows you to track the terms used when visitors see your website in search results as well as the proportion of users who saw those links and went on to click them. It also lets you know which pages have been successfully crawled and which caused crawler errors. Unlike with GA, Google already has this data, so I personally don’t see this as anywhere near as harmful as actively collecting more data on Google’s behalf.</p>
<p>Google Search Console isn’t a replacement for analytics, in fact Google push you to link it with your GA account so the datasets from each platform can be combined. But if you don’t want to feed more data into Google’s ad revenue generating machine, using Search Console on its own may be enough to give you a good idea of how users are arriving on your site and what they’re looking for.</p>
<h3>Netlify analytics</h3>
<p>If you’re hosting your website on Netlify you can enable <a href="https://www.netlify.com/products/analytics/">Netlify Analytics</a> for $9 per site, per month. That might sound steep for a service you can get elsewhere for free, but Netlify’s server-side tracking is an entirely different offering from the client-side services previously mentioned:</p>
<ol>
<li>It doesn’t impact <strong>privacy</strong>. If you’ve ever explored the GA sidebar, you’ll have seen that GA collects a baffling array of location, demographic and acquisition data from your site users. GA can collect this because it runs custom JavaScript in the client’s browser. Netlify Analytics data is compiled from server request logs: it can’t use anything other than the data provided to it by regular HTTP requests from the browser.</li>
<li>It doesn’t impact <strong>performance</strong>. All client-side analytics libraries mean forcing extra JavaScript on users when there’s no benefit to them, whereas code running only on the server will have zero impact on users.</li>
</ol>
<p>Compared to GA, the set of features is fairly minimal, but for small sites like my own personal blog, I’ve found it refreshingly simple to find the information I want. All the data for your site is shown on a single dashboard screen including graphs of visitor numbers over time, a list of top pages, and something I’ve found especially useful: a list of resources which returned the most 404 errors (something that server-side analytics is able to handle far better than client-side analytics).</p>
<p><picture>
<source srcset="https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_200.webp 200w,https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_400.webp 400w,https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_800.webp 800w,https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_1000.webp 1000w,https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_1600.webp 1600w," type="image/webp" sizes="calc(100vw - 2rem)">
<img src="https://iainbean.com/images/posts/netlify-analytics-not-found.png" srcset="https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_200.png 200w,https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_400.png 400w,https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_800.png 800w,https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_1000.png 1000w,https://iainbean.com/netlify-analytics-not-found_1600.png 1600w," alt="A screenshot from Netlify Analytics showing a list of resources and the number of 404 errors caused by each" falsefalsefalsefalse=""/>
</source></picture></p>
<p>There are some issues worth pointing out, perhaps the biggest of which is Netlify’s accuracy: compared to GA which seems to generally underestimate visitor numbers, because Netlify uses raw access logs it treats traffic from bots and aggregators (which don’t tend to run JavaScript) the same as genuine users, meaning your visitor numbers are artificially inflated with non-human visitors. While I appreciate how clean and free of configuration Netlify Analytics is, there are some glaring omissions: firstly, I’d like an option to filter out known bots based on user-agent string; I’d also like to see a method for viewing or exporting data older than 30 days — the lack of historical data makes it hard to do any serious data analysis.</p>
<p>If you aren’t using Netlify, there are other server-side analytics but most require some form of subscription fee. If you’re not afraid of some manual set up you could try <a href="https://awstats.sourceforge.io/">AWStats</a>, an open-source program written in Perl, which parses your server log files and builds an interface which you can use to explore your data.</p>
<h2>What if I don’t have a choice?</h2>
<p>Google Analytics is now so common that for many it’s become synonymous with the word, ‘analytics’. If you build websites for clients, chances are they will expect to be able to log in to ‘analytics’ using their Google account and see the familiar reporting interface. You may have other, more pressing battles you’d rather fight with a client: maybe they insist on using animated <span class="small-caps lowercase">GIF</span>s everywhere, or have a brand palette with <em>only</em> inaccessible colour combinations.</p>
<p>I’m not saying this data can’t be used for good: there are plenty of "top 10 benefits of Google Analytics" articles out there explaining how you can use GA data to make targeted improvements to your site. For example, you could try to improve the content on your most visited pages, or if the majority of your visitors are on mobile devices, you can focus your design on smaller screen sizes. If you’ve got to have it, at least use it to make your site better, but if you aren’t using it to drive improvements to your site, you’re better off without it.</p>
<p>I've found that for my own blog, a combination of Google Search Console, Twitter analytics and Netlify analytics provide me with enough information that I haven’t needed to look further. I’m lucky enough to be able to afford the $9/month fee but I understand that many people, including clients, will be hesitant to pay for something they can get for free elsewhere. It isn’t up to me to tell you whether the privacy of your website users is worth money out of your pocket, but I’d encourage you to ask yourself that question.</p>
<p>Google don’t give away analytics for free as an act of kindness: they’re still, primarily, an advertising company and the more data they can feed into their ad-targeting algorithms, the more money they can make from selling ads. By giving up your users’ data <em>voluntarily</em>, you’re doing Google a favour, but doing your users a disservice.</p>

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<h1>On all that fuckery</h1>
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<p class="center">
<a href="/david/" title="Aller à l’accueil">🏠</a> •
<a href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/on-all-that-fuckery" title="Lien vers le contenu original">Source originale</a>
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<p class="css-1tujudq"><span role="img" aria-label="warning">⚠️</span> <em class="css-0">CW: racist, sexist, transphobic, hateful language and online abuse</em></p>

<p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/78121b0fe29ffe99a14ba6f375152534/b54cd/screenshot-fuckery.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="&quot;you faggots are just giving her the material for her next talk on sexism/hate threats and all that fuckery.&quot;" title="&quot;you faggots are just giving her the material for her next talk on sexism/hate threats and all that fuckery.&quot;" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/78121b0fe29ffe99a14ba6f375152534/e5715/screenshot-fuckery.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/78121b0fe29ffe99a14ba6f375152534/8514f/screenshot-fuckery.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/78121b0fe29ffe99a14ba6f375152534/804b2/screenshot-fuckery.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/78121b0fe29ffe99a14ba6f375152534/e5715/screenshot-fuckery.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/78121b0fe29ffe99a14ba6f375152534/4ad3a/screenshot-fuckery.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/78121b0fe29ffe99a14ba6f375152534/71c1d/screenshot-fuckery.png 1536w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/78121b0fe29ffe99a14ba6f375152534/b54cd/screenshot-fuckery.png 1662w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">From July 14 to August 17, 2020 (at time of publish), I experienced targeted harassment on GitHub—the company I'm employed at—via coordination happening on several "technology" 4chan threads about me. I wanted to share this story publicly to reiterate the bullshit marginalized folks in tech have to go through in order to be successful, visible, and just <em class="css-0">exist</em>.</p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">So as the dude in the screenshot says, I have plenty of material to write a post on <em class="css-0">all that fuckery</em>.</p>

<p class="css-1tujudq"><span role="img" aria-label="wavy dash">〰️</span></p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">The first round of trolling occurred in issues and PRs on <a href="https://github.com/katmeister/tokyo-2019" class="css-2n2eq4">one of my repositories</a> that documents the food I ate with my friends on our spring Tokyo 2019 trip. It was only slightly concerning at first, until I realized that 40+ people were posting, commenting, and emoji reacting.</p>

<p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b4fa0c9a46ca93a988fba3001fb34071/917ef/gh-screenshots.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="screenshots from GitHub" title="screenshots from GitHub" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b4fa0c9a46ca93a988fba3001fb34071/e5715/gh-screenshots.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b4fa0c9a46ca93a988fba3001fb34071/8514f/gh-screenshots.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b4fa0c9a46ca93a988fba3001fb34071/804b2/gh-screenshots.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b4fa0c9a46ca93a988fba3001fb34071/e5715/gh-screenshots.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b4fa0c9a46ca93a988fba3001fb34071/4ad3a/gh-screenshots.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b4fa0c9a46ca93a988fba3001fb34071/71c1d/gh-screenshots.png 1536w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b4fa0c9a46ca93a988fba3001fb34071/917ef/gh-screenshots.png 2095w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">Here are a few examples. The most irritating ones used tech jargon ("fixing bloat") to mask their pathetic actions. As a bystander, you might not realize until viewing the proposed changes... and seeing all content deleted. This is also the most irritating because there is no obviously hateful or violent content, and can be written off as "just a joke." <span role="img" aria-label="face with rolling eyes">🙄</span></p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">This is a specific type of trolling I was experiencing, called "dogpiling":</p>

<blockquote class="css-1hj2jr3"><p class="css-1tujudq">Dogpiling: When a group of trolls works together to overwhelm a target through a barrage of disingenuous questions, threats, slurs, insults, and other tactics meant to shame, silence, discredit, or drive a target offline. — <a href="https://onlineharassmentfieldmanual.pen.org/defining-online-harassment-a-glossary-of-terms/" class="css-2n2eq4">PEN America</a></p></blockquote>

<p class="css-1tujudq">This is not a new tactic used to silence, but it was the first time I've personally experienced it. Good thing I designed a lot of our moderation tools and have talked about the <a href="https://youtu.be/5CSQYMOWOtQ?t=580" class="css-2n2eq4">taxonomy of online abuse</a> before, and recognized this type of harassment quickly. I was able to get help from amazing coworkers, <a href="https://twitter.com/cheshire137" class="css-2n2eq4">Sarah Vessels</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/deniseyu21" class="css-2n2eq4">Denise Yu</a>, to query my repo's referral data. The traffic was coming from 4chan... two 4chan threads totaling nearly 500 disturbing comments.</p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">Seeing this shit was absolutely surreal. The GitHub content was annoying, but this made me feel sick. I still remember the feeling of being so overwhelmed and just sobbing at my desk. Reading disgusting, racist, sexist comments about me. Seeing screenshots of my face plastered across the threads. Understanding the exact moment where the dogpiling was coordinated. Realizing this was likely to keep happening (and it did).</p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">And what still really creeps me out is that these people felt so emboldened to troll an EMPLOYEE using their actual GitHub accounts with legitimate work and contributions. <u>These harassers are everyday software engineers.</u></p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">I'm not famous and I don't have a very large platform, so why me?</p>

<h1 class="css-14vf4pd">So why me?</h1>

<p class="css-1tujudq">Upon reading the threads, there were some pretty clear reasons why this happened to me. I'll dig deeply into each one. <em class="css-0">HUGE shoutout to my kat-ops counterpart <a href="https://twitter.com/pifafu" class="css-2n2eq4">Kathy Zheng</a> for helping me compile screenshots!</em></p>

<h2 class="css-1qjzlku">I'm a woman.</h2>

<p class="css-1tujudq">Well, this was the most obvious reason. Women disproportionately experience online harassment, and very much so for sexual harassment. I included a few snippets but won't spend too much time on this one because it was some boring, basic bitch shit that we've all seen before <span role="img" aria-label="">🤷🏻‍♀️</span></p>

<p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/8c70cf424f0092c01e2bab74df31a7a1/4f046/screenshots-incels.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="sexist comments" title="sexist comments" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/8c70cf424f0092c01e2bab74df31a7a1/e5715/screenshots-incels.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/8c70cf424f0092c01e2bab74df31a7a1/8514f/screenshots-incels.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/8c70cf424f0092c01e2bab74df31a7a1/804b2/screenshots-incels.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/8c70cf424f0092c01e2bab74df31a7a1/e5715/screenshots-incels.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/8c70cf424f0092c01e2bab74df31a7a1/4ad3a/screenshots-incels.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/8c70cf424f0092c01e2bab74df31a7a1/71c1d/screenshots-incels.png 1536w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/8c70cf424f0092c01e2bab74df31a7a1/4f046/screenshots-incels.png 3311w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p>

<h2 class="css-1qjzlku">I'm an Asian woman.</h2>

<p class="css-1tujudq">I mean, I shouldn't have been surprised at this one, but here we are. I have a lot of privilege as an Asian American, but was quickly reminded how easy I can be reduced to stereotypes and slurs. And that the gross fetishization of Asian women still makes me a target:</p>

<p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/fb87155ab684bb443d4d7e156d69f4fe/91945/screenshots-asian-slurs.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="asian slurs" title="asian slurs" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/fb87155ab684bb443d4d7e156d69f4fe/e5715/screenshots-asian-slurs.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/fb87155ab684bb443d4d7e156d69f4fe/8514f/screenshots-asian-slurs.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/fb87155ab684bb443d4d7e156d69f4fe/804b2/screenshots-asian-slurs.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/fb87155ab684bb443d4d7e156d69f4fe/e5715/screenshots-asian-slurs.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/fb87155ab684bb443d4d7e156d69f4fe/4ad3a/screenshots-asian-slurs.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/fb87155ab684bb443d4d7e156d69f4fe/71c1d/screenshots-asian-slurs.png 1536w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/fb87155ab684bb443d4d7e156d69f4fe/91945/screenshots-asian-slurs.png 2944w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">There was one in particular I wanted to highlight:</p>

<p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b7462864208b987ab4889dcf7a278076/07a9c/screenshots-asian-slurs2.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="So half-human?" title="So half-human?" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b7462864208b987ab4889dcf7a278076/e5715/screenshots-asian-slurs2.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b7462864208b987ab4889dcf7a278076/8514f/screenshots-asian-slurs2.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b7462864208b987ab4889dcf7a278076/804b2/screenshots-asian-slurs2.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b7462864208b987ab4889dcf7a278076/e5715/screenshots-asian-slurs2.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b7462864208b987ab4889dcf7a278076/4ad3a/screenshots-asian-slurs2.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b7462864208b987ab4889dcf7a278076/07a9c/screenshots-asian-slurs2.png 1440w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">This one in particular stood out to me because it's a very specific type of harassment I've received my whole life, usually from East Asians. This piece of trash is stating that I'm subhuman because of my Vietnamese heritage. Tbh, this hits harder than boring 'ol "chink." The colorism here makes me think this was an Asian dude. And speaking of which: </p>

<p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/3eee0f75ebc7aeae694e1262392cf0a7/71c1d/screenshots-mrasian.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="asian slurs" title="asian slurs" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/3eee0f75ebc7aeae694e1262392cf0a7/e5715/screenshots-mrasian.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/3eee0f75ebc7aeae694e1262392cf0a7/8514f/screenshots-mrasian.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/3eee0f75ebc7aeae694e1262392cf0a7/804b2/screenshots-mrasian.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/3eee0f75ebc7aeae694e1262392cf0a7/e5715/screenshots-mrasian.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/3eee0f75ebc7aeae694e1262392cf0a7/4ad3a/screenshots-mrasian.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/3eee0f75ebc7aeae694e1262392cf0a7/71c1d/screenshots-mrasian.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">I also received an email from what appears to be an MRAsian... It's sadly not uncommon to see Asian men upholding white supremacy and targeting Asian women for living our damn lives.</p>

<h2 class="css-1qjzlku">I have a "radical" profile README.</h2>

<p class="css-1tujudq">My GitHub <a href="http://github.com/katmeister" class="css-2n2eq4">profile README</a> includes my pronouns, support for #BlackLivesMatter, my values, and social links. The amount of transphobic and anti-Black racist comments because of this was sickening. Attacking allyship is yet another tactic to silence and isolate us.</p>

<p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/a7ab50905868d6c10c38a7153e01cfbe/16bd1/screenshots-readme.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="attacks on my GitHub personal README" title="attacks on my GitHub personal README" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/a7ab50905868d6c10c38a7153e01cfbe/e5715/screenshots-readme.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/a7ab50905868d6c10c38a7153e01cfbe/8514f/screenshots-readme.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/a7ab50905868d6c10c38a7153e01cfbe/804b2/screenshots-readme.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/a7ab50905868d6c10c38a7153e01cfbe/e5715/screenshots-readme.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/a7ab50905868d6c10c38a7153e01cfbe/4ad3a/screenshots-readme.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/a7ab50905868d6c10c38a7153e01cfbe/71c1d/screenshots-readme.png 1536w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/a7ab50905868d6c10c38a7153e01cfbe/16bd1/screenshots-readme.png 2922w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p>

<h2 class="css-1qjzlku">I'm not a "real developer"</h2>

<p class="css-1tujudq">Yikes, there were a <em class="css-0">lot</em> of comments about this. The dismissal of my skills and claiming I can only write Markdown is an intentional tactic to tear down my value and diminish my success. Very funny, as I've been writing code to production since 2016, despite not being a skilled developer. <span role="img" aria-label="">🤷🏻‍♀️</span></p>

<p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/4aaf585e0e3766626332768d1b1cd811/60708/screenshots-not-developer.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="not a real developer" title="not a real developer" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/4aaf585e0e3766626332768d1b1cd811/e5715/screenshots-not-developer.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/4aaf585e0e3766626332768d1b1cd811/8514f/screenshots-not-developer.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/4aaf585e0e3766626332768d1b1cd811/804b2/screenshots-not-developer.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/4aaf585e0e3766626332768d1b1cd811/e5715/screenshots-not-developer.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/4aaf585e0e3766626332768d1b1cd811/4ad3a/screenshots-not-developer.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/4aaf585e0e3766626332768d1b1cd811/71c1d/screenshots-not-developer.png 1536w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/4aaf585e0e3766626332768d1b1cd811/60708/screenshots-not-developer.png 2872w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">Also, I think this comment deserves a blockquote:</p>

<blockquote class="css-1hj2jr3"><p class="css-1tujudq">women unironically think that's all there is to development - forking, pushing some spelling changes, etc</p><p class="css-1tujudq">they literally have no concept of how involved any of it is</p><p class="css-1tujudq">isn't it hilarious that these useless parasites are consuming at least 50% of employer resources? all the while shitting on actually productive geeks for political brownie points? </p></blockquote>

<p class="css-1tujudq">Just... let that one sit. <span role="img" aria-label="nauseated face">🤢</span></p>

<h2 class="css-1qjzlku">I'm ruining GitHub as an employee...</h2>

<p class="css-1tujudq">There's a recurring narrative that I'm just a diversity hire who is ruining the coding sanctity of GitHub. I don't deserve to work at this company because I do nothing, while the engineers in this thread sit in their "1 room apartments." Damn, it's not my fault you aren't talented or successful. It also appears some watched my talks—thanks for the views.</p>

<p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/23790c8be2d72cba09953ecb50c03cfc/40493/screenshots-ruining-gh.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="I'm ruining GitHub as an employee" title="I'm ruining GitHub as an employee" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/23790c8be2d72cba09953ecb50c03cfc/e5715/screenshots-ruining-gh.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/23790c8be2d72cba09953ecb50c03cfc/8514f/screenshots-ruining-gh.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/23790c8be2d72cba09953ecb50c03cfc/804b2/screenshots-ruining-gh.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/23790c8be2d72cba09953ecb50c03cfc/e5715/screenshots-ruining-gh.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/23790c8be2d72cba09953ecb50c03cfc/4ad3a/screenshots-ruining-gh.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/23790c8be2d72cba09953ecb50c03cfc/71c1d/screenshots-ruining-gh.png 1536w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/23790c8be2d72cba09953ecb50c03cfc/40493/screenshots-ruining-gh.png 2955w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">I'd like to point out that the idea of avoiding "diversity hires" as to not lower the bar of quality is still a prevalent sentiment within tech. Again, these are not just nameless 4chan trolls—they're people in our industry.</p>

<h2 class="css-1qjzlku">... and should be punished.</h2>

<p class="css-1tujudq">Yeah, these are gross. Apparently I should get fired and deserve the harassment because I'm an attention seeking whore on a programming platform! The platform I work on and create more value to developers than you ever will in your life!!</p>

<p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/e7904e47d6c1e3ff58827b2096c64f78/50e7d/screenshots-ugh.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="I should get no sympathy for abuse, should be fired, should kill myself" title="I should get no sympathy for abuse, should be fired, should kill myself" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/e7904e47d6c1e3ff58827b2096c64f78/e5715/screenshots-ugh.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/e7904e47d6c1e3ff58827b2096c64f78/8514f/screenshots-ugh.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/e7904e47d6c1e3ff58827b2096c64f78/804b2/screenshots-ugh.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/e7904e47d6c1e3ff58827b2096c64f78/e5715/screenshots-ugh.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/e7904e47d6c1e3ff58827b2096c64f78/4ad3a/screenshots-ugh.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/e7904e47d6c1e3ff58827b2096c64f78/71c1d/screenshots-ugh.png 1536w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/e7904e47d6c1e3ff58827b2096c64f78/50e7d/screenshots-ugh.png 1738w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">That wasn't every screenshot from the threads, but is a good summary. The sheer volume of comments was definitely one of the more overwhelming aspects of this fuckery. Thanks for reading along this far.</p>

<h2 class="css-1qjzlku">So if it wasn't clear:</h2>

<p class="css-1tujudq">I was targeted by racist techies because of my background and visibility in order to be silenced and driven out of this industry. <span role="img" aria-label="middle finger">🖕</span></p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">It was particularly cruel to harass me on the platform I work on everyday, where I design for open source communities. I couldn't focus at work and ended up taking two weeks off. This experience has really impacted the way I view tech and my place in it—but I'll save that for another post. </p>

<h1 class="css-14vf4pd">This will happen again.</h1>

<p class="css-1tujudq">I've already accepted that this won't be my last brush with online harassment, so long as I'm still a visible Asian woman in tech. And this is going to continue happening to me and less privileged tech workers for just existing and being successful. All we can do is protect and support each other, because it's not our job to fix this problem.</p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">It's your move next, tech. Here are my suggestions, you can have them for free: </p>

<h2 class="css-1qjzlku">To the most privileged tech leaders:</h2>

<p class="css-1tujudq">When these events happen to your employees, are you investing actual money to support them? Are you monitoring content, encouraging time off, creating company policies, and covering their therapy? In lucky cases like mine, where the bulk of harassment may happen on the platform the victim works on, are you actively fixing pain points your employee experienced? Make sure you have a policy and detailed playbook, and definitely don't expect your marginalized employees to fix these problems for you. Don't wait until an incident arises—<strong class="css-0">it's always an "edge case" until someone's personal safety is threatened.</strong></p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">By not having intentional protections for the most vulnerable in place, you're preventing employees from being productive at work (because they're dealing with bullshit!). And you're absolutely driving away diverse talent from joining your company. It's actually fucking up your business. Access and representation in tech isn't a pipeline or qualification problem. <strong class="css-0">It's a white supremacy problem.</strong></p>

<blockquote class="css-1hj2jr3"><p class="css-1tujudq">And what still really creeps me out is that these people felt so emboldened to troll an EMPLOYEE using their actual GitHub accounts with legitimate work and contributions. <u>These harassers are everyday software engineers.</u></p></blockquote>

<p class="css-1tujudq">Lastly, I want to circle back to this point about users with legitimate coding work harassing me. It's easy to dismiss these trolls as incel 4channers that we shun and don't associate with. Lol no. These are your people. They work at your companies and write your code. They are harassing or doxxing your other employees. This toxic behavior is still very much a part of your tech culture, and you keep rewarding it.</p>

<p class="css-1tujudq">Fix. This. Shit.</p>

</article>
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cache/2020/42b9ec3fa0736e788eb939e82a188879/index.md View File

@@ -0,0 +1,72 @@
title: On all that fuckery
url: https://www.tinykat.cafe/on-all-that-fuckery
hash_url: 42b9ec3fa0736e788eb939e82a188879

<p class="css-1tujudq"><span role="img" aria-label="warning">⚠️</span> <em class="css-0">CW: racist, sexist, transphobic, hateful language and online abuse</em></p><p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/78121b0fe29ffe99a14ba6f375152534/b54cd/screenshot-fuckery.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="&quot;you faggots are just giving her the material for her next talk on sexism/hate threats and all that fuckery.&quot;" title="&quot;you faggots are just giving her the material for her next talk on sexism/hate threats and all that fuckery.&quot;" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/78121b0fe29ffe99a14ba6f375152534/e5715/screenshot-fuckery.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/78121b0fe29ffe99a14ba6f375152534/8514f/screenshot-fuckery.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/78121b0fe29ffe99a14ba6f375152534/804b2/screenshot-fuckery.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/78121b0fe29ffe99a14ba6f375152534/e5715/screenshot-fuckery.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/78121b0fe29ffe99a14ba6f375152534/4ad3a/screenshot-fuckery.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/78121b0fe29ffe99a14ba6f375152534/71c1d/screenshot-fuckery.png 1536w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/78121b0fe29ffe99a14ba6f375152534/b54cd/screenshot-fuckery.png 1662w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p>
<p class="css-1tujudq">From July 14 to August 17, 2020 (at time of publish), I experienced targeted harassment on GitHub—the company I'm employed at—via coordination happening on several "technology" 4chan threads about me. I wanted to share this story publicly to reiterate the bullshit marginalized folks in tech have to go through in order to be successful, visible, and just <em class="css-0">exist</em>.</p><p class="css-1tujudq">So as the dude in the screenshot says, I have plenty of material to write a post on <em class="css-0">all that fuckery</em>.</p><p class="css-1tujudq"><span role="img" aria-label="wavy dash">〰️</span></p><p class="css-1tujudq">The first round of trolling occurred in issues and PRs on <a href="https://github.com/katmeister/tokyo-2019" class="css-2n2eq4">one of my repositories</a> that documents the food I ate with my friends on our spring Tokyo 2019 trip. It was only slightly concerning at first, until I realized that 40+ people were posting, commenting, and emoji reacting.</p><p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b4fa0c9a46ca93a988fba3001fb34071/917ef/gh-screenshots.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="screenshots from GitHub" title="screenshots from GitHub" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b4fa0c9a46ca93a988fba3001fb34071/e5715/gh-screenshots.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b4fa0c9a46ca93a988fba3001fb34071/8514f/gh-screenshots.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b4fa0c9a46ca93a988fba3001fb34071/804b2/gh-screenshots.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b4fa0c9a46ca93a988fba3001fb34071/e5715/gh-screenshots.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b4fa0c9a46ca93a988fba3001fb34071/4ad3a/gh-screenshots.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b4fa0c9a46ca93a988fba3001fb34071/71c1d/gh-screenshots.png 1536w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b4fa0c9a46ca93a988fba3001fb34071/917ef/gh-screenshots.png 2095w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p><p class="css-1tujudq">Here are a few examples. The most irritating ones used tech jargon ("fixing bloat") to mask their pathetic actions. As a bystander, you might not realize until viewing the proposed changes... and seeing all content deleted. This is also the most irritating because there is no obviously hateful or violent content, and can be written off as "just a joke." <span role="img" aria-label="face with rolling eyes">🙄</span></p><p class="css-1tujudq">This is a specific type of trolling I was experiencing, called "dogpiling":</p><blockquote class="css-1hj2jr3"><p class="css-1tujudq">Dogpiling: When a group of trolls works together to overwhelm a target through a barrage of disingenuous questions, threats, slurs, insults, and other tactics meant to shame, silence, discredit, or drive a target offline. — <a href="https://onlineharassmentfieldmanual.pen.org/defining-online-harassment-a-glossary-of-terms/" class="css-2n2eq4">PEN America</a></p></blockquote><p class="css-1tujudq">This is not a new tactic used to silence, but it was the first time I've personally experienced it. Good thing I designed a lot of our moderation tools and have talked about the <a href="https://youtu.be/5CSQYMOWOtQ?t=580" class="css-2n2eq4">taxonomy of online abuse</a> before, and recognized this type of harassment quickly. I was able to get help from amazing coworkers, <a href="https://twitter.com/cheshire137" class="css-2n2eq4">Sarah Vessels</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/deniseyu21" class="css-2n2eq4">Denise Yu</a>, to query my repo's referral data. The traffic was coming from 4chan... two 4chan threads totaling nearly 500 disturbing comments.</p><p class="css-1tujudq">Seeing this shit was absolutely surreal. The GitHub content was annoying, but this made me feel sick. I still remember the feeling of being so overwhelmed and just sobbing at my desk. Reading disgusting, racist, sexist comments about me. Seeing screenshots of my face plastered across the threads. Understanding the exact moment where the dogpiling was coordinated. Realizing this was likely to keep happening (and it did).</p><p class="css-1tujudq">And what still really creeps me out is that these people felt so emboldened to troll an EMPLOYEE using their actual GitHub accounts with legitimate work and contributions. <u>These harassers are everyday software engineers.</u></p><p class="css-1tujudq">I'm not famous and I don't have a very large platform, so why me?</p><h1 class="css-14vf4pd">So why me?</h1><p class="css-1tujudq">Upon reading the threads, there were some pretty clear reasons why this happened to me. I'll dig deeply into each one. <em class="css-0">HUGE shoutout to my kat-ops counterpart <a href="https://twitter.com/pifafu" class="css-2n2eq4">Kathy Zheng</a> for helping me compile screenshots!</em></p>
<h2 class="css-1qjzlku">I'm a woman.</h2>
<p class="css-1tujudq">Well, this was the most obvious reason. Women disproportionately experience online harassment, and very much so for sexual harassment. I included a few snippets but won't spend too much time on this one because it was some boring, basic bitch shit that we've all seen before <span role="img" aria-label="">🤷🏻‍♀️</span></p><p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/8c70cf424f0092c01e2bab74df31a7a1/4f046/screenshots-incels.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="sexist comments" title="sexist comments" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/8c70cf424f0092c01e2bab74df31a7a1/e5715/screenshots-incels.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/8c70cf424f0092c01e2bab74df31a7a1/8514f/screenshots-incels.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/8c70cf424f0092c01e2bab74df31a7a1/804b2/screenshots-incels.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/8c70cf424f0092c01e2bab74df31a7a1/e5715/screenshots-incels.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/8c70cf424f0092c01e2bab74df31a7a1/4ad3a/screenshots-incels.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/8c70cf424f0092c01e2bab74df31a7a1/71c1d/screenshots-incels.png 1536w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/8c70cf424f0092c01e2bab74df31a7a1/4f046/screenshots-incels.png 3311w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p>
<h2 class="css-1qjzlku">I'm an Asian woman.</h2>
<p class="css-1tujudq">I mean, I shouldn't have been surprised at this one, but here we are. I have a lot of privilege as an Asian American, but was quickly reminded how easy I can be reduced to stereotypes and slurs. And that the gross fetishization of Asian women still makes me a target:</p><p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/fb87155ab684bb443d4d7e156d69f4fe/91945/screenshots-asian-slurs.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="asian slurs" title="asian slurs" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/fb87155ab684bb443d4d7e156d69f4fe/e5715/screenshots-asian-slurs.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/fb87155ab684bb443d4d7e156d69f4fe/8514f/screenshots-asian-slurs.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/fb87155ab684bb443d4d7e156d69f4fe/804b2/screenshots-asian-slurs.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/fb87155ab684bb443d4d7e156d69f4fe/e5715/screenshots-asian-slurs.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/fb87155ab684bb443d4d7e156d69f4fe/4ad3a/screenshots-asian-slurs.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/fb87155ab684bb443d4d7e156d69f4fe/71c1d/screenshots-asian-slurs.png 1536w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/fb87155ab684bb443d4d7e156d69f4fe/91945/screenshots-asian-slurs.png 2944w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p><p class="css-1tujudq">There was one in particular I wanted to highlight:</p><p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b7462864208b987ab4889dcf7a278076/07a9c/screenshots-asian-slurs2.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="So half-human?" title="So half-human?" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b7462864208b987ab4889dcf7a278076/e5715/screenshots-asian-slurs2.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b7462864208b987ab4889dcf7a278076/8514f/screenshots-asian-slurs2.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b7462864208b987ab4889dcf7a278076/804b2/screenshots-asian-slurs2.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b7462864208b987ab4889dcf7a278076/e5715/screenshots-asian-slurs2.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b7462864208b987ab4889dcf7a278076/4ad3a/screenshots-asian-slurs2.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/b7462864208b987ab4889dcf7a278076/07a9c/screenshots-asian-slurs2.png 1440w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p><p class="css-1tujudq">This one in particular stood out to me because it's a very specific type of harassment I've received my whole life, usually from East Asians. This piece of trash is stating that I'm subhuman because of my Vietnamese heritage. Tbh, this hits harder than boring 'ol "chink." The colorism here makes me think this was an Asian dude. And speaking of which: </p><p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/3eee0f75ebc7aeae694e1262392cf0a7/71c1d/screenshots-mrasian.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="asian slurs" title="asian slurs" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/3eee0f75ebc7aeae694e1262392cf0a7/e5715/screenshots-mrasian.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/3eee0f75ebc7aeae694e1262392cf0a7/8514f/screenshots-mrasian.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/3eee0f75ebc7aeae694e1262392cf0a7/804b2/screenshots-mrasian.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/3eee0f75ebc7aeae694e1262392cf0a7/e5715/screenshots-mrasian.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/3eee0f75ebc7aeae694e1262392cf0a7/4ad3a/screenshots-mrasian.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/3eee0f75ebc7aeae694e1262392cf0a7/71c1d/screenshots-mrasian.png 1536w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p><p class="css-1tujudq">I also received an email from what appears to be an MRAsian... It's sadly not uncommon to see Asian men upholding white supremacy and targeting Asian women for living our damn lives.</p>
<h2 class="css-1qjzlku">I have a "radical" profile README.</h2>
<p class="css-1tujudq">My GitHub <a href="http://github.com/katmeister" class="css-2n2eq4">profile README</a> includes my pronouns, support for #BlackLivesMatter, my values, and social links. The amount of transphobic and anti-Black racist comments because of this was sickening. Attacking allyship is yet another tactic to silence and isolate us.</p><p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/a7ab50905868d6c10c38a7153e01cfbe/16bd1/screenshots-readme.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="attacks on my GitHub personal README" title="attacks on my GitHub personal README" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/a7ab50905868d6c10c38a7153e01cfbe/e5715/screenshots-readme.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/a7ab50905868d6c10c38a7153e01cfbe/8514f/screenshots-readme.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/a7ab50905868d6c10c38a7153e01cfbe/804b2/screenshots-readme.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/a7ab50905868d6c10c38a7153e01cfbe/e5715/screenshots-readme.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/a7ab50905868d6c10c38a7153e01cfbe/4ad3a/screenshots-readme.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/a7ab50905868d6c10c38a7153e01cfbe/71c1d/screenshots-readme.png 1536w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/a7ab50905868d6c10c38a7153e01cfbe/16bd1/screenshots-readme.png 2922w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p>
<h2 class="css-1qjzlku">I'm not a "real developer"</h2>
<p class="css-1tujudq">Yikes, there were a <em class="css-0">lot</em> of comments about this. The dismissal of my skills and claiming I can only write Markdown is an intentional tactic to tear down my value and diminish my success. Very funny, as I've been writing code to production since 2016, despite not being a skilled developer. <span role="img" aria-label="">🤷🏻‍♀️</span></p><p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/4aaf585e0e3766626332768d1b1cd811/60708/screenshots-not-developer.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="not a real developer" title="not a real developer" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/4aaf585e0e3766626332768d1b1cd811/e5715/screenshots-not-developer.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/4aaf585e0e3766626332768d1b1cd811/8514f/screenshots-not-developer.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/4aaf585e0e3766626332768d1b1cd811/804b2/screenshots-not-developer.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/4aaf585e0e3766626332768d1b1cd811/e5715/screenshots-not-developer.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/4aaf585e0e3766626332768d1b1cd811/4ad3a/screenshots-not-developer.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/4aaf585e0e3766626332768d1b1cd811/71c1d/screenshots-not-developer.png 1536w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/4aaf585e0e3766626332768d1b1cd811/60708/screenshots-not-developer.png 2872w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p><p class="css-1tujudq">Also, I think this comment deserves a blockquote:</p><blockquote class="css-1hj2jr3"><p class="css-1tujudq">women unironically think that's all there is to development - forking, pushing some spelling changes, etc</p><p class="css-1tujudq">they literally have no concept of how involved any of it is</p><p class="css-1tujudq">isn't it hilarious that these useless parasites are consuming at least 50% of employer resources? all the while shitting on actually productive geeks for political brownie points? </p></blockquote><p class="css-1tujudq">Just... let that one sit. <span role="img" aria-label="nauseated face">🤢</span></p>
<h2 class="css-1qjzlku">I'm ruining GitHub as an employee...</h2>
<p class="css-1tujudq">There's a recurring narrative that I'm just a diversity hire who is ruining the coding sanctity of GitHub. I don't deserve to work at this company because I do nothing, while the engineers in this thread sit in their "1 room apartments." Damn, it's not my fault you aren't talented or successful. It also appears some watched my talks—thanks for the views.</p><p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/23790c8be2d72cba09953ecb50c03cfc/40493/screenshots-ruining-gh.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="I'm ruining GitHub as an employee" title="I'm ruining GitHub as an employee" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/23790c8be2d72cba09953ecb50c03cfc/e5715/screenshots-ruining-gh.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/23790c8be2d72cba09953ecb50c03cfc/8514f/screenshots-ruining-gh.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/23790c8be2d72cba09953ecb50c03cfc/804b2/screenshots-ruining-gh.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/23790c8be2d72cba09953ecb50c03cfc/e5715/screenshots-ruining-gh.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/23790c8be2d72cba09953ecb50c03cfc/4ad3a/screenshots-ruining-gh.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/23790c8be2d72cba09953ecb50c03cfc/71c1d/screenshots-ruining-gh.png 1536w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/23790c8be2d72cba09953ecb50c03cfc/40493/screenshots-ruining-gh.png 2955w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p><p class="css-1tujudq">I'd like to point out that the idea of avoiding "diversity hires" as to not lower the bar of quality is still a prevalent sentiment within tech. Again, these are not just nameless 4chan trolls—they're people in our industry.</p>
<h2 class="css-1qjzlku">... and should be punished.</h2>
<p class="css-1tujudq">Yeah, these are gross. Apparently I should get fired and deserve the harassment because I'm an attention seeking whore on a programming platform! The platform I work on and create more value to developers than you ever will in your life!!</p><p class="css-1tujudq"><span class="gatsby-resp-image-wrapper">
<a class="gatsby-resp-image-link css-2n2eq4" href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/e7904e47d6c1e3ff58827b2096c64f78/50e7d/screenshots-ugh.png" target="_blank" rel="noopener">
<span class="gatsby-resp-image-background-image"/>
<img class="gatsby-resp-image-image css-9whsf3" alt="I should get no sympathy for abuse, should be fired, should kill myself" title="I should get no sympathy for abuse, should be fired, should kill myself" src="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/e7904e47d6c1e3ff58827b2096c64f78/e5715/screenshots-ugh.png" srcset="https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/e7904e47d6c1e3ff58827b2096c64f78/8514f/screenshots-ugh.png 192w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/e7904e47d6c1e3ff58827b2096c64f78/804b2/screenshots-ugh.png 384w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/e7904e47d6c1e3ff58827b2096c64f78/e5715/screenshots-ugh.png 768w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/e7904e47d6c1e3ff58827b2096c64f78/4ad3a/screenshots-ugh.png 1152w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/e7904e47d6c1e3ff58827b2096c64f78/71c1d/screenshots-ugh.png 1536w,https://www.tinykat.cafe/static/e7904e47d6c1e3ff58827b2096c64f78/50e7d/screenshots-ugh.png 1738w" sizes="(max-width: 768px) 100vw, 768px" loading="lazy"/>
</a>
</span></p><p class="css-1tujudq">That wasn't every screenshot from the threads, but is a good summary. The sheer volume of comments was definitely one of the more overwhelming aspects of this fuckery. Thanks for reading along this far.</p>
<h2 class="css-1qjzlku">So if it wasn't clear:</h2>
<p class="css-1tujudq">I was targeted by racist techies because of my background and visibility in order to be silenced and driven out of this industry. <span role="img" aria-label="middle finger">🖕</span></p><p class="css-1tujudq">It was particularly cruel to harass me on the platform I work on everyday, where I design for open source communities. I couldn't focus at work and ended up taking two weeks off. This experience has really impacted the way I view tech and my place in it—but I'll save that for another post. </p><h1 class="css-14vf4pd">This will happen again.</h1><p class="css-1tujudq">I've already accepted that this won't be my last brush with online harassment, so long as I'm still a visible Asian woman in tech. And this is going to continue happening to me and less privileged tech workers for just existing and being successful. All we can do is protect and support each other, because it's not our job to fix this problem.</p><p class="css-1tujudq">It's your move next, tech. Here are my suggestions, you can have them for free: </p>
<h2 class="css-1qjzlku">To the most privileged tech leaders:</h2>
<p class="css-1tujudq">When these events happen to your employees, are you investing actual money to support them? Are you monitoring content, encouraging time off, creating company policies, and covering their therapy? In lucky cases like mine, where the bulk of harassment may happen on the platform the victim works on, are you actively fixing pain points your employee experienced? Make sure you have a policy and detailed playbook, and definitely don't expect your marginalized employees to fix these problems for you. Don't wait until an incident arises—<strong class="css-0">it's always an "edge case" until someone's personal safety is threatened.</strong></p><p class="css-1tujudq">By not having intentional protections for the most vulnerable in place, you're preventing employees from being productive at work (because they're dealing with bullshit!). And you're absolutely driving away diverse talent from joining your company. It's actually fucking up your business. Access and representation in tech isn't a pipeline or qualification problem. <strong class="css-0">It's a white supremacy problem.</strong></p><blockquote class="css-1hj2jr3"><p class="css-1tujudq">And what still really creeps me out is that these people felt so emboldened to troll an EMPLOYEE using their actual GitHub accounts with legitimate work and contributions. <u>These harassers are everyday software engineers.</u></p></blockquote><p class="css-1tujudq">Lastly, I want to circle back to this point about users with legitimate coding work harassing me. It's easy to dismiss these trolls as incel 4channers that we shun and don't associate with. Lol no. These are your people. They work at your companies and write your code. They are harassing or doxxing your other employees. This toxic behavior is still very much a part of your tech culture, and you keep rewarding it.</p><p class="css-1tujudq">Fix. This. Shit.</p></article>

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<p>In a design centered company, some people spend more time thinking about design than others, but everyone takes the importance of design to heart. Not only the design of the product itself, but of every way that the company touches a customer’s life. They see the evidence of design in their work environment and in the way the company is managed. They make even the smallest decisions with the design of the customer experience in mind. The quality of the resulting experience drives sales of their products and the success of their company. In turn, the pride in this outcome reinforces their commitment to design.</p>
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<p>We who work in web development are getting more comfortable with talking about burnout. This is a good thing, or it would be if we were prepared to acknowledge what burnout <em>really</em> represents.</p>

<p>Burnout is not just overwork, or the ensuing exhaustion. Some of you will already know this. It is also not failing, or not getting anywhere. Because some things are worth trying—and are fulfilling to try—even if they don't succeed.</p>

<p>Burnout is where your work isn't yours. It's when you give yourself, but what you give is not allowed to be you. Your energy, your passion, your <em>value</em> co-opted, corrupted, and erased.</p>

<p>If you work in a capitalist organization, you will experience burnout. You may be well-paid, work with a diverse and friendly team, and feel secure. But so long as what you are doing is, ultimately, being ground down into mere profit? The burnout is coming.</p>

<p>Burnout is what Marx called alienation. It's when a worker becomes estranged from their work. It sounds like a big, grand thing, but it happens every day, in small ways. As a web designer or developer burnout comes calling when you try to do <em>good</em> work, but you're not allowed.</p>

<ul><li>You want to make the app more performant; your boss wants to fill it full of third party trackers</li><li>You want to make the app more accessible; your boss wants you to focus on the ‘able market’ instead</li><li>You want to word the app more clearly; your boss wants to <em>trick</em> users with misleading language</li></ul>

<p>If you are a good developer, and a good person, asked to do shit work, you will burn out. You will feel yourself turning into burning shit.</p>

<p>It's not a nice experience, but it's not an uncommon one. In fact, it's one of the more persistent and prevalent features of capitalism. It's simply not possible to reconcile your desire to do good, for your users, with the organization's monomaniacal desire to siphon money to shareholders, no matter the costs or consequences.</p>

<p>And 100,000 ping pong tables, awards, charitable donations, and free lunches won't make up for one jot of it. If you are working for a capitalist organization, you are working for a bad one. It doesn't make <em>you</em> a capitalist, or a bad person. But it will make you vulnerable to burnout.</p>

<p>If you struggle with burnout, you are not alone. It's the ones who don't struggle with it, who need no more than a big paycheck and a pat on the back, who bother me.</p>

<p>But there's enough of us that we can ignore them. In threads, forums, meetups, and conferences around the world you'll find developers, people, who've had these same experiences, and felt this way. By finding each other, and working together, we can not only make a better web, but a better world. One we can be proud to have worked on.</p>

<p>For now, let's just keep on talking. We have a really good, public, unproprietary, and free means of doing that.</p>

<p><hr/><p>Side note: I have been compiling my grievances (which are many) about capitalism, and its current state, into an accessible illustrated guide, called <em><strong><a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bye-bye-billionaires/x/23096336#/">Bye Bye, Billionaires</a></strong></em>. It's up on <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bye-bye-billionaires/x/23096336#/">Indiegogo</a>.</p></p>
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title: Marxian Alienation And Web Development
url: https://heydonworks.com/article/marxian-alienation-and-web-development/
hash_url: 7122463445f458a915c93957300e63c9

<p>We who work in web development are getting more comfortable with talking about burnout. This is a good thing, or it would be if we were prepared to acknowledge what burnout <em>really</em> represents.</p><p>Burnout is not just overwork, or the ensuing exhaustion. Some of you will already know this. It is also not failing, or not getting anywhere. Because some things are worth trying—and are fulfilling to try—even if they don't succeed.</p><p>Burnout is where your work isn't yours. It's when you give yourself, but what you give is not allowed to be you. Your energy, your passion, your <em>value</em> co-opted, corrupted, and erased.</p><p>If you work in a capitalist organization, you will experience burnout. You may be well-paid, work with a diverse and friendly team, and feel secure. But so long as what you are doing is, ultimately, being ground down into mere profit? The burnout is coming.</p><p>Burnout is what Marx called alienation. It's when a worker becomes estranged from their work. It sounds like a big, grand thing, but it happens every day, in small ways. As a web designer or developer burnout comes calling when you try to do <em>good</em> work, but you're not allowed.</p><ul><li>You want to make the app more performant; your boss wants to fill it full of third party trackers</li><li>You want to make the app more accessible; your boss wants you to focus on the ‘able market’ instead</li><li>You want to word the app more clearly; your boss wants to <em>trick</em> users with misleading language</li></ul><p>If you are a good developer, and a good person, asked to do shit work, you will burn out. You will feel yourself turning into burning shit.</p><p>It's not a nice experience, but it's not an uncommon one. In fact, it's one of the more persistent and prevalent features of capitalism. It's simply not possible to reconcile your desire to do good, for your users, with the organization's monomaniacal desire to siphon money to shareholders, no matter the costs or consequences.</p><p>And 100,000 ping pong tables, awards, charitable donations, and free lunches won't make up for one jot of it. If you are working for a capitalist organization, you are working for a bad one. It doesn't make <em>you</em> a capitalist, or a bad person. But it will make you vulnerable to burnout.</p><p>If you struggle with burnout, you are not alone. It's the ones who don't struggle with it, who need no more than a big paycheck and a pat on the back, who bother me.</p><p>But there's enough of us that we can ignore them. In threads, forums, meetups, and conferences around the world you'll find developers, people, who've had these same experiences, and felt this way. By finding each other, and working together, we can not only make a better web, but a better world. One we can be proud to have worked on.</p><p>For now, let's just keep on talking. We have a really good, public, unproprietary, and free means of doing that.</p><hr/><p>Side note: I have been compiling my grievances (which are many) about capitalism, and its current state, into an accessible illustrated guide, called <em><strong><a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bye-bye-billionaires/x/23096336#/">Bye Bye, Billionaires</a></strong></em>. It's up on <a href="https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/bye-bye-billionaires/x/23096336#/">Indiegogo</a>.</p>

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<p class="c-lede">Radium was discovered in 1898 by Polish chemist <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie">Marie Sklodowska Curie</a>. To produce radium, you need to extract it from pitchblende, an ore that contains uranium.</p>

<p>Radium was discovered in working with the known properties of <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uraninite">pitchblende</a>. Curie noticed that pitchblende in its unrefined state was more radioactive than the uranium that was separated from it. This lead her to correctly anticipate it containing additional radioactive properties.</p>

<p>Extracting radium is a complicated and involved process that requires a team of trained professionals. Extraction needs to be conducted at scale, due to only trace amounts being present in the ore it is extracted from.</p>

<p>After its discovery, scientists hailed it as a miracle element. Its unique properties came to represent modernity, industrialization, and technological advancement. The general public was quick to follow, and amplify this enthusiasm.</p>

<h2 class="heading-beta" id="radium-girls">Radium girls</h2>

<p>Radium’s most obvious property is its luminosity. It glows with a distinct, eerie green color. Readers of this post may be familiar with one of its more infamous uses: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_dials">painting it on watches</a> to create glow-in-the-dark dials.</p>

<figure role="figure" aria-label="Source: Radium Dials by Arma95 on Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="A glowing green watch dial floating in blackness." src="../static/images/the-radium-craze/radium-dial.jpg"/><figcaption><span class="typography-small-caps">Source:</span> <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Radium_Dial.jpg">Radium Dials by Arma95</a> on Wikimedia Commons.</figcaption></figure>

<p>Readers may also be familiar with <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/authorkatemoore/the-light-that-does-not-lie">Radium Girls</a>. This deceptively cool-sounding name describes a working-class job that was highly desirable at the time. Radium’s technological applications afforded radium dial painters a salary that enabled a semblance of financial freedom. Radium’s public perception also gave the job a sense of glamor.</p>

<p>Radium girls were women who were coerced by their male superiors to meet the demands of society and technology. They were instructed to use their mouths to form a fine tip on the paintbrushes used to apply radium paint.</p>

<p>Over time, radium built up in these women’s bodies. This led to horrible injuries and tragic and extremely painful deaths. Before death, ulcers, lesions, sarcomas, the dissolving of tissue and honeycombing of bone occurred. The horrific symptom of a jaw rotting off occurred enough that the term “radium jaw” was coined.</p>

<p>The employers of radium girls initially tried to ignore, gaslight, and shift blame about the adverse effects of radium exposure, and their part in it. The United States Radium Corporation tried to blame <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/authorkatemoore/the-light-that-does-not-lie">Mollie Maggia</a>’s death by radium poisoning on a misdiagnosis of syphilis. They then conspired to create a mass coverup to hide the ill-effects of working with the technology.</p>

<h2 class="heading-beta" id="productization">Productization</h2>

<p>What is less known is <a href="https://thehistoryvault.co.uk/the-radium-craze-americas-lethal-love-affair-by-matthew-moss/">how deeply integrated radium was into daily life</a>. Radium was used a plot device in fiction, a beauty standard, even a topic for religious sermons.</p>

<p>Radium’s rarity made it a prestige good. Businesses were quick to take its initial applications and create a whole host of radium-themed products and branding—the more coveted ones actually containing the element. It was laterally integrated into nearly every existing product space: cigarettes, toothpaste, hair cream, butter, blankets, fertilizer, cosmetics, etc.</p>

<p>Radium’s integration also created a feedback loop that bolstered its credibility. This translated to its adoption by the medical community.</p>

<p>Doctors praised the supposed medicinal effects of radium without knowing its full effects, touting the rejuvenating powers of irradiated metal. Irradiated tablets were sold to the general public, to say nothing of radium-themed suppositories.</p>

<p>Perhaps the most infamous radium product was Radithor, a beverage created by Bailey Radium Laboratories. Radithor was marketed as an “elixir of life.” Unlike a lot of competing products in the radium beverage space, Radithor was a premium product that promised certified radioactive water.</p>

<figure role="figure" aria-label="Source: Radium Dials by Arma95 on Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="A bottle of Radithor sitting in front of a paper advertisement for it. The Radithor bottle's label indicates that it is certified radioactive water." src="../static/images/the-radium-craze/radithor.jpg"/><figcaption><span class="typography-small-caps">Source:</span> <a href="https://afistfulofneurons.com/radium-water-radithor/">“The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off”</a>.</figcaption></figure>

<p>Pittsburgh socialite Eben M. Byers died by compulsively over-consuming Radithor—his body was so radioactive that he needed to be buried in a lead coffin. Because of Byers’ social position, as well as <a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/188172930/The-Radium-Water-Worked-Fine-Until-His-Jaw-Fell-Off">coverage from the The Wall Street Journal</a>, regulatory bodies were compelled to take action in banning its use.</p>

<h2 class="heading-beta" id="what-we-can-learn">What we can learn</h2>

<p>There can be a lot of external forces that compel our technology choices, who we have implement them, and how they go about it. Unlike the prewar era, we now know a lot more about how technologies are built, how they work, and what their short and potential long-term effects are.</p>

<p>We should recognize the <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrument">law of the instrument</a>.</p>

<p>Blanket-applying radium to everything created horrific outcomes, some that we’re still being affected by today. Bottles of radium-infused beverages still show up in antique stores with some frequency. If they’re recognized as such, specialized containment and cleanup crews are brought in.</p>

<p>This being said, radium has some positive applications. Contemporary uses include treating some forms of cancer, checking machined metal parts for defects, and sourcing neutrons. These are situations where radium’s properties are purposefully and deliberately applied.</p>

<p>There’s a bit of nuance behind radium’s practical applications, as well: Many of its uses have been replaced by safer, more efficient innovations building off what it pioneered. The industries that use these technologies understand the importance of radium’s initial establishing role, but also utilize <a href="https://svelte.dev/">its successors</a>.</p>

<p>Technology drives outcomes, but <a href="https://macwright.com/2020/08/22/clean-starts-for-the-web.html">its selection doesn’t live in a vacuum</a>. As technology workers, we have a responsibility to make <a href="https://www.gatsbyjs.com/blog/2019-07-11-user-testing-accessible-client-routing/">careful and deliberate technology choices</a> and not cause undue immediate or long-term harm.</p>

<p>A five page marketing website may not need <a href="https://css-tricks.com/radeventlistener-a-tale-of-client-side-framework-performance/">a Single Page Application approach</a>. Consider what you’re trying to do, how you’re going to do it, and how you treat the people that help you get there.</p>
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<h1>« Voilà, je devais le dire un jour : je suis raciste »</h1>
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<p><img src="https://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-2-900x450.jpg" class="attachment-single-page wp-post-image" alt="" srcset="https://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-2-900x450.jpg 900w, https://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-2-350x175.jpg 350w, https://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-2-400x200.jpg 400w" sizes="(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px"/> <div id="attachment_9371" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-1.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-9371" src="http://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-1-1024x952.jpg" alt="" srcset="https://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-1-1024x952.jpg 1024w, https://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-1-300x279.jpg 300w, https://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-1-768x714.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 582px) 100vw, 582px"/></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Aldo Brina. Photo: Greg Clément.</p></div>
<p><strong>Aldo Brina est Chargé d’information sur l’asile au CSP Genève et s’engage depuis 2007 au cœur du réseau de défense des réfugiés. Dans la réflexion ci-dessous que nous publions dans son intégralité, Aldo Brina s’interroge sur ce qu’est le racisme, puis sur la manière de le combattre, y compris dans ses formes les plus sournoises.</strong></p>
<p>«Voilà, je devais le dire un jour : je suis raciste.</p>
<p>Je sais, ça risque de surprendre pas mal de monde. Quinze ans à défendre le droit d’asile, plusieurs années à présider la coordination contre la xénophobie. Mais il fallait que je le dise.</p>
<p>Il fallait que je le dise parce qu’en fait, en Suisse, je me sens très seul, parce qu’il n’y a pas de racistes. Dans la conception dominante, raciste, tu l’es ou tu l’es pas. Et l’immense majorité a décidé qu’elle ne l’était pas. Les racistes, ce sont seulement ces types qui ont un drapeau du troisième Reich, ou qui affirment que les noirs sont des singes, et plus personne, ou presque, n’a ça ou ne dit ça. Donc il n’y a plus de raciste, et la lutte contre le racisme, c’est une exagération.</p>
<p>Ben moi je ne suis pas de cet avis. Alors je le dis haut et fort : je suis raciste. Le racisme ce n’est pas qu’une opinion qu’on clame, c’est aussi des pensées fluides qui pénètrent les esprits les mieux intentionnés, des cimetières indiens (et africains) sur lesquels on a construit notre présent, des institutions qui font partie de l’état de droit tout en étant, dans des mesures variables, racistes.<br/>
Une émission de télévision très regardée titrait : la Suisse est-elle raciste ? Ça n’a aucun sens. La question n’est pas de l’être ou de ne pas l’être. La question c’est qu’est-ce qu’on fait de ces réflexes, de ces pensées, de ces comportements, de cette histoire que nous partageons toutes et tous. Comment les combattre comme on a vaincu le féodalisme, la peine de mort ou le tabagisme ?</p>
<p>Moi, j’avoue, quand je croise une personne noire en bas de mon boulot, mon premier réflexe c’est de penser qu’elle vient consulter une de nos permanences juridiques on sociales. Pas qu’elle est peut-être la patronne de la société informatique qui vient réparer notre réseau ou une journaliste qui vient couvrir une conférence de presse.</p>
<p>Le parlement qui me représente comprend 0% de femmes ou d’hommes noir-e-s. C’est pas le même pourcentage quand je prends le bus.</p>
<p>Chaque jour, pour appliquer les lois de mon pays, des équipes de police arrêtent au petit matin des familles, le plus souvent noires ou racialisées, les mettent dans un avion de force. Des décisions de justice ont reconnu des insultes racistes dans ce cadre mais moi, je dors pareil la nuit. Je vois des personnes noires se faire contrôler dans la rue et je ne me pose pas trop de questions. La police s’occupe des délinquants, non?</p>
<p>Donc comprenez, je ne me sentais pas complètement à ma place parmi tous ces gens, bien-pensants, qui ne sont pas du tout racistes, jamais. Donc cet aveu, ça m’enlève un poids.</p>
<p>Je force le trait et j’entends d’ici les cris d’orfraie : s’infliger une telle culpabilité, blabli blabla. Une responsabilité, pas une culpabilité. Pas se lamenter, pas se flageller, mais se rappeler que y aura toujours du boulot. On ne vous demande pas d’être jugé-e-s avec le policier qui a assassiné George Floyd, on aimerait juste que vous vous demandiez que faire pour que cela soit impossible en Suisse.</p>
<p>Je suis raciste et, d’ailleurs, j’ai très peu d’ami-e-s noir-e-s. Trop peu.<br/>
Une prochaine fois, je vous expliquerai que je suis aussi sexiste…»</p></p>
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title: « Voilà, je devais le dire un jour : je suis raciste »
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<img src="https://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-2-900x450.jpg" class="attachment-single-page wp-post-image" alt="" srcset="https://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-2-900x450.jpg 900w, https://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-2-350x175.jpg 350w, https://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-2-400x200.jpg 400w" sizes="(max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px"/> <div id="attachment_9371" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-1.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-9371" src="http://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-1-1024x952.jpg" alt="" srcset="https://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-1-1024x952.jpg 1024w, https://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-1-300x279.jpg 300w, https://voixdexils.ch/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Greg-Clément-zioom-1-768x714.jpg 768w" sizes="(max-width: 582px) 100vw, 582px"/></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Aldo Brina. Photo: Greg Clément.</p></div>
<p><strong>Aldo Brina est Chargé d’information sur l’asile au CSP Genève et s’engage depuis 2007 au cœur du réseau de défense des réfugiés. Dans la réflexion ci-dessous que nous publions dans son intégralité, Aldo Brina s’interroge sur ce qu’est le racisme, puis sur la manière de le combattre, y compris dans ses formes les plus sournoises.</strong></p>
<p>«Voilà, je devais le dire un jour : je suis raciste.</p>
<p>Je sais, ça risque de surprendre pas mal de monde. Quinze ans à défendre le droit d’asile, plusieurs années à présider la coordination contre la xénophobie. Mais il fallait que je le dise.</p>
<p>Il fallait que je le dise parce qu’en fait, en Suisse, je me sens très seul, parce qu’il n’y a pas de racistes. Dans la conception dominante, raciste, tu l’es ou tu l’es pas. Et l’immense majorité a décidé qu’elle ne l’était pas. Les racistes, ce sont seulement ces types qui ont un drapeau du troisième Reich, ou qui affirment que les noirs sont des singes, et plus personne, ou presque, n’a ça ou ne dit ça. Donc il n’y a plus de raciste, et la lutte contre le racisme, c’est une exagération.</p>
<p>Ben moi je ne suis pas de cet avis. Alors je le dis haut et fort : je suis raciste. Le racisme ce n’est pas qu’une opinion qu’on clame, c’est aussi des pensées fluides qui pénètrent les esprits les mieux intentionnés, des cimetières indiens (et africains) sur lesquels on a construit notre présent, des institutions qui font partie de l’état de droit tout en étant, dans des mesures variables, racistes.<br/>
Une émission de télévision très regardée titrait : la Suisse est-elle raciste ? Ça n’a aucun sens. La question n’est pas de l’être ou de ne pas l’être. La question c’est qu’est-ce qu’on fait de ces réflexes, de ces pensées, de ces comportements, de cette histoire que nous partageons toutes et tous. Comment les combattre comme on a vaincu le féodalisme, la peine de mort ou le tabagisme ?</p>
<p>Moi, j’avoue, quand je croise une personne noire en bas de mon boulot, mon premier réflexe c’est de penser qu’elle vient consulter une de nos permanences juridiques on sociales. Pas qu’elle est peut-être la patronne de la société informatique qui vient réparer notre réseau ou une journaliste qui vient couvrir une conférence de presse.</p>
<p>Le parlement qui me représente comprend 0% de femmes ou d’hommes noir-e-s. C’est pas le même pourcentage quand je prends le bus.</p>
<p>Chaque jour, pour appliquer les lois de mon pays, des équipes de police arrêtent au petit matin des familles, le plus souvent noires ou racialisées, les mettent dans un avion de force. Des décisions de justice ont reconnu des insultes racistes dans ce cadre mais moi, je dors pareil la nuit. Je vois des personnes noires se faire contrôler dans la rue et je ne me pose pas trop de questions. La police s’occupe des délinquants, non?</p>
<p>Donc comprenez, je ne me sentais pas complètement à ma place parmi tous ces gens, bien-pensants, qui ne sont pas du tout racistes, jamais. Donc cet aveu, ça m’enlève un poids.</p>
<p>Je force le trait et j’entends d’ici les cris d’orfraie : s’infliger une telle culpabilité, blabli blabla. Une responsabilité, pas une culpabilité. Pas se lamenter, pas se flageller, mais se rappeler que y aura toujours du boulot. On ne vous demande pas d’être jugé-e-s avec le policier qui a assassiné George Floyd, on aimerait juste que vous vous demandiez que faire pour que cela soit impossible en Suisse.</p>
<p>Je suis raciste et, d’ailleurs, j’ai très peu d’ami-e-s noir-e-s. Trop peu.<br/>
Une prochaine fois, je vous expliquerai que je suis aussi sexiste…»</p>

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<h1>Make me think!</h1>
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<p>Until recently everyday objects were shaped by their technology. The design of a telephone was basically a hull around a machine. <strong>The task of the designers</strong> was to <strong>make technology look pretty</strong>.</p>

<p><span id="more-1291"/></p>

<p><img data-attachment-id="1293" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_1/" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_1.gif?fit=290%2C280&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="290,280" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_1" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_1.gif?fit=290%2C280&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_1.gif?fit=290%2C280&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1293 aligncenter" src="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_1.gif?resize=290%2C280" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>

<p>It was up to the <strong>engineers</strong> to <strong>define the interfaces</strong> of those objects. Their main concern was <strong>the function of the machine, not its ease of use</strong>. We — the “users” — had to figure out how they worked.</p>

<p><img data-attachment-id="1294" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_2/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_2.gif?fit=198%2C200&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="198,200" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_2" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_2.gif?fit=198%2C200&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_2.gif?fit=198%2C200&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1294 aligncenter" src="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_2.gif?resize=198%2C200" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>

<p>With every technological innovation our everyday objects became richer and increasingly complex. Designers and engineers simply <strong>burdened the users with this increase in complexity</strong>. I am still having nightmares<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kyl2g11KSqc"> trying to get a train ticket from the old BART vending machines in San Francisco</a>.</p>

<p><img data-attachment-id="1295" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_3/" data-orig-file="https://i2.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_3.gif?fit=225%2C215&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="225,215" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_3" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i2.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_3.gif?fit=225%2C215&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i2.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_3.gif?fit=225%2C215&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1295 aligncenter" src="https://i2.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_3.gif?resize=225%2C215" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>

<h3>From complicated to simple</h3>

<p>Fortunately, UX (User eXperience) designers have found ways to design beautiful interfaces that are easy to use. Their process can resemble a philosophical enquiry, where they constantly ask questions such as: <strong>What is this really about? How do we perceive this? What is our mental model?</strong></p>

<p><img data-attachment-id="1296" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_4/" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_4.gif?fit=222%2C214&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="222,214" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_4" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_4.gif?fit=222%2C214&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_4.gif?fit=222%2C214&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1296 aligncenter" src="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_4.gif?resize=222%2C214" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>

<p>Today, as a result of their efforts, we interact with wonderfully designed interfaces. <strong>Designers have been taming complexity for us</strong>. They make extremely sophisticated technology appear simple and easy to use.</p>

<p><img data-attachment-id="1297" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_5/" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_5.gif?fit=128%2C200&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="128,200" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_5" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_5.gif?fit=128%2C200&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_5.gif?fit=128%2C200&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1297 aligncenter" src="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_5.gif?resize=128%2C200" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>

<h3>From simple to too simple</h3>

<p>And easy sells well. Thus more and more products are based on the promise to <strong>make our lives easier</strong> by <strong>using increasingly complex technologies with ever simpler interfaces</strong>.</p>

<p><img data-attachment-id="1298" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_6/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_6.gif?fit=325%2C284&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="325,284" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_6" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_6.gif?fit=300%2C262&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_6.gif?fit=325%2C284&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1298 aligncenter" src="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_6.gif?resize=325%2C284" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>

<p>Just tell your phone what you want and things will appear magically — whether it is the information on a screen or a package delivered to your doorstep. A <strong>gigantic amount of technologies and infrastructure</strong> is domesticated by brave designers and engineers who make all this work.</p>

<p><img data-attachment-id="1299" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_7/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_7.gif?fit=105%2C180&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="105,180" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_7" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_7.gif?fit=105%2C180&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_7.gif?fit=105%2C180&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1299 aligncenter" src="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_7.gif?resize=105%2C180" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>

<p>But we don’t see — let alone understand — what is going on behind the scenes, behind the simple appearance. <strong>We are kept in the dark</strong>.</p>

<p><img data-attachment-id="1300" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_8/" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_8.gif?fit=177%2C146&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="177,146" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_8" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_8.gif?fit=177%2C146&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_8.gif?fit=177%2C146&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1300 aligncenter" src="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_8.gif?resize=177%2C146" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>

<p>You should see me whining like a spoiled brat when a video call is not working as smoothly as expected — all those interruptions and the bad sound quality! An experience which would have appeared nothing short of a <strong>miracle</strong> to people just 50 years ago and which requires the operation of a colossal infrastructure has become an expected normality for me.</p>

<p><strong>We fail to appreciate and to empathise because we don’t understand what is going on.</strong></p>

<p>So does technology makes us dumb? This question isn’t really new. Famously Plato warned us about the detrimental effects of writing — which we know of because he wrote them down.</p>

<h3>The problem with “user centered” design</h3>

<p>In his <strong>excellent</strong> book “Living with complexity” Donald Norman offers numerous strategies for how designers can harness the design of complexity to <strong>improve the user experience</strong>.</p>

<p>And there lies a problem.</p>

<p>I am increasingly wary of the term “<strong>user centered design</strong>”. The word “user” has a second meaning — “consumer of drugs”— which implies <strong>dependance, short-sighted gratification and a reliable source of income for the “dealer”</strong>. The word “centered” excludes pretty much everyone and everything else.</p>

<p><img data-attachment-id="1301" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_9/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_9.gif?fit=230%2C140&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="230,140" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_9" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_9.gif?fit=230%2C140&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_9.gif?fit=230%2C140&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1301 aligncenter" src="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_9.gif?resize=230%2C140" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>

<h3>A holistic approach to complexity</h3>

<p>As an alternative we should widen our perspective and ask questions such as:</p>

<h4>Empowerment: Who’s having the fun?</h4>

<p>Maybe being able to speak a foreign language is more fun than using a translation software.</p>

<p>Whenever we are about to substitute a laborious activity such as learning a language, cooking a meal, or tending to plants with a — deceptively — simple solution, we might always ask ourselves: <strong>Should the technology grow — or the person using it?</strong></p>

<p><img data-attachment-id="1302" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_10/" data-orig-file="https://i2.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_10.gif?fit=526%2C157&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="526,157" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_10" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i2.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_10.gif?fit=300%2C90&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i2.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_10.gif?fit=526%2C157&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1302 aligncenter" src="https://i2.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_10.gif?resize=526%2C157" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>

<h4>Resilience: Does it make us more vulnerable?</h4>

<p>Highly sophisticated systems work flawlessly, <strong>as long as things go as expected</strong>.</p>

<p>When a problem occurs which hasn’t been anticipated by the designers, those systems are prone to fail. <strong>The more complex the systems are, the higher are the chances that things go wrong</strong>. They are less resilient.</p>

<p><img data-attachment-id="1303" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_11/" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_11.gif?fit=458%2C206&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="458,206" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_11" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_11.gif?fit=300%2C135&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_11.gif?fit=458%2C206&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1303 aligncenter" src="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_11.gif?resize=458%2C206" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>

<p>A chronic dependance on a combination of electronics, artificial intelligence and a high speed internet connection for the simplest tasks is a recipe for disaster. It makes our lives more complicated, especially when we don’t understand what is going on behind the deceptively simple interface.</p>

<h4>Empathy: What is the impact of simplification on others?</h4>

<p>Our decisions have consequences for ourselves and others. <strong>A simplified appearance can make us blind to those consequences</strong>.</p>

<p><img data-attachment-id="1304" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_12/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_12.gif?fit=565%2C275&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="565,275" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_12" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_12.gif?fit=300%2C146&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_12.gif?fit=565%2C275&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1304 aligncenter" src="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_12.gif?resize=565%2C275" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>

<p>Our decision what smart phone to buy or what to have for dinner has a huge impact on other living beings. Knowing about the complexity behind such a decision can be of tremendous value. <strong>We need to know things better if we want to be better</strong>.</p>

<p><strong>Embracing complexity</strong></p>

<p>Simplification is a powerful design strategy. Naturally the button to make an emergency call should be as simple as possible. And yet, we also need further design strategies that help us accept, understand, and interact with complex situations in our lives.</p>
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title: Make me think!
url: https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/
hash_url: 82918fea8d8ed461aae66915dbed02c9

<p>Until recently everyday objects were shaped by their technology. The design of a telephone was basically a hull around a machine. <strong>The task of the designers</strong> was to <strong>make technology look pretty</strong>.</p>
<p><span id="more-1291"/></p>
<p><img data-attachment-id="1293" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_1/" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_1.gif?fit=290%2C280&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="290,280" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_1" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_1.gif?fit=290%2C280&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_1.gif?fit=290%2C280&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1293 aligncenter" src="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_1.gif?resize=290%2C280" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>
<p>It was up to the <strong>engineers</strong> to <strong>define the interfaces</strong> of those objects. Their main concern was <strong>the function of the machine, not its ease of use</strong>. We — the “users” — had to figure out how they worked.</p>
<p><img data-attachment-id="1294" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_2/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_2.gif?fit=198%2C200&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="198,200" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_2" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_2.gif?fit=198%2C200&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_2.gif?fit=198%2C200&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1294 aligncenter" src="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_2.gif?resize=198%2C200" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>
<p>With every technological innovation our everyday objects became richer and increasingly complex. Designers and engineers simply <strong>burdened the users with this increase in complexity</strong>. I am still having nightmares<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kyl2g11KSqc"> trying to get a train ticket from the old BART vending machines in San Francisco</a>.</p>
<p><img data-attachment-id="1295" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_3/" data-orig-file="https://i2.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_3.gif?fit=225%2C215&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="225,215" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_3" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i2.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_3.gif?fit=225%2C215&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i2.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_3.gif?fit=225%2C215&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1295 aligncenter" src="https://i2.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_3.gif?resize=225%2C215" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>
<h3>From complicated to simple</h3>
<p>Fortunately, UX (User eXperience) designers have found ways to design beautiful interfaces that are easy to use. Their process can resemble a philosophical enquiry, where they constantly ask questions such as: <strong>What is this really about? How do we perceive this? What is our mental model?</strong></p>
<p><img data-attachment-id="1296" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_4/" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_4.gif?fit=222%2C214&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="222,214" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_4" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_4.gif?fit=222%2C214&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_4.gif?fit=222%2C214&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1296 aligncenter" src="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_4.gif?resize=222%2C214" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>
<p>Today, as a result of their efforts, we interact with wonderfully designed interfaces. <strong>Designers have been taming complexity for us</strong>. They make extremely sophisticated technology appear simple and easy to use.</p>
<p><img data-attachment-id="1297" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_5/" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_5.gif?fit=128%2C200&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="128,200" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_5" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_5.gif?fit=128%2C200&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_5.gif?fit=128%2C200&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1297 aligncenter" src="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_5.gif?resize=128%2C200" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>
<h3>From simple to too simple</h3>
<p>And easy sells well. Thus more and more products are based on the promise to <strong>make our lives easier</strong> by <strong>using increasingly complex technologies with ever simpler interfaces</strong>.</p>
<p><img data-attachment-id="1298" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_6/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_6.gif?fit=325%2C284&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="325,284" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_6" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_6.gif?fit=300%2C262&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_6.gif?fit=325%2C284&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1298 aligncenter" src="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_6.gif?resize=325%2C284" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>
<p>Just tell your phone what you want and things will appear magically — whether it is the information on a screen or a package delivered to your doorstep. A <strong>gigantic amount of technologies and infrastructure</strong> is domesticated by brave designers and engineers who make all this work.</p>
<p><img data-attachment-id="1299" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_7/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_7.gif?fit=105%2C180&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="105,180" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_7" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_7.gif?fit=105%2C180&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_7.gif?fit=105%2C180&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1299 aligncenter" src="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_7.gif?resize=105%2C180" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>
<p>But we don’t see — let alone understand — what is going on behind the scenes, behind the simple appearance. <strong>We are kept in the dark</strong>.</p>
<p><img data-attachment-id="1300" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_8/" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_8.gif?fit=177%2C146&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="177,146" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_8" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_8.gif?fit=177%2C146&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_8.gif?fit=177%2C146&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1300 aligncenter" src="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_8.gif?resize=177%2C146" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>
<p>You should see me whining like a spoiled brat when a video call is not working as smoothly as expected — all those interruptions and the bad sound quality! An experience which would have appeared nothing short of a <strong>miracle</strong> to people just 50 years ago and which requires the operation of a colossal infrastructure has become an expected normality for me.</p>
<p><strong>We fail to appreciate and to empathise because we don’t understand what is going on.</strong></p>
<p>So does technology makes us dumb? This question isn’t really new. Famously Plato warned us about the detrimental effects of writing — which we know of because he wrote them down.</p>
<h3>The problem with “user centered” design</h3>
<p>In his <strong>excellent</strong> book “Living with complexity” Donald Norman offers numerous strategies for how designers can harness the design of complexity to <strong>improve the user experience</strong>.</p>
<p>And there lies a problem.</p>
<p>I am increasingly wary of the term “<strong>user centered design</strong>”. The word “user” has a second meaning — “consumer of drugs”— which implies <strong>dependance, short-sighted gratification and a reliable source of income for the “dealer”</strong>. The word “centered” excludes pretty much everyone and everything else.</p>
<p><img data-attachment-id="1301" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_9/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_9.gif?fit=230%2C140&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="230,140" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_9" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_9.gif?fit=230%2C140&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_9.gif?fit=230%2C140&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1301 aligncenter" src="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_9.gif?resize=230%2C140" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>
<h3>A holistic approach to complexity</h3>
<p>As an alternative we should widen our perspective and ask questions such as:</p>
<h4>Empowerment: Who’s having the fun?</h4>
<p>Maybe being able to speak a foreign language is more fun than using a translation software.</p>
<p>Whenever we are about to substitute a laborious activity such as learning a language, cooking a meal, or tending to plants with a — deceptively — simple solution, we might always ask ourselves: <strong>Should the technology grow — or the person using it?</strong></p>
<p><img data-attachment-id="1302" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_10/" data-orig-file="https://i2.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_10.gif?fit=526%2C157&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="526,157" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_10" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i2.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_10.gif?fit=300%2C90&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i2.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_10.gif?fit=526%2C157&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1302 aligncenter" src="https://i2.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_10.gif?resize=526%2C157" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>
<h4>Resilience: Does it make us more vulnerable?</h4>
<p>Highly sophisticated systems work flawlessly, <strong>as long as things go as expected</strong>.</p>
<p>When a problem occurs which hasn’t been anticipated by the designers, those systems are prone to fail. <strong>The more complex the systems are, the higher are the chances that things go wrong</strong>. They are less resilient.</p>
<p><img data-attachment-id="1303" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_11/" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_11.gif?fit=458%2C206&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="458,206" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_11" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_11.gif?fit=300%2C135&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_11.gif?fit=458%2C206&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1303 aligncenter" src="https://i1.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_11.gif?resize=458%2C206" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>
<p>A chronic dependance on a combination of electronics, artificial intelligence and a high speed internet connection for the simplest tasks is a recipe for disaster. It makes our lives more complicated, especially when we don’t understand what is going on behind the deceptively simple interface.</p>
<h4>Empathy: What is the impact of simplification on others?</h4>
<p>Our decisions have consequences for ourselves and others. <strong>A simplified appearance can make us blind to those consequences</strong>.</p>
<p><img data-attachment-id="1304" data-permalink="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/makemethink_12/" data-orig-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_12.gif?fit=565%2C275&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="565,275" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="makemethink_12" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_12.gif?fit=300%2C146&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_12.gif?fit=565%2C275&amp;ssl=1" loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-1304 aligncenter" src="https://i0.wp.com/ralphammer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/makemethink_12.gif?resize=565%2C275" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1"/></p>
<p>Our decision what smart phone to buy or what to have for dinner has a huge impact on other living beings. Knowing about the complexity behind such a decision can be of tremendous value. <strong>We need to know things better if we want to be better</strong>.</p>
<p><strong>Embracing complexity</strong></p>
<p>Simplification is a powerful design strategy. Naturally the button to make an emergency call should be as simple as possible. And yet, we also need further design strategies that help us accept, understand, and interact with complex situations in our lives.</p>

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<article>
<header>
<h1>Make Me Think</h1>
</header>
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<p class="center">
<a href="/david/" title="Aller à l’accueil">🏠</a> •
<a href="https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2020/make-me-think/" title="Lien vers le contenu original">Source originale</a>
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<blockquote>
<p>For many years now, the rallying cry of digital designers has been epitomised by the title of Steve Krug’s terrific book, Don’t Make Me Think. But what happens when that rallying cry is taken too far? What happens when it stops being “don’t make think while I’m trying to complete a task” to simply “don’t make me think” full stop? — Jeremy Keith, <a href="https://adactio.com/journal/6786">“Seams”</a> </p>
</blockquote>

<p>Steve Krug’s book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Make_Me_Think">“Don’t Make Me Think”</a> is a wonderful book. Unfortunately, I’ve often seen its contents narrowly distilled to a slogan revered as the great commandment of software design: don’t make people think. </p>

<p>Have you heard of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_reflection_test">the cognitive reflection test</a>? It’s a test “designed to measure a person’s tendency to override an incorrect ‘gut’ response and engage in further reflection to find a correct answer.” More from Wikipedia:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>According to Frederick, there are two general types of cognitive activity called "system 1" and "system 2" (these terms have been first used by Daniel Kahneman). System 1 is executed quickly without reflection, while system 2 requires conscious thought and effort. The cognitive reflection test has three questions that each have an obvious but incorrect response given by system 1. The correct response requires the activation of system 2. For system 2 to be activated, a person must note that their first answer is incorrect, which requires reflection on their own cognition</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Here are the three questions from the test:</p>

<ol>
<li>A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?</li>
<li>If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?</li>
<li>In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?</li>
</ol>

<p>The intuitive answers are: </p>

<ol>
<li>10 cents</li>
<li>100 minutes</li>
<li>24 days</li>
</ol>

<p>The correct answers are: </p>

<ol>
<li>5 cents</li>
<li>5 minutes</li>
<li>47 days.</li>
</ol>

<p>What’s interesting, Malcolm Gladwell points out in his book <em>David and Goliath</em>, is that there is an easy way to raise peoples’ grades on this test: make the test questions difficult to read.</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The psychologists Adam Alter and Daniel Oppenheimer tried this a few years ago with a group of undergraduates at Princeton University. First they gave the CRT the normal way, and the students averaged 1.9 correct answers out of three. That’s pretty good, though it is well short of the 2.18 that MIT students averaged. Then Alter and Oppenheimer printed out the test questions in a font that was really hard to read—a 10 percent gray, 10-point italics Myriad Pro font...</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Translated to digital, that would mean a question that looked roughly like this:</p>

<p><img src="https://cdn.jim-nielsen.com/blog/2019/make-me-think-test-questions.png" alt="A graphical approximation of the first CRT questions when represented in a small, light gray version of Myriad Pro"/>

</p>

<p>What happened when the questions received this kind of visual treatment?</p>

<blockquote>
<p>The average score this time around [went up to] 2.45. Suddenly, the students were doing much better.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Wait, but I thought we were supposed to <em>not</em> make people think? Present things to people clearly and simply and they’ll do better. Why is the opposite happening here? The typographic treatment of the question made reading difficult. You likely had to squint, possibly even read some words (or the entire question) multiple times. Interacting with the question in this way required you to stop and think. It made you <em>work</em>. Gladwell comments on this interesting result of the study:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>As Alter says, making the questions “disfluent” causes people to “think more deeply about whatever they come across. They’ll use more resources on it. They’ll process more deeply or think more carefully about what’s going on. If they have to overcome a hurdle, they’ll overcome it better when you force them to think a little harder.” Alter and Oppenheimer made the CRT more difficult. But that difficulty turned out to be <em>desirable</em>.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Look at that: purposefully making something more difficult turned out to be desirable.</p>

<h2 id="a-product-example">A Product Example</h2>

<p>A little while ago, I knew some folks building a product touted as an “anonymous job platform for your ideal next role”. I was able to get a sneak peak at using the app and one of the things that struck me was how difficult it was to use. Not “difficult” in a human/computer interaction kind of way, but rather in a critical thinking kind of way. It was hard because it required me to stop and think. It required introspection. I half-jokingly noted to the the designer in my feedback “I probably thought harder...when creating a profile than most any other time in my life.” He responded by saying, “We heard that same feedback...I’m loving that part of it. I think we're gonna try to encourage that even more.”</p>

<p>What I found ingenious about the product was that it didn’t shy away from being difficult. Again, it’s not that the product was difficult to understand or the UI tricky to use. No. In fact, the UI and instructions were quite clear, helpful, even empathetic to the task at hand. There were moments of suggested pause, followed by probing questions meant to draw out the best kinds of thought, which would then power the product to deliver the best kinds of value. </p>

<p>After more use of the product, I wrote my feedback to one of the owners:</p>

<blockquote>
<p>[To do this right] I realize that I'd really need to sit down and think about:</p>
<ol>
<li>What do I want? And not just a general “what do I want out of life?” but a very precise set of details “I want to be doing <em>this</em> kind of work, on <em>this</em> kind of team, with <em>this</em> kind of business”...</li>
</ol>
<p>[I think you’ve done a] really good job on the way the app makes me think. I found myself multiple times thinking “this is too hard. You people who made this app, you’re making me think too much!” But then an inner voice said “hey stupid, this stuff that’s hard, it’s for YOU. It’s for YOUR benefit. Are you telling me you don’t want to work hard for YOURSELF? You get what you put into it.” And then I was like “ok I’ll spend whatever amount of time this takes.”</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Turns out, this “disfluency” I was picking up on was a kind of intentional friction by the product designers, one of whom responded to my feedback in this manner: </p>

<blockquote>
<p>We’re hearing similar things from other folks. I’m a little scared we’re gonna lose people because it is difficult, but that might be OK? It’s the antithesis of most internet things these days. Instead of go-go-go, fast-fast, more-more, we’re asking [people] to slow down, take their time...[I think we’ll] reiterate as much as we can that...it’s OK that it’s hard.</p>
</blockquote>

<h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2>

<p>Why am I writing all of this? I don’t know. I guess as a reminder to myself. “Hard things are hard”. Great software allows people to do the actual thinking of the task at hand. If computers really are a “bicycle for the mind” we should make sure we don’t remove what makes bicycles great: human-powered motion. Too often our propensity is to make software that turns bicycles into motorcycles: all that’s required of you is to twist your arm on the throttle and boom, automated motion.</p>

<p>The removal of all friction should’t be a goal. Making things easy and making things hard should be a design tool, employed to aid the end user towards their loftiest goals. As <a href="https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1250090346010140675?s=20">@dhh has stated</a></p>

<blockquote>
<p>Instead of always chasing the erasure of friction, it's worth thinking about how friction can help people</p>
</blockquote>
</main>
</article>


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+ 67
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cache/2020/a8103eb4d28f54bf8d5e58905fa96c0a/index.md View File

@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
title: Make Me Think
url: https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2020/make-me-think/
hash_url: a8103eb4d28f54bf8d5e58905fa96c0a

<blockquote>
<p>For many years now, the rallying cry of digital designers has been epitomised by the title of Steve Krug’s terrific book, Don’t Make Me Think. But what happens when that rallying cry is taken too far? What happens when it stops being “don’t make think while I’m trying to complete a task” to simply “don’t make me think” full stop? — Jeremy Keith, <a href="https://adactio.com/journal/6786">“Seams”</a> </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Steve Krug’s book <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Make_Me_Think">“Don’t Make Me Think”</a> is a wonderful book. Unfortunately, I’ve often seen its contents narrowly distilled to a slogan revered as the great commandment of software design: don’t make people think. </p>
<p>Have you heard of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_reflection_test">the cognitive reflection test</a>? It’s a test “designed to measure a person’s tendency to override an incorrect ‘gut’ response and engage in further reflection to find a correct answer.” More from Wikipedia:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>According to Frederick, there are two general types of cognitive activity called "system 1" and "system 2" (these terms have been first used by Daniel Kahneman). System 1 is executed quickly without reflection, while system 2 requires conscious thought and effort. The cognitive reflection test has three questions that each have an obvious but incorrect response given by system 1. The correct response requires the activation of system 2. For system 2 to be activated, a person must note that their first answer is incorrect, which requires reflection on their own cognition</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Here are the three questions from the test:</p>
<ol>
<li>A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?</li>
<li>If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?</li>
<li>In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?</li>
</ol>
<p>The intuitive answers are: </p>
<ol>
<li>10 cents</li>
<li>100 minutes</li>
<li>24 days</li>
</ol>
<p>The correct answers are: </p>
<ol>
<li>5 cents</li>
<li>5 minutes</li>
<li>47 days.</li>
</ol>
<p>What’s interesting, Malcolm Gladwell points out in his book <em>David and Goliath</em>, is that there is an easy way to raise peoples’ grades on this test: make the test questions difficult to read.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The psychologists Adam Alter and Daniel Oppenheimer tried this a few years ago with a group of undergraduates at Princeton University. First they gave the CRT the normal way, and the students averaged 1.9 correct answers out of three. That’s pretty good, though it is well short of the 2.18 that MIT students averaged. Then Alter and Oppenheimer printed out the test questions in a font that was really hard to read—a 10 percent gray, 10-point italics Myriad Pro font...</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Translated to digital, that would mean a question that looked roughly like this:</p>
<p><img src="https://cdn.jim-nielsen.com/blog/2019/make-me-think-test-questions.png" alt="A graphical approximation of the first CRT questions when represented in a small, light gray version of Myriad Pro"/>

</p><p>What happened when the questions received this kind of visual treatment?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The average score this time around [went up to] 2.45. Suddenly, the students were doing much better.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Wait, but I thought we were supposed to <em>not</em> make people think? Present things to people clearly and simply and they’ll do better. Why is the opposite happening here? The typographic treatment of the question made reading difficult. You likely had to squint, possibly even read some words (or the entire question) multiple times. Interacting with the question in this way required you to stop and think. It made you <em>work</em>. Gladwell comments on this interesting result of the study:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>As Alter says, making the questions “disfluent” causes people to “think more deeply about whatever they come across. They’ll use more resources on it. They’ll process more deeply or think more carefully about what’s going on. If they have to overcome a hurdle, they’ll overcome it better when you force them to think a little harder.” Alter and Oppenheimer made the CRT more difficult. But that difficulty turned out to be <em>desirable</em>.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Look at that: purposefully making something more difficult turned out to be desirable.</p>
<h2 id="a-product-example">A Product Example</h2>
<p>A little while ago, I knew some folks building a product touted as an “anonymous job platform for your ideal next role”. I was able to get a sneak peak at using the app and one of the things that struck me was how difficult it was to use. Not “difficult” in a human/computer interaction kind of way, but rather in a critical thinking kind of way. It was hard because it required me to stop and think. It required introspection. I half-jokingly noted to the the designer in my feedback “I probably thought harder...when creating a profile than most any other time in my life.” He responded by saying, “We heard that same feedback...I’m loving that part of it. I think we're gonna try to encourage that even more.”</p>
<p>What I found ingenious about the product was that it didn’t shy away from being difficult. Again, it’s not that the product was difficult to understand or the UI tricky to use. No. In fact, the UI and instructions were quite clear, helpful, even empathetic to the task at hand. There were moments of suggested pause, followed by probing questions meant to draw out the best kinds of thought, which would then power the product to deliver the best kinds of value. </p>
<p>After more use of the product, I wrote my feedback to one of the owners:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[To do this right] I realize that I'd really need to sit down and think about:</p>
<ol>
<li>What do I want? And not just a general “what do I want out of life?” but a very precise set of details “I want to be doing <em>this</em> kind of work, on <em>this</em> kind of team, with <em>this</em> kind of business”...</li>
</ol>
<p>[I think you’ve done a] really good job on the way the app makes me think. I found myself multiple times thinking “this is too hard. You people who made this app, you’re making me think too much!” But then an inner voice said “hey stupid, this stuff that’s hard, it’s for YOU. It’s for YOUR benefit. Are you telling me you don’t want to work hard for YOURSELF? You get what you put into it.” And then I was like “ok I’ll spend whatever amount of time this takes.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Turns out, this “disfluency” I was picking up on was a kind of intentional friction by the product designers, one of whom responded to my feedback in this manner: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We’re hearing similar things from other folks. I’m a little scared we’re gonna lose people because it is difficult, but that might be OK? It’s the antithesis of most internet things these days. Instead of go-go-go, fast-fast, more-more, we’re asking [people] to slow down, take their time...[I think we’ll] reiterate as much as we can that...it’s OK that it’s hard.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2>
<p>Why am I writing all of this? I don’t know. I guess as a reminder to myself. “Hard things are hard”. Great software allows people to do the actual thinking of the task at hand. If computers really are a “bicycle for the mind” we should make sure we don’t remove what makes bicycles great: human-powered motion. Too often our propensity is to make software that turns bicycles into motorcycles: all that’s required of you is to twist your arm on the throttle and boom, automated motion.</p>
<p>The removal of all friction should’t be a goal. Making things easy and making things hard should be a design tool, employed to aid the end user towards their loftiest goals. As <a href="https://twitter.com/dhh/status/1250090346010140675?s=20">@dhh has stated</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Instead of always chasing the erasure of friction, it's worth thinking about how friction can help people</p>
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<p>It's been another quiet week, not bad from a productivity standpoint considering the level of hay fever symptoms that can put me out of action on a bad day. </p>

<p>Most professional events have moved online, and it's been interesting to see what happens when geographical constraints are gone. I've been attending about one every two weeks since the confinement began, which is at least double my usual pace. </p>

<p>The remote nature of events gives us access to more free content than ever before, and from the comfort of home, the barrier to trying an event is considerably lower. It's exciting to be more adventurous with choosing topics and communities of interest, or luck out with a free talk by a known speaker who is unlikely to visit our city. </p>

<p>It comes with the "liberty" to be late, not show up, have dinner while attending the event, or quietly drop out if something better comes along. The flip side is that the chances of establishing a deep-enough connection with someone to follow-up on, even if it's an encounter at a later event, is much lower. </p>

<p>From a speaker's point of view, the commodotization of content can be tough. With boundaries of an audience - who they are, why they're here, what they expect - evaporating, we need to put more care in setting expectations before we attempt to surpass them. It takes more work to understand an audience, and then to hold their attention. </p>

<p>I believe the biggest changes are for community organizers. If I invest in my meetup as a way to contribute to my local scene and my place within it, what is my motivation to organize an event that anyone from around the world can join? If first-timers become more numerous than my regulars, how does it affect the shape of the space I try to hold? What is it I'm actually asking of, and offering to my speakers? If the long-timers can't have casual-yet-intimate conversations over drinks, where will they go instead? <strong>Who are "we" and why are we doing this? </strong> </p>

<p>It's time to re-visit the nuances of what we mean by building community. Having the technical and facilitation expertise to run online events is just one piece of the puzzle. Honestly, organizing events takes too much effort to simply move existing activities online without having chewed on these questions. I fear that community organizers will burn out faster than before, as it becomes more difficult to tangibly feel the fruits of our efforts. </p>

<p>My accelerated experiences as an attendee has been invaluable in teasing out a point of view for these three roles. With <a href="https://www.ripplet.org/design-research-tokyo">Design Research Tokyo</a>, we haven't run any events since pausing planning for a physical one in February but I think we're close to re-opening with something that's designed to be - dare I say - online-first. In parallel, I've been working with <a href="https://twitter.com/stonecrops_?lang=en">Dave</a> towards an event next Thursday for the ResearchOps Berlin community called "<a href="https://www.meetup.com/ResearchOps-Berlin/events/270235620/">Using the Research Skills Framework</a>". </p>

<p>Meetups can take on a wide spectrum of flavors but its key concern is always grounded on the quality of connections established, for which the underlying principle remains the same: Listen carefully to the signals coming from the vast and increasingly noisy networks around us, and tune what we ourselves send out. </p>

<p>p.s.
The wider DRT audience includes plenty of (?) young mothers whose household schedules aren't compatible with coming out to a multi-hour event after hours. Offering babysitting services is beyond our reach but perhaps a shorter online event could be the right mechanism that brings learning opportunities to them. Was one of the first things that we discussed internally! </p>
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title: On meet-ups moving online
url: https://www.ripplet.org/weeknotes/2020/4/26/week-17-2020-on-meet-ups-moving-online
hash_url: abc0dac647cbe1e8b4432fdba9cb3152

<p>It's been another quiet week, not bad from a productivity standpoint considering the level of hay fever symptoms that can put me out of action on a bad day. </p>
<p>Most professional events have moved online, and it's been interesting to see what happens when geographical constraints are gone. I've been attending about one every two weeks since the confinement began, which is at least double my usual pace. </p>
<p>The remote nature of events gives us access to more free content than ever before, and from the comfort of home, the barrier to trying an event is considerably lower. It's exciting to be more adventurous with choosing topics and communities of interest, or luck out with a free talk by a known speaker who is unlikely to visit our city. </p>
<p>It comes with the "liberty" to be late, not show up, have dinner while attending the event, or quietly drop out if something better comes along. The flip side is that the chances of establishing a deep-enough connection with someone to follow-up on, even if it's an encounter at a later event, is much lower. </p>
<p>From a speaker's point of view, the commodotization of content can be tough. With boundaries of an audience - who they are, why they're here, what they expect - evaporating, we need to put more care in setting expectations before we attempt to surpass them. It takes more work to understand an audience, and then to hold their attention. </p>
<p>I believe the biggest changes are for community organizers. If I invest in my meetup as a way to contribute to my local scene and my place within it, what is my motivation to organize an event that anyone from around the world can join? If first-timers become more numerous than my regulars, how does it affect the shape of the space I try to hold? What is it I'm actually asking of, and offering to my speakers? If the long-timers can't have casual-yet-intimate conversations over drinks, where will they go instead? <strong>Who are "we" and why are we doing this? </strong> </p>
<p>It's time to re-visit the nuances of what we mean by building community. Having the technical and facilitation expertise to run online events is just one piece of the puzzle. Honestly, organizing events takes too much effort to simply move existing activities online without having chewed on these questions. I fear that community organizers will burn out faster than before, as it becomes more difficult to tangibly feel the fruits of our efforts. </p>
<p>My accelerated experiences as an attendee has been invaluable in teasing out a point of view for these three roles. With <a href="https://www.ripplet.org/design-research-tokyo">Design Research Tokyo</a>, we haven't run any events since pausing planning for a physical one in February but I think we're close to re-opening with something that's designed to be - dare I say - online-first. In parallel, I've been working with <a href="https://twitter.com/stonecrops_?lang=en">Dave</a> towards an event next Thursday for the ResearchOps Berlin community called "<a href="https://www.meetup.com/ResearchOps-Berlin/events/270235620/">Using the Research Skills Framework</a>". </p>
<p>Meetups can take on a wide spectrum of flavors but its key concern is always grounded on the quality of connections established, for which the underlying principle remains the same: Listen carefully to the signals coming from the vast and increasingly noisy networks around us, and tune what we ourselves send out. </p>
<p>p.s.
The wider DRT audience includes plenty of (?) young mothers whose household schedules aren't compatible with coming out to a multi-hour event after hours. Offering babysitting services is beyond our reach but perhaps a shorter online event could be the right mechanism that brings learning opportunities to them. Was one of the first things that we discussed internally! </p>

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<p><b>There is a new e-mail provider in town and it’s an excellent opportunity to have a reasoned conversation about how to improve your e-mail management. I do not believe that decisions around your e-mail provider should be made lightly. Your e-mail address is often the hub of your online presence and your inbox is your sanctuary. Well, at least it could be.</b></p>

<p>First, let me break down why there is this nagging feeling of urgency to sign up for the HEY e-mail service and “be saved”. There are a number of biases in play that could be affecting you:</p>

<ul>
<li><b>Authority bias.</b> Basecamp founders are household names in the tech industry, and they also have friends in high places. There is no shortage of prominent advocates who are now buzzing about the HEY e-mail service. This could make the opinions hit closer to your heart.</li>
<li><b>Selective perception.</b> When we favour information that we agree with we may avoid information that could have a negative impact. The ability to choose who can send you e-mail may sound fantastic. So much so that any peripheral concerns about accessibility, lock-in and privacy may pass you by.</li>
<li><b>Scarcity bias.</b> Choosing to initially be invitation-only is a purposeful choice by HEY. It works. Since it targets a human weakness.</li>
<li><b>Bandwagon effect.</b> Many people are talking about it – at least in your circles – and asking for invites. But going along with the crowd, when the choice is not required, can be harmful when it’s not in an individual’s best interest. HEY is not free.</li>
<li><b>Noble-edge effect.</b> Products of caring companies are seen as superior. Basecamp is not just any company. They’ve done a lot of impressive work, often challenge common truthisms and generally contribute in a positive way to concepts of designing and working. This of course does not mean one has to jump when they say jump.</li>
<li><b>Speak-easy effect.</b> Words that are easier to say are more trustworthy and valuable. Hey, I don’t need to explain this one , right?</li>
<li><b>FOMO.</b> Fear of missing out. What if this really is the next big thing? Trust me, then it won’t die.</li>
</ul>

<p>It may truly feel like you need the new shiny thing. And I’ll be honest, when I heard Jason Fried being <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/recode-decode/e/71072616">interviewed by Kara Swisher on Recode Decode</a>, HEY did sound like the best thing since sliced bread. Kara was noticeably craving for it.</p>

<p>And no one’s wrong to be entranced. The reason many of us are susceptible to the allurement of HEY is because the current state of e-mail really is failing many of us. We live with e-mail that needs fixing. From overload, from disarray, from mass-marketing and more.</p>

<p>But before we decide that HEY is the answer to that fix, I’ll encourage anyone and everyone to stop, reflect and reason. Because getting excited about something before it has proven its worth can too easily led us astray.</p>

<h2 id="A completely new e-mail address">A completely new e-mail address</h2>

<p>Here’s the thing. Signing up for HEY and using it as your main e-mail address really will mean that you have to change your e-mail address. In many places. Or get used to managing yet another e-mail address. While this can solve a lot of things it could also lead to more labor for you.</p>

<ul>
<li>Will you need to maintain two e-mail addresses, and for how long? For many years if you still want that searchable archive.</li>
<li>Will you forward all e-mail from the old account? Then how much have you solved?</li>
<li>Can you migrate all your e-mail from the old account ?-The answer to that is a <a href="https://hey.com/faqs/#can-i-import-my-gmail-outlook-apple-email-into-hey">resounding no</a>. You are starting fresh in this aspect.</li>
</ul>

<p>If you’re prepared to switch e-mail address to solve your current problems with e-mail, and not bring any old e-mail with you, then you are prepared for some major changes in your e-mail management.</p>

<p>Remember, many reviews of HEY are going to be positive in the beginning. Everyone will have vastly less e-mail and it will naturally feel liberating. The primary reason they will have vastly less e-mail is that they are starting a new e-mail address with zero e-mails. Something that could be achieved with just about any service.</p>

<p>If you’re ready for the big change that a new e-mail address sets in motion, maybe you’re ready for decision-making that helps you seize more control over your inbox, rather than blindly trust another actor to know what’s best for you.</p>

<p>Before I walk you through that decision process, let me share som other facts about HEY that may help you stop and think some more:</p>

<h2 id="Locking your e-mails inside HEY">Locking your e-mails inside HEY</h2>

<blockquote><p>HEY treats email in <a href="https://hey.com/faqs/#can-i-check-my-hey-email-with-my-existing-email-app">all sorts of special ways</a>, so off-the-shelf 3rd party email apps won’t work with HEY.<br/>
— <i>from the HEY FAQ</i></p>
</blockquote>

<p>To use HEY you can only use their app and their website. There is no POP/IMAP access from other e-mail clients. If you ‘ve ever moved between accounts before you’ll remember this as a common way to migrate your e-mail, or reach multiple e-mail accounts from the same app.</p>

<p><em>On a sidenote: To get your e-mail out of HEY, if you don’t like it, they offer MBOX as an export format. And as long as you’ve paid for a first year of service your <a href="http://hey.com">hey.com</a> e-mail is yours forever to forward wherever you want. So you could pay $99 for the heck of it, if that ’s how you like to, and can, play the game.</em></p>

<p>More importantly, this closed garden means deviating from e-mail standards of structure, protocols and security. This does not have to be bad through-and-through, but should trigger questions around openness and transparency, and a wish to understand more before committing.</p>

<h2 id="Accessibility">Accessibility</h2>

<p>Some e-mail clients <a href="https://uxpajournal.org/usability-evaluation-of-email-applications-by-blind-users/">are better than others</a> when it comes to making content accessible to people with, for example, variations in visual, sensory and auditive perception. Being able to use <a href="http://www.accessibilitycentral.net/accessible%20email%20client%20mozilla%20thunderbird.html">your own client of choice</a> (software or online service) for e-mail can make all the difference between being able to even read it or not. This is one of several reasons the lack of POP and/or IMAP access can pose a huge problem.</p>

<p>All users, regardless of ability, become reliant on the HEY web client and apps. This means they need to cater to many different needs and abilities. And as it turns out, some concerning lapses in accessibility have already been uncovered:</p>

<blockquote><p>So I’m checking out @dhh’s new HEY email service as I’m keen to get away from Gmail and like what they preach about smaller sustainable business. After a few minutes of looking, there is inexcusable accessibility issues that means I won’t recommend it or subscribe. — <a href="https://twitter.com/NickColley/status/1272986177155538946">@NickColley</a></p>
</blockquote>

<p>When a new tool by design excludes people who are time and time again excluded in society and communities, it’s generally a tool I do not wish to support. Even if I personally could fare well with the service, the way I voice my values is by not supporting tools that reject others – and especially people who are forced into vulnerability by not being listened to enough.</p>

<h2 id="Finding old e-mail">Finding old e-mail</h2>

<p>If you’re anything like me, searching for e-mail with advanced operators is one of the ways I get by with e-mail management and working effectively with e-mail. HEY mentions little about how their search engine helps you do this. Again, remember that their search engine is all you’ve got since you can’t use another e-mail client to access your e-mail.</p>

<h2 id="The rewards of being patient">The rewards of being patient</h2>

<p>HEY does introduce some nifty ideas on threads, subjects lines and notifications. I doubt that these will go unnoticed by other e-mail providers. If proven successful, they will likely be copied in some form. Should this occur, I’ll certainly acknowledge that we have HEY to thank for pushing the envelope.</p>

<p>Some features may already be available with other providers to some extent. In their marketing for the “Reply Later” feature, HEY writes:</p>

<blockquote><p>You often know you need to get back to someone, but you don’t have time <i>right now</i>. Gmail, Outlook, and the rest, force you to come up with kludgy workarounds to deal with this (like marking an email unread so you hopefully remember to deal with it later). <b>That’s ridiculous.</b></p>
</blockquote>

<p>For anyone familiar with Gmail, there is a Snooze feature that allows you to accomplish what “Reply Later” does, and then some. I see people already posting on how much better designed the HEY version is. But hey, the marketing copy wasn’t really true to fact, was it?</p>

<figure id="attachment_9488" align="aligncenter"><a href="https://i2.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gmail-snooze.png?ssl=1"><img loading="lazy" src="https://i2.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gmail-snooze.png?resize=300%2C284&amp;ssl=1" class="size-medium wp-image-9488 jetpack-lazy-image" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1" data-lazy-srcset="https://i2.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gmail-snooze.png?resize=300%2C284&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i2.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gmail-snooze.png?w=540&amp;ssl=1 540w" data-lazy-sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" data-lazy-src="https://i2.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gmail-snooze.png?resize=300%2C284&amp;is-pending-load=1#038;ssl=1" srcset="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7"/><noscript><img loading="lazy" src="https://i2.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gmail-snooze.png?resize=300%2C284&amp;ssl=1" class="size-medium wp-image-9488" alt="" srcset="https://i2.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gmail-snooze.png?resize=300%2C284&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i2.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gmail-snooze.png?w=540&amp;ssl=1 540w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" data-recalc-dims="1"/></noscript></a> Screenshot of the Snooze feature in Gmail.</figure>

<p>Remember you’re looking to make your e-mail work for <b>you</b>. Keep your eye on the goal, we’re getting closer to the checklist.</p>

<h2 id="Getting privacy conscious">Getting privacy conscious</h2>

<p>One valid reason to avoid free Gmail is absolutely to avoid having personal data and attention traded as a product, which is often how you pay when you’re not paying with money. HEY underscores how Google’s email service relies on your data and rightfully emphasises how HEY blocks tracking pixels.</p>

<p>On the other hand, if privacy is a primary reason for you to choose HEY, first have a look at the <a href="https://basecamp.com/about/policies/privacy/hey-subprocessors">sub-processors for the HEY e-mail service</a>. A sub-processor is a data processor who, on behalf of HEY, processes the personal data of customers. These are:</p>

<ul>
<li>Amazon Web Services. Cloud services provider.</li>
<li>Braintree. Payment processing services.</li>
<li>Google Cloud Platform. Cloud services provider.</li>
<li>Help Scout. Help desk software.</li>
<li>Mailchimp. Email newsletter service.</li>
<li>Sentry. Error reporting software.</li>
<li>TaxJar. Sales tax calculation.</li>
<li>Zapier. Software integration service.</li>
</ul>

<p>It’s not a (very) long list, but may feel like a damning one depending on the trust you place in the companies on the list, and how much you wish to support them.</p>

<p>I’m not surprised by the list at all, and I’m sure the data processing agreement between HEY and these companies is by the book. It’s just one of those wake-up calls reminding us all of how many companies choose to build online software today. Relying on a network of third-party platforms is often quicker and more cost-efficient in the short term.</p>

<p><em>Note (update): The number of subprocessors does not necessarily affect privacy. This can all be well-managed, and I trust that it is. But complexity (and thus vulnerability) can increase with the number of dependencies – and for someone wishing to avoid certain companies, knowing where those dependencies lie can be important.</em></p>

<p>When it comes to privacy, no service is of course stronger than its weakest link. And remember, there are other services out there blocking trackers as well.</p>

<h2 id="Manage e-mail with care - A checklist for inbox improvement">Manage e-mail with care – A checklist for inbox improvement</h2>

<p>Choosing HEY is a financial decision and you’ll do right by yourself if you set aside time to do your research. What HEY does well is bring to attention the importance of making choices around your e-mail that mitigate frustrations and benefit your well-being.</p>

<h3 id="Decide if changing e-mail address is worth it">Decide if changing e-mail address is worth it</h3>

<p>How much work am I willing to put into changing address where it would need to be changed? Do I send an alert to everyone in my address book and let them know? How long before I’ve just redirected all my e-mail to a new place? What is my exit strategy when I’m locked in and really don’t like it?</p>

<p>And if you are changing e-mail address, which in some contexts very well could prove to be a smart step, are there <i>other services that would suit you better</i>? This is the crucial question before taking the plunge. Because it will likely be some time before you’re prepared to move again.</p>

<p>I’ve listed a few services at the end of the article, most of them with a greater focus on privacy.</p>

<h3 id="Decide who can e-mail you">Decide who can e-mail you</h3>

<p>To be fair, the opt-in feature of HEY sounds hugely appealing. Nobody could send me e-mail without my approval. Whether or not it’s a killer feature remains to be seen. It’s however not unique. Another provider is launching with the same functionality this summer, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/07/new-email-service-onmail-will-let-recipients-control-who-can-send-them-mail/">OnMail</a> – built by the team behind Edison Mail.</p>

<p>If it turns out to be a hit, I expect others to follow suit with this option. Meanwhile, your current provider will offer some variant of blocking to give you more control. I encourage you to go ahead and block generously.</p>

<h3 id="Opt-out of seeing things you don’t need to act on or reply to">Opt out of seeing things you don’t need to act on or reply to</h3>

<p>Whether you’re sticking with your current e-mail or changing to a new one you’ll do good to spend time opting out of newsletters, marketing and notifications from social platforms.</p>

<p>I’ve been applying this strategy extensively with all e-mails that arrive over the past six months and the effect is noticeable. Generally there are three things you may want to do:</p>

<ul>
<li>Opt-out of things you do not want. This sounds obvious but you’d be surprised to see how many times I see people delete time and time again instead of unsubscribing.</li>
<li>Filter into a folder if there are senders you never want to see in your inbox but may want to find when you search</li>
<li>Use a separate service for newsletters you may want to read, keeping them out of your inbox. I’ve written about this in a separate post: <a href="https://axbom.blog/newsletters-the-mindful-way/">Subscribing to newsletters the mindful way</a>. This advice is valid even if you do choose to sign up for HEY.</li>
</ul>

<p>Just do not use services like <a href="https://axbom.blog/delete-unroll-me-revoke-access/">unroll-me</a> to unsubscribe.</p>

<h3 id="Who gets to see my e-mail address?">Who gets to see my e-mail address?</h3>

<p>This is where many of us have gone wrong in the past. By sharing and posting and signing up with the same e-mail address all over the place we have set ourselves up for the misuse that we are now experiencing.</p>

<p>Your e-mail address is a thing of great value and more of us should probably start treating it as such.</p>

<p>Are you signing up for a new service that you have no prior relationship with and have no specific reason to trust? You can decide to not give them your real e-mail address. For this very purpose, I use services such as <a href="https://burnermail.io">burnermail</a>*. It will generate an anonymous e-mail and you can sign up with a unique address for every service you use. This allows you to block each address if it’s being misused.</p>

<p>As a bonus, trackers and advertisers will find it harder to follow you online. Your e-mail is a unique identifier that is often used to cross-reference databases to find out more about you from third parties. See what I mean about “thing of great value”?</p>

<p>Think again about who you want to trust with this value.</p>

<p><em>*For variants of burner mail, do an online search for “disposable e-mail” or “temporary e-mail”.</em></p>

<h3 id="Who gets my time?">Who gets my time?</h3>

<p>I get a huge amount of e-mail. Some are really interesting messages from students, podcast listeners, researchers, journalists and junior designers from all over the world. For me, this is why e-mail is awesome and why an opt-in solution may not work for me. It’s not always obvious who I’d want to reject as a sender. And what learnings it could cost me to do that.</p>

<p>Obviously replying to all these e-mails costs me as well. And sometimes there is just no time. For me, acknowledging the impossibility of responding to everyone is important. It allows me to be kinder to myself even when I feel bad about failing to reply promptly.</p>

<p>One thing I’ve done strictly to make myself feel better is to have a short template that I use to respond when my priorities are elsewhere. It’s most often used for e-mails where I get a lot of questions around best ways forward for a design challenge or when being asked to be interviewed for a dissertation.</p>

<blockquote><p>Thanks for your e-mail. I am currently unable to respond to all of the many e-mails that reach me, and I will not be able to respond to yours. This is not a reflection of the content of your e-mail. This is my approach for prioritising my well-being and personal goals during periods where my capacity for attention is scarce.</p>
<p>Thank you again for reaching out and I wish you all the best.</p>
<p>Kind regards,<br/>
/Per</p>
</blockquote>

<p>I reply with this and then I can archive the e-mail. In fairness this usually happens after I’ve snoozed the e-mail several times. Realising your own limits can be painful.</p>

<h2 id="Full disclosure">Full disclosure</h2>

<p><span class="todo-text">I’ve signed up for the HEY e-mail service, gained access and started the trial. I’ve done this out of curiosity getting the better of me, for purposes of understanding the service better and getting enough experience to have an educated opinion on it. In the end it may also be a way for me to protect my brand name on a potentially popular service.</span></p>

<p>The funny things is this: I just don’t know who I would tell about this e-mail address and why I should. It seems I can get a pretty good handle of managing my e-mail without it, in an interface I am already comfortable with.</p>

<p>Furthermore, the seven (7!) e-mails that immediately clutter my “Imbox” (yes, that’s what they call it), with tutorials on how to use the service, seems like a disconnect from any message of simplicity. First impressions leave me… bewildered.</p>

<figure id="attachment_9490" align="aligncenter"><a href="https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?ssl=1"><img loading="lazy" src="https://i0.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails-1024x489.png?resize=640%2C306&amp;ssl=1" class="size-large wp-image-9490 jetpack-lazy-image" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1" data-lazy-srcset="https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=1024%2C489&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=300%2C143&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=768%2C366&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=1536%2C733&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=2048%2C977&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?w=1280&amp;ssl=1 1280w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w" data-lazy-sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" data-lazy-src="https://i0.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails-1024x489.png?resize=640%2C306&amp;is-pending-load=1#038;ssl=1" srcset="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7"/><noscript><img loading="lazy" src="https://i0.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails-1024x489.png?resize=640%2C306&amp;ssl=1" class="size-large wp-image-9490" alt="" srcset="https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=1024%2C489&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=300%2C143&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=768%2C366&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=1536%2C733&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=2048%2C977&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?w=1280&amp;ssl=1 1280w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" data-recalc-dims="1"/></noscript></a> Screenshot of the 7 e-mails in my “Imbox”</figure>

<p>Note that this article is not intended as a takedown of the HEY e-mail service. I’m sure it can provide value to a lot of people. Just not everyone. My text is an emotional response to an explosion of hype over the past week and I’ve made an effort to bring more thoughtfulness to the conversation. I want to highlight shortcomings and the importance of reasoned decisions when jumping on the bandwagon. No service is perfect but a strong ability to listen to reflections and feedback will likely help a company improve its products. I do believe Basecamp to be one such company. And I especially hope for a considered response to the weaknesses in accessibility .</p>

<p>There’s a chance HEY can change our relationship to e-mail. Then again, there’s also a big chance it won’t. But if this made you sit down and think about how you can improve your management of electronic mail, even if you don’t sign up for HEY, then perhaps the hype was worth it.</p>

<p><hr/>
<h3 id="Footnote about custom domains">Footnote about custom domains</h3>
<p><i>Eventually</i> you’ll be able to set up your own domain with <a href="http://hey.com">hey.com</a> but there is no indication of how soon or far off that is. A multi-user option with this feature, targeted at businesses, is said to be ready this year.</p>
<p>Generally, if you own your own domain and can afford the cost of custom domains, moving between e-mail providers is an easier choice, since your e-mail address does not have to change. Obviously, only a small percentage of people enjoy this opportunity,</p>
<h3 id="List of E-mail services">List of E-mail services</h3>
<p>More and more people are waking up to the importance of privacy. Here is a list of small tech e-mail providers that raise the bar on privacy.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.fastmail.com">Fastmail</a> (Australia)</li>
<li><a href="https://kolabnow.com">KolabNow</a> (Switzerland)</li>
<li><a href="https://mailbox.org/">Mailbox</a> (Germany)</li>
<li><a href="https://posteo.de/en">Posteo</a> (Germany)</li>
<li><a href="https://protonmail.com">ProtonMail</a> (Switzerland)</li>
</ul></p>
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title: Hey, your e-mail matters more than hype
url: https://axbom.blog/hey-email-hype/
hash_url: ff79ece116b91175ab716d0ea7ac3854

<p><b>There is a new e-mail provider in town and it’s an excellent opportunity to have a reasoned conversation about how to improve your e-mail management. I do not believe that decisions around your e-mail provider should be made lightly. Your e-mail address is often the hub of your online presence and your inbox is your sanctuary. Well, at least it could be.</b></p>
<p>First, let me break down why there is this nagging feeling of urgency to sign up for the HEY e-mail service and “be saved”. There are a number of biases in play that could be affecting you:</p>
<ul>
<li><b>Authority bias.</b> Basecamp founders are household names in the tech industry, and they also have friends in high places. There is no shortage of prominent advocates who are now buzzing about the HEY e-mail service. This could make the opinions hit closer to your heart.</li>
<li><b>Selective perception.</b> When we favour information that we agree with we may avoid information that could have a negative impact. The ability to choose who can send you e-mail may sound fantastic. So much so that any peripheral concerns about accessibility, lock-in and privacy may pass you by.</li>
<li><b>Scarcity bias.</b> Choosing to initially be invitation-only is a purposeful choice by HEY. It works. Since it targets a human weakness.</li>
<li><b>Bandwagon effect.</b> Many people are talking about it – at least in your circles – and asking for invites. But going along with the crowd, when the choice is not required, can be harmful when it’s not in an individual’s best interest. HEY is not free.</li>
<li><b>Noble-edge effect.</b> Products of caring companies are seen as superior. Basecamp is not just any company. They’ve done a lot of impressive work, often challenge common truthisms and generally contribute in a positive way to concepts of designing and working. This of course does not mean one has to jump when they say jump.</li>
<li><b>Speak-easy effect.</b> Words that are easier to say are more trustworthy and valuable. Hey, I don’t need to explain this one , right?</li>
<li><b>FOMO.</b> Fear of missing out. What if this really is the next big thing? Trust me, then it won’t die.</li>
</ul>
<p>It may truly feel like you need the new shiny thing. And I’ll be honest, when I heard Jason Fried being <a href="https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox/recode-decode/e/71072616">interviewed by Kara Swisher on Recode Decode</a>, HEY did sound like the best thing since sliced bread. Kara was noticeably craving for it.</p>
<p>And no one’s wrong to be entranced. The reason many of us are susceptible to the allurement of HEY is because the current state of e-mail really is failing many of us. We live with e-mail that needs fixing. From overload, from disarray, from mass-marketing and more.</p>
<p>But before we decide that HEY is the answer to that fix, I’ll encourage anyone and everyone to stop, reflect and reason. Because getting excited about something before it has proven its worth can too easily led us astray.</p>
<h2 id="A completely new e-mail address">A completely new e-mail address</h2>
<p>Here’s the thing. Signing up for HEY and using it as your main e-mail address really will mean that you have to change your e-mail address. In many places. Or get used to managing yet another e-mail address. While this can solve a lot of things it could also lead to more labor for you.</p>
<ul>
<li>Will you need to maintain two e-mail addresses, and for how long? For many years if you still want that searchable archive.</li>
<li>Will you forward all e-mail from the old account? Then how much have you solved?</li>
<li>Can you migrate all your e-mail from the old account ?-The answer to that is a <a href="https://hey.com/faqs/#can-i-import-my-gmail-outlook-apple-email-into-hey">resounding no</a>. You are starting fresh in this aspect.</li>
</ul>
<p>If you’re prepared to switch e-mail address to solve your current problems with e-mail, and not bring any old e-mail with you, then you are prepared for some major changes in your e-mail management.</p>
<p>Remember, many reviews of HEY are going to be positive in the beginning. Everyone will have vastly less e-mail and it will naturally feel liberating. The primary reason they will have vastly less e-mail is that they are starting a new e-mail address with zero e-mails. Something that could be achieved with just about any service.</p>
<p>If you’re ready for the big change that a new e-mail address sets in motion, maybe you’re ready for decision-making that helps you seize more control over your inbox, rather than blindly trust another actor to know what’s best for you.</p>
<p>Before I walk you through that decision process, let me share som other facts about HEY that may help you stop and think some more:</p>
<h2 id="Locking your e-mails inside HEY">Locking your e-mails inside HEY</h2>
<blockquote><p>HEY treats email in <a href="https://hey.com/faqs/#can-i-check-my-hey-email-with-my-existing-email-app">all sorts of special ways</a>, so off-the-shelf 3rd party email apps won’t work with HEY.<br/>
— <i>from the HEY FAQ</i></p>
</blockquote>
<p>To use HEY you can only use their app and their website. There is no POP/IMAP access from other e-mail clients. If you ‘ve ever moved between accounts before you’ll remember this as a common way to migrate your e-mail, or reach multiple e-mail accounts from the same app.</p>
<p><em>On a sidenote: To get your e-mail out of HEY, if you don’t like it, they offer MBOX as an export format. And as long as you’ve paid for a first year of service your <a href="http://hey.com">hey.com</a> e-mail is yours forever to forward wherever you want. So you could pay $99 for the heck of it, if that ’s how you like to, and can, play the game.</em></p>
<p>More importantly, this closed garden means deviating from e-mail standards of structure, protocols and security. This does not have to be bad through-and-through, but should trigger questions around openness and transparency, and a wish to understand more before committing.</p>
<h2 id="Accessibility">Accessibility</h2>
<p>Some e-mail clients <a href="https://uxpajournal.org/usability-evaluation-of-email-applications-by-blind-users/">are better than others</a> when it comes to making content accessible to people with, for example, variations in visual, sensory and auditive perception. Being able to use <a href="http://www.accessibilitycentral.net/accessible%20email%20client%20mozilla%20thunderbird.html">your own client of choice</a> (software or online service) for e-mail can make all the difference between being able to even read it or not. This is one of several reasons the lack of POP and/or IMAP access can pose a huge problem.</p>
<p>All users, regardless of ability, become reliant on the HEY web client and apps. This means they need to cater to many different needs and abilities. And as it turns out, some concerning lapses in accessibility have already been uncovered:</p>
<blockquote><p>So I’m checking out @dhh’s new HEY email service as I’m keen to get away from Gmail and like what they preach about smaller sustainable business. After a few minutes of looking, there is inexcusable accessibility issues that means I won’t recommend it or subscribe. — <a href="https://twitter.com/NickColley/status/1272986177155538946">@NickColley</a></p>
</blockquote>
<p>When a new tool by design excludes people who are time and time again excluded in society and communities, it’s generally a tool I do not wish to support. Even if I personally could fare well with the service, the way I voice my values is by not supporting tools that reject others – and especially people who are forced into vulnerability by not being listened to enough.</p>
<h2 id="Finding old e-mail">Finding old e-mail</h2>
<p>If you’re anything like me, searching for e-mail with advanced operators is one of the ways I get by with e-mail management and working effectively with e-mail. HEY mentions little about how their search engine helps you do this. Again, remember that their search engine is all you’ve got since you can’t use another e-mail client to access your e-mail.</p>
<h2 id="The rewards of being patient">The rewards of being patient</h2>
<p>HEY does introduce some nifty ideas on threads, subjects lines and notifications. I doubt that these will go unnoticed by other e-mail providers. If proven successful, they will likely be copied in some form. Should this occur, I’ll certainly acknowledge that we have HEY to thank for pushing the envelope.</p>
<p>Some features may already be available with other providers to some extent. In their marketing for the “Reply Later” feature, HEY writes:</p>
<blockquote><p>You often know you need to get back to someone, but you don’t have time <i>right now</i>. Gmail, Outlook, and the rest, force you to come up with kludgy workarounds to deal with this (like marking an email unread so you hopefully remember to deal with it later). <b>That’s ridiculous.</b></p>
</blockquote>
<p>For anyone familiar with Gmail, there is a Snooze feature that allows you to accomplish what “Reply Later” does, and then some. I see people already posting on how much better designed the HEY version is. But hey, the marketing copy wasn’t really true to fact, was it?</p>
<figure id="attachment_9488" align="aligncenter"><a href="https://i2.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gmail-snooze.png?ssl=1"><img loading="lazy" src="https://i2.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gmail-snooze.png?resize=300%2C284&amp;ssl=1" class="size-medium wp-image-9488 jetpack-lazy-image" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1" data-lazy-srcset="https://i2.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gmail-snooze.png?resize=300%2C284&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i2.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gmail-snooze.png?w=540&amp;ssl=1 540w" data-lazy-sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" data-lazy-src="https://i2.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gmail-snooze.png?resize=300%2C284&amp;is-pending-load=1#038;ssl=1" srcset="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7"/><noscript><img loading="lazy" src="https://i2.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gmail-snooze.png?resize=300%2C284&amp;ssl=1" class="size-medium wp-image-9488" alt="" srcset="https://i2.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gmail-snooze.png?resize=300%2C284&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i2.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/gmail-snooze.png?w=540&amp;ssl=1 540w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" data-recalc-dims="1"/></noscript></a> Screenshot of the Snooze feature in Gmail.</figure>
<p>Remember you’re looking to make your e-mail work for <b>you</b>. Keep your eye on the goal, we’re getting closer to the checklist.</p>
<h2 id="Getting privacy conscious">Getting privacy conscious</h2>
<p>One valid reason to avoid free Gmail is absolutely to avoid having personal data and attention traded as a product, which is often how you pay when you’re not paying with money. HEY underscores how Google’s email service relies on your data and rightfully emphasises how HEY blocks tracking pixels.</p>
<p>On the other hand, if privacy is a primary reason for you to choose HEY, first have a look at the <a href="https://basecamp.com/about/policies/privacy/hey-subprocessors">sub-processors for the HEY e-mail service</a>. A sub-processor is a data processor who, on behalf of HEY, processes the personal data of customers. These are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Amazon Web Services. Cloud services provider.</li>
<li>Braintree. Payment processing services.</li>
<li>Google Cloud Platform. Cloud services provider.</li>
<li>Help Scout. Help desk software.</li>
<li>Mailchimp. Email newsletter service.</li>
<li>Sentry. Error reporting software.</li>
<li>TaxJar. Sales tax calculation.</li>
<li>Zapier. Software integration service.</li>
</ul>
<p>It’s not a (very) long list, but may feel like a damning one depending on the trust you place in the companies on the list, and how much you wish to support them.</p>
<p>I’m not surprised by the list at all, and I’m sure the data processing agreement between HEY and these companies is by the book. It’s just one of those wake-up calls reminding us all of how many companies choose to build online software today. Relying on a network of third-party platforms is often quicker and more cost-efficient in the short term.</p>
<p><em>Note (update): The number of subprocessors does not necessarily affect privacy. This can all be well-managed, and I trust that it is. But complexity (and thus vulnerability) can increase with the number of dependencies – and for someone wishing to avoid certain companies, knowing where those dependencies lie can be important.</em></p>
<p>When it comes to privacy, no service is of course stronger than its weakest link. And remember, there are other services out there blocking trackers as well.</p>
<h2 id="Manage e-mail with care - A checklist for inbox improvement">Manage e-mail with care – A checklist for inbox improvement</h2>
<p>Choosing HEY is a financial decision and you’ll do right by yourself if you set aside time to do your research. What HEY does well is bring to attention the importance of making choices around your e-mail that mitigate frustrations and benefit your well-being.</p>
<h3 id="Decide if changing e-mail address is worth it">Decide if changing e-mail address is worth it</h3>
<p>How much work am I willing to put into changing address where it would need to be changed? Do I send an alert to everyone in my address book and let them know? How long before I’ve just redirected all my e-mail to a new place? What is my exit strategy when I’m locked in and really don’t like it?</p>
<p>And if you are changing e-mail address, which in some contexts very well could prove to be a smart step, are there <i>other services that would suit you better</i>? This is the crucial question before taking the plunge. Because it will likely be some time before you’re prepared to move again.</p>
<p>I’ve listed a few services at the end of the article, most of them with a greater focus on privacy.</p>
<h3 id="Decide who can e-mail you">Decide who can e-mail you</h3>
<p>To be fair, the opt-in feature of HEY sounds hugely appealing. Nobody could send me e-mail without my approval. Whether or not it’s a killer feature remains to be seen. It’s however not unique. Another provider is launching with the same functionality this summer, <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/07/new-email-service-onmail-will-let-recipients-control-who-can-send-them-mail/">OnMail</a> – built by the team behind Edison Mail.</p>
<p>If it turns out to be a hit, I expect others to follow suit with this option. Meanwhile, your current provider will offer some variant of blocking to give you more control. I encourage you to go ahead and block generously.</p>
<h3 id="Opt-out of seeing things you don’t need to act on or reply to">Opt out of seeing things you don’t need to act on or reply to</h3>
<p>Whether you’re sticking with your current e-mail or changing to a new one you’ll do good to spend time opting out of newsletters, marketing and notifications from social platforms.</p>
<p>I’ve been applying this strategy extensively with all e-mails that arrive over the past six months and the effect is noticeable. Generally there are three things you may want to do:</p>
<ul>
<li>Opt-out of things you do not want. This sounds obvious but you’d be surprised to see how many times I see people delete time and time again instead of unsubscribing.</li>
<li>Filter into a folder if there are senders you never want to see in your inbox but may want to find when you search</li>
<li>Use a separate service for newsletters you may want to read, keeping them out of your inbox. I’ve written about this in a separate post: <a href="https://axbom.blog/newsletters-the-mindful-way/">Subscribing to newsletters the mindful way</a>. This advice is valid even if you do choose to sign up for HEY.</li>
</ul>
<p>Just do not use services like <a href="https://axbom.blog/delete-unroll-me-revoke-access/">unroll-me</a> to unsubscribe.</p>
<h3 id="Who gets to see my e-mail address?">Who gets to see my e-mail address?</h3>
<p>This is where many of us have gone wrong in the past. By sharing and posting and signing up with the same e-mail address all over the place we have set ourselves up for the misuse that we are now experiencing.</p>
<p>Your e-mail address is a thing of great value and more of us should probably start treating it as such.</p>
<p>Are you signing up for a new service that you have no prior relationship with and have no specific reason to trust? You can decide to not give them your real e-mail address. For this very purpose, I use services such as <a href="https://burnermail.io">burnermail</a>*. It will generate an anonymous e-mail and you can sign up with a unique address for every service you use. This allows you to block each address if it’s being misused.</p>
<p>As a bonus, trackers and advertisers will find it harder to follow you online. Your e-mail is a unique identifier that is often used to cross-reference databases to find out more about you from third parties. See what I mean about “thing of great value”?</p>
<p>Think again about who you want to trust with this value.</p>
<p><em>*For variants of burner mail, do an online search for “disposable e-mail” or “temporary e-mail”.</em></p>
<h3 id="Who gets my time?">Who gets my time?</h3>
<p>I get a huge amount of e-mail. Some are really interesting messages from students, podcast listeners, researchers, journalists and junior designers from all over the world. For me, this is why e-mail is awesome and why an opt-in solution may not work for me. It’s not always obvious who I’d want to reject as a sender. And what learnings it could cost me to do that.</p>
<p>Obviously replying to all these e-mails costs me as well. And sometimes there is just no time. For me, acknowledging the impossibility of responding to everyone is important. It allows me to be kinder to myself even when I feel bad about failing to reply promptly.</p>
<p>One thing I’ve done strictly to make myself feel better is to have a short template that I use to respond when my priorities are elsewhere. It’s most often used for e-mails where I get a lot of questions around best ways forward for a design challenge or when being asked to be interviewed for a dissertation.</p>
<blockquote><p>Thanks for your e-mail. I am currently unable to respond to all of the many e-mails that reach me, and I will not be able to respond to yours. This is not a reflection of the content of your e-mail. This is my approach for prioritising my well-being and personal goals during periods where my capacity for attention is scarce.</p>
<p>Thank you again for reaching out and I wish you all the best.</p>
<p>Kind regards,<br/>
/Per</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I reply with this and then I can archive the e-mail. In fairness this usually happens after I’ve snoozed the e-mail several times. Realising your own limits can be painful.</p>
<h2 id="Full disclosure">Full disclosure</h2>
<p><span class="todo-text">I’ve signed up for the HEY e-mail service, gained access and started the trial. I’ve done this out of curiosity getting the better of me, for purposes of understanding the service better and getting enough experience to have an educated opinion on it. In the end it may also be a way for me to protect my brand name on a potentially popular service.</span></p>
<p>The funny things is this: I just don’t know who I would tell about this e-mail address and why I should. It seems I can get a pretty good handle of managing my e-mail without it, in an interface I am already comfortable with.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the seven (7!) e-mails that immediately clutter my “Imbox” (yes, that’s what they call it), with tutorials on how to use the service, seems like a disconnect from any message of simplicity. First impressions leave me… bewildered.</p>
<figure id="attachment_9490" align="aligncenter"><a href="https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?ssl=1"><img loading="lazy" src="https://i0.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails-1024x489.png?resize=640%2C306&amp;ssl=1" class="size-large wp-image-9490 jetpack-lazy-image" alt="" data-recalc-dims="1" data-lazy-srcset="https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=1024%2C489&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=300%2C143&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=768%2C366&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=1536%2C733&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=2048%2C977&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?w=1280&amp;ssl=1 1280w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w" data-lazy-sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" data-lazy-src="https://i0.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails-1024x489.png?resize=640%2C306&amp;is-pending-load=1#038;ssl=1" srcset="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7"/><noscript><img loading="lazy" src="https://i0.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails-1024x489.png?resize=640%2C306&amp;ssl=1" class="size-large wp-image-9490" alt="" srcset="https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=1024%2C489&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=300%2C143&amp;ssl=1 300w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=768%2C366&amp;ssl=1 768w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=1536%2C733&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?resize=2048%2C977&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?w=1280&amp;ssl=1 1280w, https://i1.wp.com/axbom.blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/hey-imbox-emails.png?w=1920&amp;ssl=1 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px" data-recalc-dims="1"/></noscript></a> Screenshot of the 7 e-mails in my “Imbox”</figure>
<p>Note that this article is not intended as a takedown of the HEY e-mail service. I’m sure it can provide value to a lot of people. Just not everyone. My text is an emotional response to an explosion of hype over the past week and I’ve made an effort to bring more thoughtfulness to the conversation. I want to highlight shortcomings and the importance of reasoned decisions when jumping on the bandwagon. No service is perfect but a strong ability to listen to reflections and feedback will likely help a company improve its products. I do believe Basecamp to be one such company. And I especially hope for a considered response to the weaknesses in accessibility .</p>
<p>There’s a chance HEY can change our relationship to e-mail. Then again, there’s also a big chance it won’t. But if this made you sit down and think about how you can improve your management of electronic mail, even if you don’t sign up for HEY, then perhaps the hype was worth it.</p>
<hr/>
<h3 id="Footnote about custom domains">Footnote about custom domains</h3>
<p><i>Eventually</i> you’ll be able to set up your own domain with <a href="http://hey.com">hey.com</a> but there is no indication of how soon or far off that is. A multi-user option with this feature, targeted at businesses, is said to be ready this year.</p>
<p>Generally, if you own your own domain and can afford the cost of custom domains, moving between e-mail providers is an easier choice, since your e-mail address does not have to change. Obviously, only a small percentage of people enjoy this opportunity,</p>
<h3 id="List of E-mail services">List of E-mail services</h3>
<p>More and more people are waking up to the importance of privacy. Here is a list of small tech e-mail providers that raise the bar on privacy.</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.fastmail.com">Fastmail</a> (Australia)</li>
<li><a href="https://kolabnow.com">KolabNow</a> (Switzerland)</li>
<li><a href="https://mailbox.org/">Mailbox</a> (Germany)</li>
<li><a href="https://posteo.de/en">Posteo</a> (Germany)</li>
<li><a href="https://protonmail.com">ProtonMail</a> (Switzerland)</li>
</ul>

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<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/6723325d9229f986f6b77cc5ff6d3ef2/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : Choose Boring Technology">Choose Boring Technology</a> (<a href="https://mcfunley.com/choose-boring-technology" title="Accès à l’article original distant : Choose Boring Technology">original</a>)</li>
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<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/0bdcd919935d2bc62634f2df3dedd06d/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : The Forgotten Story Of The Radium Girls, Whose Deaths Saved Thousands Of Lives">The Forgotten Story Of The Radium Girls, Whose Deaths Saved Thousands Of Lives</a> (<a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/authorkatemoore/the-light-that-does-not-lie" title="Accès à l’article original distant : The Forgotten Story Of The Radium Girls, Whose Deaths Saved Thousands Of Lives">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/5a82172cc73bfc2050a2590b4d81e82d/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : Digital Gardens">Digital Gardens</a> (<a href="https://sentiers.media/dispatch-08-digital-gardens/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : Digital Gardens">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/9a05c76807ac1090c1fbaa96acb9f933/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : La rose et le lotus">La rose et le lotus</a> (<a href="http://maiadereva.net/la-rose-et-le-lotus/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : La rose et le lotus">original</a>)</li>
@@ -251,6 +261,8 @@
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/81585c1eca04b8e13fa1d096f70c96ec/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : Rétro-confinement">Rétro-confinement</a> (<a href="http://www.aubryconseil.com/post/Retro-confinement" title="Accès à l’article original distant : Rétro-confinement">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/75e6de14d16c3bed78799c91c67c0e09/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : « Voilà, je devais le dire un jour : je suis raciste »">« Voilà, je devais le dire un jour : je suis raciste »</a> (<a href="https://voixdexils.ch/2020/07/09/voila-je-devais-le-dire-un-jour-je-suis-raciste/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : « Voilà, je devais le dire un jour : je suis raciste »">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/959add1c9fe6dc27e1ee1ee8960b930b/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : On dependency">On dependency</a> (<a href="https://v7.robweychert.com/blog/2020/06/v7-on-dependency/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : On dependency">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/2343cdf9e5f75cc6bfba098799f0f2fd/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : A Future with No Future: Depression, the Left, and the Politics of Mental Health">A Future with No Future: Depression, the Left, and the Politics of Mental Health</a> (<a href="https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/future-no-future-depression-left-politics-mental-health/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : A Future with No Future: Depression, the Left, and the Politics of Mental Health">original</a>)</li>
@@ -263,6 +275,8 @@
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/cbef115a80c646c9eddc61ac077a6891/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : Sonos in bricked speaker 'recycling' row">Sonos in bricked speaker 'recycling' row</a> (<a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-50948868" title="Accès à l’article original distant : Sonos in bricked speaker 'recycling' row">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/7122463445f458a915c93957300e63c9/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : Marxian Alienation And Web Development">Marxian Alienation And Web Development</a> (<a href="https://heydonworks.com/article/marxian-alienation-and-web-development/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : Marxian Alienation And Web Development">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/5d838c30481a8c4ccd249265f71d5924/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : Le municipalisme libertaire : qu'est-ce donc ?">Le municipalisme libertaire : qu'est-ce donc ?</a> (<a href="https://www.revue-ballast.fr/le-municipalisme-libertaire-quest-ce-donc/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : Le municipalisme libertaire : qu'est-ce donc ?">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/42b02cc81a7fface539dfb3397f0a464/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : How to Fake a Traffic Jam on Google Maps">How to Fake a Traffic Jam on Google Maps</a> (<a href="https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9393w7/this-man-created-traffic-jams-on-google-maps-using-a-red-wagon-full-of-phones" title="Accès à l’article original distant : How to Fake a Traffic Jam on Google Maps">original</a>)</li>
@@ -293,8 +307,12 @@
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/572b785bc7ef89977817e656bbe3af12/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : Zam : simplifier le processus de réponse aux amendements">Zam : simplifier le processus de réponse aux amendements</a> (<a href="https://blog.beta.gouv.fr/dinsic/2019/01/18/zam-simplifier-les-reponses-aux-amendements/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : Zam : simplifier le processus de réponse aux amendements">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/a8103eb4d28f54bf8d5e58905fa96c0a/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : Make Me Think">Make Me Think</a> (<a href="https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2020/make-me-think/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : Make Me Think">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/bdc65ed9d2657f45d13d97186072b415/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : How I think about solving problems">How I think about solving problems</a> (<a href="https://humanwhocodes.com/blog/2020/02/how-i-think-about-solving-problems/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : How I think about solving problems">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/82918fea8d8ed461aae66915dbed02c9/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : Make me think!">Make me think!</a> (<a href="https://ralphammer.com/make-me-think/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : Make me think!">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/59dac1925636ebf6358c3a598bf834f9/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : Un pédophile est un client Apple comme les autres.">Un pédophile est un client Apple comme les autres.</a> (<a href="https://www.affordance.info/mon_weblog/2020/01/pedophile-client-apple.html" title="Accès à l’article original distant : Un pédophile est un client Apple comme les autres.">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/618f913d970fee8feadadd15cf282e5a/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : How “Good Intent” Undermines Diversity and Inclusion">How “Good Intent” Undermines Diversity and Inclusion</a> (<a href="https://thebias.com/2017/09/26/how-good-intent-undermines-diversity-and-inclusion/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : How “Good Intent” Undermines Diversity and Inclusion">original</a>)</li>
@@ -319,6 +337,8 @@
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/7e8f31c1021b2049977e3c92d3a3b356/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : Il n'y aura pas de retour à la normale">Il n'y aura pas de retour à la normale</a> (<a href="https://www.terrestres.org/2020/03/24/il-ny-aura-pas-de-retour-a-la-normale/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : Il n'y aura pas de retour à la normale">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/42b9ec3fa0736e788eb939e82a188879/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : On all that fuckery">On all that fuckery</a> (<a href="https://www.tinykat.cafe/on-all-that-fuckery" title="Accès à l’article original distant : On all that fuckery">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/8d7e08c54e30cc6d35375da17e6a61c0/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : Zam - beta.gouv.fr">Zam - beta.gouv.fr</a> (<a href="https://beta.gouv.fr/startups/zam.html" title="Accès à l’article original distant : Zam - beta.gouv.fr">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/ca757669ade725d06b1b055e664bf449/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : futur sans péremption">futur sans péremption</a> (<a href="https://www.la-grange.net/2020/07/18/futur" title="Accès à l’article original distant : futur sans péremption">original</a>)</li>
@@ -345,8 +365,12 @@
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/c8a8edb7bc65f4ed6b0edc18010434cc/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : How Contact Tracing Can Foil COVID-19 & Big Brother">How Contact Tracing Can Foil COVID-19 & Big Brother</a> (<a href="https://ncase.me/contact-tracing/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : How Contact Tracing Can Foil COVID-19 & Big Brother">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/0ca66318c85095c1406e42bb932f5e60/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : RFC8890: The Internet is for End Users">RFC8890: The Internet is for End Users</a> (<a href="https://www.mnot.net/blog/2020/08/28/for_the_users" title="Accès à l’article original distant : RFC8890: The Internet is for End Users">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/fc97310297178a549eab5c5f9e8a334f/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : Why 543 KB keep me up at night">Why 543 KB keep me up at night</a> (<a href="https://www.matuzo.at/blog/why-543kb-keep-me-up-at-night/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : Why 543 KB keep me up at night">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/4a058a01a70886c2b41f94783b946044/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : The Role of Design">The Role of Design</a> (<a href="http://expletiveinserted.com/2014/08/15/the-role-of-design/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : The Role of Design">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/70e5fefd4e7ab3f2bc03e917c4add8b0/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : Thoughts on Trust in Business">Thoughts on Trust in Business</a> (<a href="https://garrettdimon.com/2020/thoughts-on-trust-in-business/" title="Accès à l’article original distant : Thoughts on Trust in Business">original</a>)</li>
<li><a href="/david/cache/2020/1d190443e06aa99b44dd2a4d55b1b58e/" title="Accès à l’article dans le cache local : The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It">The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It</a> (<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/technology/clearview-privacy-facial-recognition.html" title="Accès à l’article original distant : The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It">original</a>)</li>

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