this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023

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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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imagine caring about accessibility and working for this person (awful.systems)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I talk a lot about how "empathy" in commercial UX is mostly a posture because in reality capitalism doesn't care, but it's important to consider the additional problem of people in charge who are too shallow to be capable of understanding "why" some people prefer, or need, to do things differently than they do.

This one time I was telling the ceo/founder of a startup I worked for that our react app was making my new macbook pro crawl and we need to fix that because it was a b2b product that would be used by people in finance offices decked out with dell opticrap machines. He responded with surprise "wow, steve. you really care about people don't you?"

I was kinda floored. Anyway, here we are...

https://web.archive.org/web/20230727121010/https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1684491212219359232

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Freedom means not having a choice in website color scheme.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

"b-bht what good is it having the freedom to do what I want if I can't force other people to agree with me?! I thought I was the king?!"

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@fasterandworse He has probably fired every employee that has accommodations or visible disabilities, except for the one person he had to rehire because he enraged an entire country after firing him.

I mean dark mode aside, the dude is a proud eugenicist, so I can't imagine accessibility is one of his priorities.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yep, totally agree. I shared this link with no surprise that he's like this. Just wanted to highlight one of those moments that are a giveaway to this kind of person.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@fasterandworse

I've successfully convinced front-end designers to have empathy in the past, especially younger ones who really hadn't spent time thinking about other people's tech needs. Hell, back when I was A Youth™️, I had my own boneheaded takes about people who use tech in a way I don't (vi/emacs wars, lol, I'm old).

But yeah, exactly, Musk isn't in "assume good intent" or "teachable moment". He has for years been 100% in "when people tell you who they are, believe them."

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I like how you put it. When you spend enough time around these people you can hear them drop a lie about their lunch and have enough information to know they will screw anyone over in a heartbeat.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Musk is changing Twitter to be what he thinks is cool, not what anyone else thinks is necessary

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

If you've already set tens of billions of dollars on fire, might as well have some fun with it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nothing is going to change with this perpetual man child until the world stops paying attention to his little tantrums.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Simpsons song "just don't look" repeats endlessly in my head.

Probably the best piece of advice the Simpsons ever accidentally gave out. Imagine if we all did.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Thanks for bringing back that memory.

It was nice back when the Simpsons used to be good. Now it’s just celebrity cameos with name drops instead of playing original characters.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

That's not being shallow, it's being an ableist, like much of society, so lets not sugar coat things.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Dark mode makes me irrationally angry. Doesn't matter what app or service it is, I just despise it. I can't even really explain why. It just looks so bad.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It does have a habit of showing up in software designed For Gamers, so that would go a way in explaining that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Dark mode & Dark side

[+] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (20 children)

For some it's just personal preference, for some with vision issues it's unreadable

What's the benefit to removing one and forcing everyone to use the other?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

nothing wrong with not having one. Having one and removing it because you like the dark mode better, on the other hand? He's been told that every design decision has to consider light and dark. Just like he's going to be told that the web app requires more dev resources for browser compatibility testing, accessibility, performance etc and more design resources for responsiveness and stuff like mouse vs touch.

If he drops light mode he can cut more staff for sure. If he drops web, he can cut even more. He will do it.

but anyway, light mode/dark mode are a great example of corps doing something good in the bare minimum way. Before apple or whoever branded black backgrounds and white text as "dark mode" implementing an alternative UI theme based on accessibility concerns on a major web app would have been impossible to get approved.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I personally prefer it. I'd be surprised and annoyed if it went away.

That said, I don't get too het up if an existing site/service only has dark mode.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

I clicked the button that deshittfied the thread but since that deleted the warning I posted too:

reconsider before having a 10xer slapfight here