Our Users Deserve a Bill of Rights
The author critiques the tech industry's neglect of end users, advocating for a "User Bill of Rights" to ensure accountability and balance between innovation and stability in software development.
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The author expresses frustration with the tech industry’s treatment of end users, arguing that they often suffer from the consequences of software failures without any compensation or consideration from providers. The piece reflects on recent incidents, such as outages affecting Delta Airlines, highlighting a lack of accountability among tech companies. The author critiques the frequent updates and changes in user interfaces that disrupt established workflows, suggesting that these changes are often unnecessary and driven by developers' need to justify their roles rather than genuine user benefit. The author proposes the idea of a "User Bill of Rights" to better protect users, although acknowledges the complexity of defining such rights without hindering software development. The discussion raises questions about compensation for software failures, especially concerning free software, and emphasizes the need for a balance between innovation and stability in software development. The author concludes with a call for the industry to recognize the difference between meaningful innovation and disruptive change, expressing hope for a future where user rights are prioritized. The piece serves as a critique of the current state of the tech industry and a proposal for a more user-centered approach moving forward.
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2 commentsConsider the EU's GDPR regulation, which forces company to handle users' private data with care. That covers everything from not selling your users' data on the open market, to paying fines of your poor security practices mean that users' confidential details get hacked. Or more recently, the CRA and PLD, which together ensure that people selling software are liable when that software causes problems - when IoT devices are sold without security, or when your phone can no longer accept security updates a couple of years after you bought it, and so on.
This is for the EU, but I know similar legislation has been implemented in parts of the US.
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