User Indulgence Is the New User Interface

Tech companies beware:  As customers become increasingly sophisticated, demanding and vocal, they’ll want more features on their terms, not yours.

The new U.I.

Photographer: Al Gretz/Archive Photos via Getty Images
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Twitter doesn’t have an edit button. Despite a chorus of protest over many years, the company has declined to bow to user demand — indeed, as Covid-19 raged, Twitter trolled its 330 million users with this taunt:

This absence of edit mirrors a range of controversial Twitter innovations — including switching the “validation” button from a star to a heart; re-ordering the timeline from chronological to “relevant,” despite promising not to; and (merely) adding warning labels to President Donald Trump’s inaccurate and inflammatory statements: