[richardsocher]

yea.. why?

the truth is that most users have no other easily accessible way for them to switch away from a monopoly that sells them, their data and privacy to the highest bidder and requires all companies to pay a tax to exist in the online economy...

if you are an expert, you can change your settings manually and hence not require the extension.

[Matthias1]

Sorry, I went to make a search without the extension installed (because I did try) and I got hit with a full screen error message saying I needed to install the extension.

My mistake was obviously typing in the search bar at the top of the screen. I should have edited the address in the address bar manually. If you don’t have the extension installed, the search bar serves only to take you to an ad to install it.

A UI element that appear to be a search box but is actually an ad for your extension, I would characterize as user hostile design.

Google’s practices, if you don’t agree with them, doesn’t mean that you can do whatever you want because you’re the little guy. Offering an extension is fine. But disabling searching if the extension isn’t installed is not helpful.

[DennisP]

Yeah when I tried a search and got that "download our extension" message, my immediate gut reaction was that it was trying to hack me. If I hadn't started from HN, I'd have been convinced of it, closed the browser immediately, and never gone back.

[ohyeshedid]

Respectfully: because nobody knows who the fuck you are, and your reasoning doesn't make sense.

You want to offer a privacy focused search service, but the users need to install an extension because otherwise <some gibberish about google evil here> instead of just having a regular web frontend for the masses to try. Then it's too hard for lusers to switch; you created this problem for yourself.

The more you respond, the more it looks like this is some poorly thought out lead capture, or you're so focused on the service you don't understand the broader security concerns.

[dang]

You broke the site guidelines with this comment. Putting "respectfully" in front of something disrespectful does not make it ok.

It's particularly important not to pile on someone when they're presenting their own work—the Show HN guidelines have additional rules about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html.

Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN in the intended spirit.

[ohyeshedid]

I don't see anything disrespectful in that comment; it was made entirely in good faith.

That concept becomes tricky in situations like this, because you're assuming bad faith, and then tone policing based off that. My point of view is that you got it wrong this time, but that doesn't really matter, you're the one with the hammer, boss. o7

Fwiw, HN needs an alert/messaging system of some kind to deliver these moderation messages to users. If I don't see you responded in an official capacity before I post enough to push it to second page of my profile, I may never see it, which means it's not serving it's entire purpose. The public signaling part works, but the direct signaling could easily get lost. I know usually you aren't doing this a day later, but in those cases, there's gotta be a better solution.

[dang]

You packed so many swipey phrases into your comment ("nobody knows who the fuck you are", "<some gibberish about google evil here>", "you created this problem for yourself", "the more you respond", "this is some poorly thought out", "you don't understand") that the post came across as something between a harangue and an outright an attack. This is not a good way to communicate respectfully on the internet. (Doubly so in the context of a mass pile-on, which is what this thread became.)

I believe you that you wrote your post in good faith, but intentions aren't enough. All too often, a comment comes out in a way that doesn't at all make its good intent clear, and damaging effects don't become less when the damage is unintentional. Therefore the burden falls on the commenter to disambiguate intent (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...).

(Yes, it's on the list to eventually build a better way of signaling moderation to accounts. I'm sure there is a much better solution.)

[ohyeshedid]

You stuck this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29165602

You posted this, whether by userscript or directly: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29167680

and then this subthread, where we're having this conversation after dinging me.

The OP didn't disclose the requirement of a browser extension. The linked site didn't function in two out of three browsers, and prompted extension installs on Chrome. It was also breaking in user tests.

The users responded as they did. When the extension requirement became the core topic, OP rotated between multiple reasons for why, including some rather bad generalizations about google being a $2trn company, users not being smart enough to switch the default search provider, and almost-but-not-quite admitting it's user capture.

They were back in the other thread debating back and forth, and called out about dishonesty in regards to more of their product claims since. They also removed the extension requirement.

Where were you?

You dinged me, a day later, but never said a word to OP about the need to disclose unexpected software installation requirements for a search service? You allowed them to post, in two separate threads, and market their product with dark patterns.

That's how pile-on's happen, Dan. The product didn't work as submitted, as it required an undisclosed software installation on only one browser, and didn't function at all on others.

Did you test the landing page before sticking their promotional comment?

Did you test it at all?

Do you verify any of the submissions?

If so, why didn't you verify this one?

Why are Show submissions allowed to promote their products with dark patterns?

The people that care about this community's fellow members rightly piled on, because you weren't doing anything about it. This is not the first time this situation has happened. That pile-on is the public screaming warnings to those who might be unaware of potential danger.

Good faith says you just missed the context because you're swamped, I get it man.

When you start dictating what other peoples words mean, without context, and trying to redefine their communication styles to fit your preferred format, on top of the perspective I just shared; How do you think that looks?

I think your approach on this, from the initial submission up, is either disingenuous or careless. I think you fired from the hip, based on my comment, and didn't do anything to actually address, or understand, the cause of the issues in this thread, or the other one.

[dang]

I'm sure you have a lot of good points in here but I don't see anything that changes the specific moderation issue that I was posting about, that your comment went against the site guidelines.

A couple points of clarification in case it's useful:

I pinned https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29165602 to the top of the thread because that's standard moderation practice for Show HNs. When people post an introductory blurb about the project they're presenting, we pin it to the top (assuming we see it!) and turn off replies. There are two reasons: one is that the introductory blurb is really a companion piece to the original submission and therefore belongs at the top. The other is that people often reply to that blurb with general feedback about the project, which (most likely unintentionally) is a kind of topjacking, i.e. it privileges their response higher up on the page, relative to other users who post general feedback in the thread at large. By turning off replies to the blurb comment, we're treating the blurb as part of the original submission and putting all user responses on a level playing field. It's a nice solution! Sorry for the long explanation (no time to make it shorter &c).

As for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29167680 — I never post anything by script! I do have a lot of keyboard shortcuts in my mod-client-browser-extension to help speed things up. But all posts are done manually. I don't think it would be in the spirit of HN to do otherwise.

[richardsocher]

I get it. There are tons of sketchy extensions. We'll open source our extension so you can see the entire 33kB that's needed to make one settings change. Also, you can try it out in incognito mode or change those settings manually and hence give it a try :)

But most people need the simplicity and convenience of a few clicks in order to give it a proper try.

[justinpombrio]

> But most people need the simplicity and convenience of a few clicks in order to give it a proper try.

... how about zero clicks, by showing search results when someone searches in Chrome using your search box?

[xupybd]

What about changing devices. I'm not going to install an extension to search when I have Google at hand on my phone.

[maydup-nem]

bruh, i use a chromium-based browser which doesn't support extensions (or an incognito mode) as of this moment. i ain't installing chrome just for some stupid setting, just saying.

sounds like a severe case of tunnel vision...

[foobiekr]

We don’t trust you not to modify the extension in an update. And no, publishing hypothetical source does not address that.

[zhte415]

I'm late to the comments, did something change?

There does seem to be a regular web front end, you.com. The link in the HN post was to a search for you.com on you.com. There's also a search bar at the top of that 'results' page.

[foerbert]

Edit: I now believe the website was, in fact, changed.

Original comment below, most individual bits still relevant aside from the overall conclusion that the pieces added up to accidental confusion. Apparently concluding HN folk were bad at understanding even poorly displayed tech was not wise. Who knew? I probably should have realized that was not a good bet.

At this point I consider the apparent lack of understanding from the OP willful ignorance at best. All this seems like kind of a waste now. Oh well.

---

Unless the website was recently changed (final edit: yeah... unless...), I think the problem here is a combination of the link that was submitted and uh... excessively effective design, if I want to put it nicely. You're doing too good a job of directing attention to the extension, and people are missing the actual means of using your website.

Right now the link is https://you.com/search?q=you.com&fromSearchBar=true. That page currently has a little search bar in the top UI bar which is prefilled with a search term, and the contrast that identifies it as a text input is pretty minimal. Dark Reader further hides that fact with some elements like the 'x' in the input not getting adjusted to be more visible. These aspects make it extremely easy to overlook as a text input. My first instinct is to ignore it as part of the wasted space in the top bar, and it does a poor job of standing out as anything else.

Furthermore the banner for the extension is pretty freaking huge and draws all the attention. The copy on it also pretty strongly implies you need it to use the website.

The multiple comments from other HN folk that have clearly been mislead about the importance of the extension further feeds that perception. I'm sure some people haven't even actually checked for themselves - I know I almost didn't. It also wasn't immediately obvious to me what was going on once I did visit the submitted page, and I nearly fell into the same trap.

Meanwhile https://you.com/ offers a much more familiar design that does not contain so many opportunities for confusion. I think you may have been better off submitting that.

While I'm at it, I have few other thoughts. I continually find myself expecting many of the non-ads to be ads. I keep ignoring them or even getting annoyed with them, until I remind myself I should look again. This happens on both the submitted page with the various blurbs/links down at the bottom and the search results page. My very first response to attempting a search was essentially a dismissive and annoyed eyeroll as I thought you'd tried to load up an entire screen full of ads.

I'm not entirely sure what the whole problem is. I'd guess it's partly being conditioned by other search providers about the very top 'results' and partly the overall style. Maybe grids of little boxes with so-perfectly-rounded corners and strong titles just seem like ads to me. On the submitted page, I'm sure having a bunch of company names there in the Media section doesn't help.

Again, this is just my immediate impression of the UI elements. I don't believe them to actually be ads, but I'm constantly having to fight my instincts to treat them otherwise.

[DangitBobby]

Regarding your feedback on the ads, I actually really like that feeling of expecting ads and finding something useful to be there instead.

[detaro]

Which browser are you using? Firefox appears to be not getting the agressive prompt to install the Chrome extension, they were clever enough to check for that.

[foerbert]

Ah, that would explain it. I was using Firefox. That probably should have occurred to me too.

[corobo]

They weren't yesterday. It looks like they just ditched it entirely now