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by bolognafairy 532 days ago
“Users are dumb” is not and was never the attitude. On average, people are average. You’ve just got completely unrealistic expectations of people. You’re asking for the world to be built around your wants, needs, preferences, and areas of expertise. Something this complex in the hands of 99.99% of the population would be entirely useless.
2 comments
alex7734 532 days ago
A few years ago everyone that had ever used a computer knew what a file and a folder was and could move a document to an USB drive.

Thanks to the efforts of Google to "simplify" smartphones the average young person now couldn't find and double-click a downloaded file if their life depended on it.

In the US, a manual car is considered an anti-theft device. In Europe, basically everyone that isn't obscenely rich has driven a manual car at some point.

People learn what they're expected to learn.

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johannes1234321 532 days ago
Back then user base of computers was a lot smaller.

However Whatsapp/signal show how e2e can be done in a user-compatible way. By default it simply exchanges keys and shows a warning when key is changed and those who need/want can verify identity.

Missing there of course openness.

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upofadown 532 days ago
> ... those who need/want can verify identity.

So the rest are actually OK with Whatsapp/Signal having the opportunity to see their messages? I would submit that most are not even aware of the issue...

The identity thing is basically the usability issue for E2EE messaging. If you don't solve that then you have not actually increased usability in a meaningful way. The PGP community understood this and did things like organize key signing parties. When is the last time anyone did anything like that for any popular E2EE capable instant messenger?

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arccy 532 days ago
if anything it's Apple / iOS that dumbs down users, Google / Android provide a perfectly fine file picker / file management app.
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ANewFormation 532 days ago
Another example would be ctrl+alt+del, ctrl+c, ctrl+v, etc, etc.

Like you said people learn what they're expected to learn.

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dzikimarian 531 days ago
Imagine we went with "it's unrealistic to expect people to learn reading" - in the end it's just one skill and takes months to comprehend on very basic level.
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1oooqooq 531 days ago
well, now that people can work with voice interfaces, you might be surprised sooner than you think.
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