[seszett]

I think it's just some kind of design trend or something. But I don't know anyone who isn't at least a little bit put off by it from a user perspective.

French has the added difficulty of requiring to choose between "tu" and "vous" if you want to use the "your..." style. So you can instantly see if the website is trying to fake being your friend.

I think Flemish websites just use "jouw whatever" but it's much less direct and jarring than being called "tu" in French by a corporate entity (not a native Dutch speaker though, but I've been living in Flanders for quite a while now).

[roelschroeven]

Software in Dutch has a bit of a tension between je/jouw and u/uw too. Je/jouw sometimes seems to familiar, u/uw too formal. And I feel the balance between the two is different in Flanders vs the Netherlands.

For something like Facebook, it's OK to use je/jouw. But for something like a government website, or perhaps things like banks or insurance companies, je/jouw is not appropriate and u/uw should be used.

I just checked some samples: Facebook uses je/jouw, LinkedIn uses u/uw, government website MyMinfin uses u/uw. That all seems appropriate, so the choice is perhaps not as delicate as I first thought.

[d--b]

Yeah, it looks like the French websites are actually doing it less and less.