> They're not responsible for the giant evil megacorp that employs them.
Of course they are! People aren't magically born hired to some giant company... they choose to--hell: they even fight to!--work there because they like making more money than they could at another job, in no small part as these jobs involve doing some evil things that extract more value from the world.
> They all got told what the software was supposed to do and they tried to make the software to do what it was supposed to do, because that's what their job is.
First off: who is telling them? Microsoft isn't some AI: it can't tell anyone what to do as it has no agency of its own... people had to make every single decision and take every single action that you are attributing to "Microsoft". They can't "all" be told what the software is supposed to do: someone--often someone low in the org chart, fascinatingly, but this sometimes could actually be someone high up--had to come up with the idea and do the telling.
Second: no... just because "that's your job" isn't an excuse to just do whatever your boss wants you to do, even when you disagree with it; that is a ridiculous level of blame shifting. If you don't want to be held responsible and you somehow can't quit then you should at least be helping in protest of whatever you are finding yourself doing.
> The user isn't allowed to truly say "no, never"...
I mean, why not? Well, because someone, somewhere--a person, with a name, whether they were high or low in the ranks--decided it was more profitable to take agency from users, and then a scant handful of other people were willing to go along with that decision in exchange for everyone being paid their share of the spoils.
(BTW: I would totally accept an argument that this button is a silly example to care deeply about. I'm not attached to the example myself: I was replying to someone else who cared about this and so am adopting this frame. There are much much worse decisions being made by Apple and Google these days.)
> I would totally accept an argument that this button is a silly example to care deeply about.
I'm not trying to make an argument about that feature. I think it's a good, overt example of Microsoft's attitude towards Windows users. There are many others like it and many are more and less offensive.
> I mean, why not?
You seem to have missed my point here (my bad). In the hypothetical scenario (the key points of which you are repeating) the imaginary UX team did their job well, by making the outcome of each choice more clear than they would/could have been and possibly even giving the user more than zero choice in the first place.
> Of course they are! [responsible for the company that employs them]
Of course they're not!
It's obviously not that simple.
You seem to be making/repeating a "no one is holding a gun to their head" argument.
There's not really any way to argue with that, because it's such an extreme point of view to hold.
So I'll just say:
Yes, people make choices. I thought we all knew that.
I also thought that we all knew that there are any number of complicating factors involved in any one of those choices.
I think you should consider that not everyone has the power or opportunity to do whatever they want to at any point in time.
Of course they are! People aren't magically born hired to some giant company... they choose to--hell: they even fight to!--work there because they like making more money than they could at another job, in no small part as these jobs involve doing some evil things that extract more value from the world.
> They all got told what the software was supposed to do and they tried to make the software to do what it was supposed to do, because that's what their job is.
First off: who is telling them? Microsoft isn't some AI: it can't tell anyone what to do as it has no agency of its own... people had to make every single decision and take every single action that you are attributing to "Microsoft". They can't "all" be told what the software is supposed to do: someone--often someone low in the org chart, fascinatingly, but this sometimes could actually be someone high up--had to come up with the idea and do the telling.
Second: no... just because "that's your job" isn't an excuse to just do whatever your boss wants you to do, even when you disagree with it; that is a ridiculous level of blame shifting. If you don't want to be held responsible and you somehow can't quit then you should at least be helping in protest of whatever you are finding yourself doing.
> The user isn't allowed to truly say "no, never"...
I mean, why not? Well, because someone, somewhere--a person, with a name, whether they were high or low in the ranks--decided it was more profitable to take agency from users, and then a scant handful of other people were willing to go along with that decision in exchange for everyone being paid their share of the spoils.
(BTW: I would totally accept an argument that this button is a silly example to care deeply about. I'm not attached to the example myself: I was replying to someone else who cared about this and so am adopting this frame. There are much much worse decisions being made by Apple and Google these days.)