Ask HN: Why are all content apps so insanely cluttered?
8 comments
"Pure Desperation"
What happens when there is more Content than there are Eyeballs or Time to consume it all? Or economically what happens when Supply massively overshoots Demand? People who design UX/UI aren't economists they are just reacting to an environment, dominated by a few companies all fighting tooth and nail over a finite non growing pool of Attention. Anyone that makes a move is automatically copied by everyone else out of sheer FOMO.
So we get the tooth aisle - hundreds of different toothpastes - but really a few companies that have divided up the entire market and shit scared of loosing ground so they copy each other furiously constantly adding more and more options just cause the other guy did so - https://metropolismag.com/programs/the-toothpaste-aisle
What happens when there is more Content than there are Eyeballs or Time to consume it all? Or economically what happens when Supply massively overshoots Demand? People who design UX/UI aren't economists they are just reacting to an environment, dominated by a few companies all fighting tooth and nail over a finite non growing pool of Attention. Anyone that makes a move is automatically copied by everyone else out of sheer FOMO.
So we get the tooth aisle - hundreds of different toothpastes - but really a few companies that have divided up the entire market and shit scared of loosing ground so they copy each other furiously constantly adding more and more options just cause the other guy did so - https://metropolismag.com/programs/the-toothpaste-aisle
So this could just be reckless copying? Sounds both crazy and plausible
Absolute desperation for the illusion of engagement and retention. Otherwise, you'll almost definitely only get back there via an aggregator rarely if ever. The aggregators themselves, are almost down to just Google/Apple/Meta/Twitter, they don't care who they send the traffic to they just want a shitload of rent. They only care if you pay them to promote/boost/etc, and that's just extra rent for the aggregator to get around their shitty discovery and search, plus maybe 30% fee if you buy your boosted posts on your iPhone.
With that illusion of engagement and retention, they can convince someone to pay them to put ads and shit throughout and if they're lucky earn enough to keep playing.
With that illusion of engagement and retention, they can convince someone to pay them to put ads and shit throughout and if they're lucky earn enough to keep playing.
Do you think we will ever move into an ad free era?
Maybe, we're already centralizing everything around a handful of big companies - for most of them ads are like a fallback more so than a plan A. Many things that are ad-supported have subscription-supported competition. Some of the tech industry loves their fees on that just as much if not more than ads.
Most content apps aren’t built for reading; they’re built for clicks, time on site, and ad views. That’s why everything is cluttered, autoplay, likes, pop-ups… they tested well for engagement, not for peace.
I’ve built content apps and learned this the hard way. Clean design feels good, but it doesn’t always boost the right metrics.
Now I stick to RSS, newsletters, and read-it-later tools like Matter, way less noise, and I read more.
I’ve built content apps and learned this the hard way. Clean design feels good, but it doesn’t always boost the right metrics.
Now I stick to RSS, newsletters, and read-it-later tools like Matter, way less noise, and I read more.
Could you let us know what apps you built? Would love to check them out
the people paying for development see "more = better" and spend their time envisioning how to add and connect more things.
alternatively, there may be 50 petty feifdoms each with it's own heirarchy and vested interests to defend and an overall manager for such a product might have no power to rein it in.
alternatively, there may be 50 petty feifdoms each with it's own heirarchy and vested interests to defend and an overall manager for such a product might have no power to rein it in.
The best blogs however only show you maybe 1-5 articles with great design, and it actually causes me to read more.
So from the UI/UX perspective, why do companies continue to make reading harder? Is there some psychology behind it?