do values or features guide application adoption
This morning Discord announced that it will require a face scan or ID to verify your age in order to have full access to the app, starting next month. There's been a tremendous outpouring of disappointment and frustration at this policy change on Twitter and Bluesky, with many people saying that they're cancelling their paid Discord Nitro subscriptions in protest.
This makes me wonder about the current landscape of technology usage and adoption, and how much our values determine the applications we use compared to what technical features are offered. Do our values actually determine the applications we use in the long-term?
I do think there is a small population of people online who do stick to their values, especially when alternatives work for them. When Twitter was bought out by Elon, and we ended up with increasing alt-right propaganda in the algorithm, or when they rolled out an update to allow Grok to edit any photo that was posted, a lot of users did flock away from the platform. Some went to Bluesky, some went to LinkedIn, and some just... stopped using textual social media. But some, after time passed, returned to Twitter.
This isn't the first time there's been drama over Discord. I still remember how a few years ago, Discord tried to build in crypto/blockchain nonsense into the app, and folks voiced their dissent over it. Eventually they rolled back their plans (or stated that the plans were never really concrete to begin with), but it stood to show that the company listens to its users when their bottom line is at risk. I think as well about the times that people have cancelled their Netflix subscriptions in protest, or protested Amazon for any number of heinous things that they're involved in. But at the end of the day, it seems a lot of folks have stayed or returned to using and paying for those platforms.
Maybe this is just anecdotal, but I do wonder if we actually are in an era where our values determine what applications we use, moreso than the features that are offered. I saw today that folks mentioned they want a Discord alternative because they're upset at the face scan news, along with a long history of Discord just being terrible about safety and privacy, but folks don't want to go over to alternatives like Teamspeak because feature-wise its just not good enough. At the end of the day, I worry that what an application does is more important to us than what it stands for, and no matter how much we believe in values like if they're open-source or if they don't contribute to the military-industrial complex, what matters is what we can use. Even if we say "I'm sure a bit of both things matter," I worry that in the end, we'll still need to use something that works, and thus the importance of the features of an application win out.
I ask these questions because I wonder: if an alternative did exist, whose only difference was that the company or community running the application was more value-aligned with its users, would folks actually flock to it and use it in the long term? If I somehow designed an alternative to Twitter, or Discord, or any of these other platforms that we're now so frustrated by, would people actually use it because of their values?
In asking this question, a deeper worry arises in my mind: what if it's because of these terrible values (selling off user data, partnering with right-wing corporations, contributing to the military-industrial complex, etc.) is why these applications are able to do what they do. What if values can't so easily be detangled from features, and some features are only possible because they've been funded through shitty means? I suppose, ultimately, the same provocation that's always been on my mind comes back again: is it even possible to have tech that isn't rooted in the evils of capitalism?