"Let’s admit it, we are all in the persuasion business. Technologists build products meant to persuade people to do what we want them to do. We call these people 'users' and even if we don’t say it aloud, we secretly wish every one of them would become fiendishly hooked to whatever we’re making." --"Hooked" (2013)

The snappy aphorism off the top of my head is that "only drug dealers and IT call their customers 'users.'"

One day perhaps we will indeed look at the apps of today as massive social engineering experiments gone haywire. But the author's categorization of Facebook as an "ant farm of humanity" and a "digital cesspool" is juuuust a bit too misanthropic and bitter for my tastes. The internet has connected humanity to an extent that is literally hard to grasp, and yes, that does come with very human problems, so it's silly imo to pin all of our woes on Facebook et al. I'd love to hear what kinds of creative derogatory phrases the author would come up with to describe the period of dominating telephone networks, or mass media television, or even before we had any wires at all and just had to rely on the post and grapevine in the horrific dark ages before the invention of the telegraph in the 19th century.

Plus, for nostalgia's sake, the indie web's still out there if you know where to look (e.g. https://wiby.me/)