Compared to that it probably does feel hostile. But it's just them being part of the general and widespread shift of more skepticism towards tech's promises and more awareness of its downsides.
The author of the article was super mad, lambasting tech companies left and right for dark patterns, called it a bunch of different synonyms of immoral, etc.
His own paper, The New York Times, has a dark pattern system so pervasive that people here, on Hacker News, had to tell their bank to block payments because they couldn't get to the end of it. I've seen this story repeatedly here.
There's no way that didn't come up during the author's research. The author chose to completely ignore that and publish anyway. And The New York Times chose to make a huge deal out of it. What does that say about their ethics?
Because the author (who does not control how NYT subscriptions work) does mention that in the story:
> About 30 sites made it easy to sign up for services but particularly hard to cancel, requiring phone calls or other procedures. The Times requires people to talk with a representative online or by phone to cancel subscriptions, but the researchers did not study it or other publishing sites.
And highlighted it on her social media promotion of her work: https://twitter.com/jenvalentino/status/1143531833147240449?...
However, if I were still nitpicky, I would say that her little mention leaves out a ton about what the unsubscribe experience is like.
For example, she doesn't mention that The New York Times employs very few chat agents, so that waiting to cancel takes forever even on weekdays. Or that when you get through the chat, they will offer you a discount, and if you decline they'll give you another discount, and you have to decline that one too. Same understaffing and manipulation for phone calls also applies.
Or that The New York Times has different rules for California because of the law, and allows 24/7 calling and cancelling there, whereas for the rest of the US it's only standard business hours.
And so on...
Almost all brand surveys will have most of the top 5 be the tech companies you know and which HN loves to hate. That's not trending downward. It's trending upward.
The upward trend indicates that it isn't "riding on" but simply being considered good because they are.