I get the feeling there's a kind of bleak, hopeless circularity in your
thinking, but I can't quite nail it. It feels like saying;
Universal suffrage is great idealism, but it doesn't matter unless
women vote for it.
That's to say, the means by which change might occur are also the goal
of that change. That's a hard place to get out of.
> idealism doesn’t matter without users.
It absolutely does, because "idealism" is precisely that force in the
world that exists despite and in hope for better things than the
status-quo. It's the engine of all progress, and is almost always a
minority concern in the face of a herd mentality. I'm glad you like my
idealism though, because some (fake pragmatists with narrow horizons
and fear of losing the privilege) treat idealism as a fault, whereas
we see it as a badge of honour.
> the majority of users have repeatedly chosen
For very small values of "chosen". People accept what they're given.
Not even the "consumers" themselves believe in the myth of demand
driven markets now. They mostly adopt stuff to fit in and be like
their friends. If pressed, they'll rationalise. Today, digital
literacy does not extend to social, economic and political awareness
of why choice might even matter. Some of us are trying to fix that
(see [1]), and I am happy that in Europe we are gaining greater
strength.
Number of users matters for making money. I get that. And I can see
why many people here fixate on that. Making money is nice. But one
shouldn't let it distort ones better judgement. And one should know
when enough is enough and when greed is working against our future
capacity to make money.
> choose UX innovations over things like standards and interoperability.
That's a false dichotomy. Those things aren't even on the same axis.
It is the sloth of companies wanting to lock-in users that gives
motive to break interoperability standards. That doing so is necessary
for innovation is a blatant falsehood peddled in so many of the
comments I've read here today. You say yourself, that it's a thin
veneer over standards. Not to recognise the value of foundations paid
for with generations of public money and the role of government in
maintaining the very conditions that allowed tech firms to prosper is
ungrateful and parochial. I'm getting downvoted because that hurts to
hear.
[1] https://www.humanetech.com/technologists