Is it true that people are usually making it larger? I'm making it smaller the majority of the time, because websites tend to make the fonts absurdly large (HN is an exception -- I read this with the fonts only reduced to 90% of their default size). I honestly can't remember the last time I had to increase the font size. Do I just have superhuman vision?
My issues are retinal, not a matter of focus, so glasses don't really do that much for me. And I have to say I hate, hate, hate apps that don't respect the OS configuration for text sizing. Facebook used to be one of the worst offenders, the only app I've used recently that's particularly bad has got to be the AliExpress app.
I'm actually not a fan of generalization in the article, as the "pixels" in a browser are not supposed to be device pixels, but a given fraction of an inch, similar to pt size. Typical text should be 6 lines per inch by default... this is and has been a relative standard for print forever. The issue is device scaling isn't always correct in the OS or browser... You may have a 4k display, but if the OS doesn't know if it's 24" or 42" it won't scale correctly, and generally doesn't.
Similarly, I wish more OSes had a way to override the scaling for a given application, especially older apps with a fixed size, if you could 2x-3x them for modern displays, even if it's "blocky" it would be nice. I have setup an app shortcut layer on Linux for this once, but it would be far better if it was in the UI instead of setting up scripts, and custom shortcuts.
Sorry for veering OT, just concerns me more and more as I get older and my vision is less than perfect.
But surely websites can tell if you're browsing from a phone or not, and only do that on the phone? I don't know, I very rarely browse the web from my phone.
It will vary of course, some technically advanced users will often prefer a more dense ui/ux. Also, scaling a UX as you suggest takes a LOT of additional up front design consideration and effort (roughly 3x the effort every time you add a single target variance). My own experience on the developer side, is that you rarely have good design or UX guidelines as it stands in most projects, let alone appropriately defining and testing how you transition or show more than one UX.
For example, how many times have you seen a website that's different for phone or desktop, and one side or the other are missing functionality completely, meaning you often have to force-switch leading to a poorer experience overall.