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Comment by mtlynch | Hacker News Reader

>This project is making the commercial web more bearable, but I'd rather spend my energy on making the non-commercial web more attractive.

They don't spell it out explicitly, but I think the author realized that they were effectively acting as an enabler.

The letsblock.it tool encouraged customers to use workarounds so that they could still continue engaging with big tech companies that are so customer-hostile. Instead, the author is choosing to let big tech make their experience worse, and customers have more incentive to seek out non-commercial alternatives.

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> They don't spell it out explicitly, but I think the author realized that they were effectively acting as an enabler. > The letsblock.it tool encouraged customers to use workarounds so that they could still continue engaging with big tech companies that are so customer-hostile.

With only 800 active users, letsblock.it obviously didn't have any measurable effect. To think otherwise is hubris.

People use products from "big tech companies" because they offer something that is useful that others don't offer. In the author's conflation of "big tech" and "commercial", I think they need more clarity in what they really want to accomplish, what their mission is. Being "against" something is a valid goal in life, but then you really have to be very strategic about it. Being "for something" and pouring your energy into making something that people want or need seems more productive. Even then, you want to be strategic because there's an infinite number of things you could go after. Do you diffuse your attention or do you focus? Supporting the "non-commercial web" seems too vague in my opinion.

Such a weird comment. Are you trying to debate them back into working on the project?

> Are you trying to debate them back into working on the project?

No, I think the project was based on wrong assumptions (strategy) and poorly executed.

I am merely putting constructive ideas out there.

I don’t think you are. You have a very utilitarian set of ideas, where optimization towards some unspecified goal of commercial success is the objective, and everything else is deemed ‘lack of strategy’, or ‘poor’.

> You have a very utilitarian set of ideas, where optimization towards some unspecified goal of commercial success is the objective, and everything else is deemed ‘lack of strategy’, or ‘poor’.

Their strategy was to provide free UX enhancements for commercial companies. When they are against the commercial web!

Success does not have to be commercial. It can be about non-monetary impact. They had 800 users and tells themselves "launching letsblock.it and keeping it running for over two years is a big success in my book". Claiming that outcome as a big success is odd and I don't know that the author is learning from failure. When they can say to themselves "I failed in my mission, let me learn from it," I think they will have a larger chance to grow, be more successful, have bigger impact.

“constructive ideas” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here in ignoring your lack of empathy. i am always amazed by the people that provide “constructive ideas”, and then fail to take any “constructive ideas” from others.

you are failing in the same way as the original author by your own metric

> “constructive ideas” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here in ignoring your lack of empathy.

Empathy can be “nice” but does not necessarily mean it is helpful, and can sometimes even be harmful.

When you care about someone, but fail to challenge them directly you are not helping them, you just coddle them.

> Being "against" something is a valid goal in life, but then you really have to be very strategic about it. Being "for something" and pouring your energy into making something that people want or need seems more productive.

From the announcement:

> but I'd rather spend my energy on making the non-commercial web more attractive.

The author pretty explicitly states that they want to shift from an "against something" mentality (against disruptive content in proprietary apps, against the intended user-experience of those apps) to a "for something" mentality (building and supporting non-commercial services).

I genuinely do not see the complaint.

> With only 800 active users, letsblock.it obviously didn't have any measurable effect.

Unless the author was planning on never making a popular project, I don't think this is a good way of evaluating direction or effort. In either case, putting in a huge amount of effort to support 800 active users who might otherwise (at least partially) shift their attention to better services seems reasonable to question. If we take it that there is any value in improving experiences for a small number of people, then there is equal value in making it more pleasant for those people to use Libre services.

And of course that's even before asking about the opportunity cost. If an author can take the same amount of time they were devoting to this and instead build tools that make a Libre/Community service more attractive for 800 people, that's arguably a much higher impact activity on the health and growth of that service than wasting that effort trying to make proprietary platforms palatable.

But again, if your point here is to focus in on a mission, starting with "nothing I build will have any impact on any of this" is just not really helpful at all.

> Supporting the "non-commercial web" seems too vague in my opinion.

A general mission statement/direction is often the first step towards narrowing down product ideas. I think making a decision in a direction (ie, pivoting from doing free UX enhancements for commercial companies towards saying, "I want to benefit services that don't feel exploitative") is a good place to start. Of course over time the author will probably narrow that focus, but this at least lays out a category that they can start looking into.

> > Supporting the "non-commercial web" seems too vague in my opinion. A general mission statement/direction is often the first step towards narrowing down product ideas. I think making a decision in a direction (ie, pivoting from doing free UX enhancements for commercial companies towards saying, "I want to benefit services that don't feel exploitative") is a good place to start. Of course over time the author will probably narrow that focus, but this at least lays out a category that they can start looking into.

This further emphasizes the lack of clarity, focus, and suboptimal strategy. When I read your assessment of their previous strategy "doing free UX enhancements for commercial companies" while the person is against commerce, I do not walk away with a sense that they have reconciled for themselves what is worth going after and so the non-specific "I want to support communities and applications that respect their users and value what we have to say." I predict will likely also have no registrable impact.

I have more candid feedback for the author and that is to take a more clear look at how they evaluate themselves. They say "launching letsblock.it and keeping it running for over two years is a big success in my book." Instead they should call it what it is - a failure - and learn from it. Failure is fine, failure is great, even. They would be more successful by dreaming bigger and with more focus.

> When I read your assessment of their previous strategy "doing free UX enhancements for commercial companies" while the person is against commerce, I do not walk away with a sense that they have reconciled for themselves what is worth going after [...]

> Instead they should call it what it is - a failure - and learn from it.

I'm going to be really blunt here, it sounds a lot less like your critique is that the author isn't clear about their goals or that the author doesn't know how to evaluate themselves -- and more like your critique is that the author's evaluation of themselves and their goals doesn't match yours.

Running any project with 800 users for 2 years as a hobbyist can be reasonably called a success. This reads a lot like how VC people will come into Mom and Pop shops and say, "this business is a failure, they just have years of loyal customers in a niche, what a disgrace! They obviously haven't thought enough about their product focus."

> Running any project with 800 users for 2 years as a hobbyist can be reasonably called a success.

That's not success, and certainly not a "big success" which is the author's self-reflection.

Unless the author's goal was to run something for 2 years, accumulate 800 users, and then shutting it down.

> This reads a lot like how VC people will come into Mom and Pop shops and say

I think they set out to make a big impact. That means growth, but doesn't imply commercial success.

> That's not success, and certainly not a "big success" which is the author's self-reflection.

Again, the author is not obligated in any way to align themselves to your definition of success. And them disagreeing with your definition of success is not the same thing as them being confused or not having thought enough about what they want. It might just mean they disagree with you.

> I think they set out to make a big impact. That means growth

No, not necessarily. Growth can be a component of impact, but they are not synonymous, and many highly impactful projects never see a lot of attention or direct growth -- they enable other projects to succeed or fix some of the many diverse pain points that subsets of users for those projects have.

800 people might not fix the whole tech ecosystem (it is impossibly broken which so I can see why the author would like to just go work on something else). But if you got 800 people in a room to say thanks, I bet it would feel pretty cool.

(This isn’t intended as a full counter argument against your broader point, which I’m still not really sure either way about, I just wanted to note that sometimes we have small effects and that’s OK. We’re only individuals after all, it wouldn’t make sense to expect every person to change the world in some sense, it would be chaos).

> But if you got 800 people in a room to say thanks, I bet it would feel pretty cool.

Absolutely. It feels great, and that is a perfectly valid reason to spend the time - so that you feel the warmth from others.

ding ding ding!

Exactly. If the commercial enshittified web bothers you to the point of trying to fix it, at some point you'll realize that it's a quixotic crusade, and that you don't even want to engage with the content offered on these platforms anymore. Why would you? The shittier the platform, the shittier the content.

The future of good online interactions is in small, closed, well-maintained and asynchronous communities.

> Why would you? The shittier the platform, the shittier the content.

Paradoxically that's the way some people find salvation. They have to hit the bottom. Instead of making their experience of digital abuse more palatable what they need is more YouTube, more Facebook, more Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram. Until something inside snaps and their soul pukes.

I'd totally get it if the author realised they were just prolonging users' misery. As Nietzsche said; "What is shaky, push it!"

The last line resonates with me as the discord I hang out in is my only source of good recommendations anymore. Almost all of the good stuff I've seen in the past years comes from there. My algorithmic feeds by comparison are all high-viewcount trash for idiots. That onion article from years ago about the lowest common denominator dropping at an alarming rate has only gotten more true over time.

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