Who treats their users better — tech or drug dealers?

Photo by Dmitry Ratushny on Unsplash

It has been said that the only 2 industries who refer to their customers ‘users’ are drug dealers and tech companies.

“There are only two industries that call their customers ‘users’: illegal drugs and software”
- Edward Tufte

One of these…

• Count their number of daily active users (DAU) — you have to get them back every day, not just when they need your product
• Monitor everything these DAU are doing while using your product
• Try to find ways to increase how much of the product they use and how long they spend doing it
• They want to make you addicted
• They use data to track and target you
• They use psychological theories to nudge you into certain behaviours (that aren’t always good for you)
• They use dark paterns to trick you into doing one thing, when you think you are doing another
• Try to make their users ‘hooked’ on their product
• They want their products to be ‘habit forming’
• I mean, literally, they read the book on it