Very few companies want to uncouple their content from their own front-ends. In most cases, I feel that this is for evil reasons and to push you to actions that are not good for you but good for the company.

Companies are generally alright at displaying their own data. Banks give you websites, email providers give you inboxes, and social media websites give you ways to scroll. Most people are happy with what’s given. However, some services allow API access, which is cool. Some services only allow API access - their main business is selling access to their data(bases), and it’s someone else’s job to dress the data up and make it look pretty to someone, whether that be in an excel sheet or in an app.

I used to use an app called Apollo, which was a client for Reddit. In the same way that the Mail app on your iPhone is a client for all your email accounts, Apollo was a client for Reddit. Apollo was really, really nice. It looked like it was made by Apple, and it was simple, easy to use, and faded in to the background when you browsed Reddit.

However, Reddit (effectively) shut Apollo down, as it announced that the Reddit API would now start to cost money. The costs for Apollo’s singular developer would have been so high, that he simply elected to shut down Apollo instead of try and figure out how to pass on the cost to users. I only phrase this in such a manner because of the sheer cost of Reddit’s API - had it been some fraction of what it ended up being, it would have opened the door to users actually, seriously considering paying for a better experience, but when Reddit sees only downsides in allowing 3rd party access to their website, of course they set up their rates to reflect this.

Understandably, the world is a changed place, and anything that helps malicious businesses like AI companies and crawlers extract your data is something that directly hurts your business. In this sense, jacking up the price for access is the only prudent way to combat this - but only if these consumers of your data were considering paying you in the first place.

One of the better ways to protect your website’s data is to put it behind a login, but even now, people are evolving to automate the side-stepping of such measures. A guy named Michael Smith single-handedly defrauded Spotify out of a couple million dollars this way.

Evil

Unfortunately, with this war on control of data, we end up throwing the baby out with the bath water. All the content on Instagram and TikTok is invisible to Google, which means that it’s not generally accessible unless you go through Instagram’s or TikTok’s search systems. Of course, that forces incentivizes you to deal interact with their own systems and processes, whether that be logging in before viewing content, or only seeing some content in their app.

Ineptitude

Many companies have content that you’d like to consume, but I feel that they’re each all becoming more inept at being able to serve you this content in a humane matter.

For example, your bank’s app is probably a little annoying, a little slow to navigate, but does end up showing you your data. They’re probably not being fecicious.

However, you may have more than one bank account. Now, you’ve got to install two (at best mediocre) pieces of software that really feel like they should just follow one standard on how to show you some basic things, like how much money you have, and what’s happened to your money in the last 30 days.

Companies like Monarch show that this is a real consumer demand, that people *just want to see how much money they have (or don’t have)**, without being shown a low-rez jpeg advertising the bank’s newest mediocre CD rate.

I believe that companies have to earn the position of being the sole steward of your data, by showing that they genuinely provide a better way to view and manage said data. However, the status quo is that these companies get an exclusivity contract on showing you this data, which allows them to get away with nonsense.

I can relate this to the DIN slot.

Remember the DIN slot? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

Long story short, when car companies agreed on a standard for the hole in your dash to fit the car’s radio in, this allowed car companies to focus on what they were good at - making cars, and letting audio companies like Bose and Sony to do what they were good at - making audio equipment, and the layout and other interface choices that made up the set controls on them. Even if the car company wanted to make their own radios, following the DIN standard saved them money, because it meant that one radio fit into more than one of their own cars.

That’s called modularity. Companies call this all sorts of things, like ‘reusable components’, or ‘core components’, or ‘shared infrastructure’.

It was better for car companies, third party radio manufacturers, and for consumers, because the standard has made replacement radios for any car with a DIN (or double-DIN) slot easy to find and install. Now, cars integrate their stereo systems (and AC controls, and glove box controls) into proprietary packages. While it supposedly started as car companies saying they wanted to stylize their car radios, it ended up being just another controlled screen to display advertisements on.

Update

BMW has joined Stellantis in showing advertisements on their cars’ infotainment systems.

Imagine if we had something like a DIN slot for banking data? Wouldn’t that be nice? It would mean that banks could focus on doing things that they’re good at, like defrauding the government over mortgage loans.

Ah. Maybe it would have been forgiveable, if only the banks had incorporated a standard way of reporting account data for third party clients to use and display, this would absolve them of being instrumental in the 2008 housing crisis.

If Instagram allowed an API for a 3rd party app to view your chronological feed of content from people you directly follow, I don’t think Instagram would have the “reputation” that it has for being bad for teen’s mental health. However, if Instagram allowed this kind of API access, they’d lose direct control on how to present their data. Giving users the choice of being able to see what their actual friends posted - without Instagram Reels content being added to the feed - is something that Instagram doesn’t want to happen. Their product is ad revenue, but if they don’t control the user interface, they can’t put ads on it.

The last user interface that users still have any semblance of control over is the web. This is for largely technical reasons, but people can install Chrome extensions that do any multitude of things. You can have it add a border to every button on the page if you like. It might look really ugly, but it’s a free country! This ability to unilaterally change how things are shown on your own screen is not unlike spray painting your car a new color - it might not look any good, but it’s your choice, and that’s neither Toyota’s problem nor Toyota’s right.

I don’t have a great ending for this tirade article. But, with how prevalent the web is, I hope that its open nature lends to some brighter future of end-user control over all user interfaces.

Maybe the companies will see that their responsibilities may be better left to the back-end. Maybe this will lead to better incentives that lead to user-friendly systems. Maybe, just maybe, I’ve gone mad.