"Recommended" label in preferences is harmful UI

[impiaaa]

#10977 introduces an important-looking label next to some preference items, including "Auto-play animated GIFs" and "Disclose application used to send toots."

The label is misleading and it is not functional: it does not reliably indicate the default option, and default options are not indicated in any other way. The label is subjective: recommended by whom? and why?

Most importantly, the label pushes users to choose options they might not want by shaming them. I would say this is similar to Confirmshaming, but I'm also reminded of videogames that have an easy mode but label it something like "cakewalk mode for whiny babies who don't like fun." If you don't want me to choose the option, why have the option in the first place? Why do you have to insult the user in the process? It's manipulative and really just bad practice.

If you want to suggest that these options could be dangerous, put it under an "advanced" mode, like many other apps do. If you want to have a way to revert options to their default, have a way of doing that. There's no reason to tell the user that the way they're using the app is "wrong."

[Gargron]

Where are you getting the insult from? Let's take GIF autoplay for example. It's off by default to accommodate people with motion sickness and epilepsy. But it's also what I as developer hear the most from new people: "Why don't the GIFs animate, can we please have that". So the label highlights that option to make it stand out.

In other cases, for things that are on by default, it indicates that there's a reason such a default was chosen and you should leave it as is unless you specifically know what you want: for example aggregation of multiple boosts of the same post in the home feed. It's a very technical option and the default serves the most people well and randomly disabling it might lead to a degraded user experience (home feed consists of 20x the same post)

Is it really a mystery that "recommended" means recommended by the developers? I think it's a stretch to call it harmful UI. The way i see it, it provides some guidance for our rather extensive and overwhelming options.

[Cassolotl]

recommended by whom? and why?

I can't see why someone would recommend gifs be autoplaying, for example. Why are these recommended but not others? Maybe a tooltip when you hover over recommended could be like "autoplaying gifs is off by default because some gifs can trigger epileptic seizures, but we recommend that that you turn it on because..."

[impiaaa]

Where are you getting the insult from?

Sorry, I guess that part of the metaphor wasn't clear. I'm not personally insulted by the "recommended" label. I only brought up "easy mode" because it's the same kind of manipulation: technically giving the user a choice but making them feel bad for choosing one way over another.

But it's also what I as developer hear the most from new people: "Why don't the GIFs animate, can we please have that". So the label highlights that option to make it stand out.

There are other ways to make an option to stand out that aren't as subjective. For example, using bold type, or putting it at the top.

It's a very technical option and the default serves the most people well and randomly disabling it might lead to a degraded user experience

This is why I suggested either removing highly technical options, or moving them to a separate "advanced" tab, mode, or heading. Or, like the above comment suggests, actually explain what the option does, and include in the explanation something like "If unsure, leave this on." If a tooltip is too subtle, another common design I see is a little circled "i" next to the label, telling the user that there is a more detailed description.

Is it really a mystery that "recommended" means recommended by the developers?

I mean, I, personally, know that you, @Gargron, recommend these options because I had to look up the pull request and saw that you authored it. But Mastodon has hundreds of contributors, and they might not all have the same opinion. Moreover, an while an end-user might be aware of Mastodon-the-software-project, most of the curation of their experience comes from their instance admins. I can definitely see people assuming the labels come from them.

I can see why you want to better curate your users' experience. My point is that there are more elegant ways to maintain a vision, without confusing the user and without resorting to manipulation.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[trwnh]

perhaps the "recommended" badge should be reworked into a page that displays commonly-changed settings? like a quick landing page for settings