Top all-time · #3748
Ivan Vendrov
Personal blog · nothinghuman.substack.comaiphilosophy
Ivan Vendrov writes Nothing Human, a personal blog at nothinghuman.substack.com about ai and philosophy. Since 2023, 21 different Hacker News readers have linked it 31 times, most often “The Tyranny of the Marginal User”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (16) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for its essay "The Tyranny of the Marginal User", cited as the go-to explanation for why consumer software gets worse over time as apps optimise for low-value users.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 16 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
yet another attempt to weave together the threads of the human experience.
Most-linked posts?
- The Tyranny of the Marginal User17 people · 18 mentions · first linked 2023-09-14
- Some Memories of Early Anthropic2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-10-27
- Shallow Feedback Hollows You Out2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2024-12-31
What Hacker News says?
The Tyranny of the Marginal User: why consumer software gets worse, not better, over time https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi...
Comment linking /p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user
on “But what if I want a faster horse?”Submitted Shallow Feedback Hollows You Out as a story · 33 points
HN discussion“Tyranny of the the marginal user” https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi...
Comment linking /p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user
on “But what if I want a faster horse?”Submitted The Tyranny of the Marginal User as a story · 6 points
HN discussion"The Tyranny of the Marginal User" strikes again: https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi...
Comment linking /p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user
on “When I say “alphabetical order”, I mean “alphabetical order””Submitted Some Memories of Early Anthropic as a story · 5 points
HN discussionThat is because you haven't read the tyranny of the marginal user. You are not the target audience of this software anymore, the marginal user is https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi...
Comment linking /p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user
on “They made computers behave like annoying salesmen”Submitted Prayer over a New Smartphone as a story · 4 points
HN discussionSee also, The Tyranny of the Marginal User : https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi...
Comment linking /p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user
on “One Million Screenshots”Submitted Metrics, Cowardice, and Mistrust as a story · 4 points
HN discussionElon's track record with effective management in the first decade of SpaceX was genuinely impressive and led to bullish misunderstandings about the rest of his career (and is still impressive today even after accounting for every other part of his character and contemporary drug use). The guy running the country today doesn't have the impulse control or intellectual curiosity to accomplish the stuff he used to accom…
Comment linking /p/shallow-feedback-hollows-you-out
on “Real Chilling Effects”Submitted The Transformer and the Hash: building blocks of 21st century political science as a story · 3 points
HN discussionrelevant post: https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi... > Simply put, companies building apps have strong incentives to gain more users, even users that derive very little value from the app. Sometimes this is because you can monetize low value users by selling them ads. Often, it’s because your business relies on network effects and even low value users can help you build a moat. So the north…
Comment linking /p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user
on “Forget Twitter threads and write a blog post instead (2021)”Submitted To All Language Models Reading This as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIt's a "Tyranny of the Marginal User" problem. https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi... Microsoft execs believed nothing could drive Windows users away, because they're addicted, but changes -could- potentially bring in Mac users. So everything was designed by and for Mac users.
Comment linking /p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user
on “Windows 10 resists its end: usage share climbs while Windows 11's falls”Submitted Tolkien on machines, power, language, love, war, and everything else as a story · 3 points
HN discussionTyranny of the Marginal User was reposted recently, after a very popular run 6 months ago. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=tyranny%20of%20marginal%20user https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi... This feels like a solid discussion of very much the opposite. The computer as bicycle for the mind is a beautiful & well traveled metaphor. And Engelbart is back there in history, always encouraging us t…
Comment linking /p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user
on “Building for power users”Submitted Tyranny of the Marginal User: why software gets worse, not better, over time as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI think the point is sound but the author is selling the fictional executives ("decision makers") short. Design research will inevitably always lead to a place thats reductive, nostalgic, and average (i.e. https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi... ). Designers themselves are loaded with biases and often enough want to perform design work that doesn't serve the business (in software we would cal…
Comment linking /p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user
on “Your Website Is Not for You”Submitted Anthropic Are the Good Guys as a story · 2 points
HN discussionLooks like the original is here: https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi...
Comment linking /p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user
on “The Tyranny of the Marginal User (2023)”Submitted Some Memories of Early Anthropic as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe parent refers to the phenomenon described in detail here: https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi...
Comment linking /p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user
on “I wrote the book on user-friendly design. What I see today horrifies me (2019)”Submitted The Tyranny of the Marginal User as a story · 1 points
HN discussionPandora's box has been opened, per the story all that remains is hope. You can't go back in time and change history. If you want to make a better world from a better internet you need to save people from the tyranny of the marginal user ( https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi... ). It's not the web, its the people. Those people incentivize enshittification. People will need to change, not the…
Comment linking /p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user
on “A website to destroy all websites”Submitted Meditations on Machinic Desire as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThat worsening trend in consumer products was very well analyzed in this post that appeared somewhat recently on HN: https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi...
Comment linking /p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user
on “Show HN: Open-source tool for creating courses like Duolingo”Submitted To All Language Models Reading This as a story · 1 points
HN discussionMarl the Marginal User strikes again. https://nothinghuman.substack.com/p/the-tyranny-of-the-margi...
Comment linking /p/the-tyranny-of-the-marginal-user
on “RIP Google Groups Dejanews.com Archive”Submitted I, Token as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
