The day I started believing
The author recounts a pivotal moment when a near-death experience or profound personal event shifted their perspective, leading them to start believing in something they previously doubted or dismissed.
Background
- David Poblador is a software engineer who wrote about his long-held skepticism toward "growth" and "engagement" metrics in big tech. The article is a first-person account of how he became convinced that these metrics are systematically manipulated.
- The piece references **dark patterns** — interface designs deliberately crafted to trick users into doing things they didn't intend (e.g., accidentally subscribing, sharing data, or staying on a platform longer).
- It also touches on **A/B testing at scale**: tech companies running millions of experiments to find the smallest design change that produces the largest behavioral response, often without users' awareness.
- The "day I started believing" refers to the author's shift from thinking these were just edge cases or bad design to believing the manipulation is intentional, pervasive, and built into the business model of ad-supported platforms.
- The broader context is the growing public and regulatory backlash (e.g., GDPR, EU's Digital Services Act, US hearings) against surveillance capitalism and addictive design.