You know why there's lists of ingredients on all food, and all sorts of other info in manuals and elsewhere even thought most people never read it? I know it's partly because of regulations, but ideally, it would be because of pride of craftsmanship on behalf of the people making them. And at any rate, if someone doesn't want to know what they're eating or using, that's their problem, but they don't get to dictate that to anyone else no matter how many of them there may be.

But in this super new fangled world, where less is more to the point that worse becomes better, there's hardly time to write documentation because you have to shovel more product. Why worry about things like link rot that actual webmasters (that would deserve a title implying mastery) of olden times discussed, when you can have nothing there to begin with, right?

Decent adults have handled and will forever handle everything as follows: You try to enable autonomy and creativity and knowledge in those who have the means and drive for it, and try to make it so it doesn't get in the way of the rest too much. Nothing against elegance and simplicity, but not at the expense of moral and intellectual decency. And what's so impossibly hard about having "advanced options", or even several builds? That users will drop the product for the competition that doesn't even exist anymore? People can magically learn to drive cars without becoming murderers ever when they turn 18 -- but we cannot RISK them getting confused with options in a browser. Give me a break. This is intellectual dishonesty contortion news so much of the time. Hacker is NOT supposed to be the superlative of hack, damnit.

Google is an ad company. Ads are for making people act against their interests, not for informing them. That's where the journey is going for those onboard with it.

> In fact, most people I've seen using the browser have no idea what browser is and find even basic tab interface complicated.

That doesn't mean extra features confuse people necessarily. Also, "most" isn't 95%, nice try there.

People, including developers, tend to ignore the things they don't understand or haven't had time to look into yet. When I open about:config I would have to look up most of that stuff to know what it means, and even then I might leave most of it on default. But I can still go down the list and see if something looks useful to me, and learn more about it if I want to. When I read a manual that has multiple languages, I don't read it every page with a confused stare until I get to the language I actually know. I just skip to the bit I need.

Most kids can't read and write when they get born. Why teach them? Why even run the risk they might learn it from scratch by leaving books around? If this is the information age (heh), you're with the priests of mass illiteracy. Google determines what you see, not your search query. Facebook organizes your content and what you see of what you're interested in, not you. We went from personal computers to walled garden spy devices, and saying that's what people want, as if many in the "industry" (I put it in quotes because that comes from industrious, and I'm not seeing the diligence and craftsmanship that would warrant such associations) don't want that to the point of pushing and pushing and pushing to get it, is essentially victim blaming.

(sorry for continually adding to this post, but you know how game consoles where supposed to be superior because you don't have to fuzz about, it just works? now they have all the downsides of computers but none of the advantages, they actually start leaking into and degrading PC gaming, and the people who said "fuck that shit" in the 90s were proven right, once again)

And it's infected Firefox, too. E.g. open the options, and you have to click on "Firefox will [Remember history]" to see there are custom settings available. The only way for a newbie who heard of cookies to find the cookie settings is to click on everything. Lame, especially considering the padding and line spacing. It's not users who are confused, it's developers who are lazy. They just assume because this is the direction "everybody" is going in, any shoddy rationalization, and fake statistics like "95%" and "most", will do. After all, it wasn't your idea, you're just going along.