> As a user, when I set my browser to be full screen, I expect the content to take up the full screen. I bought a nice big 27" monitor, and I want to use it. How dare some UX designer 2,000 miles away from me simply decide that I should only be able to see content on a 5" wide strip down the middle!

I've seen this argument come up before multiple times on HN, and it's wild to me. Having sensible CSS defaults is not a designer dictating that you are only able to see content one way. You might prefer to read text in a giant line spread across a giant monitor, and that's fine, but it's not a freedom thing. It's not denying your browser's role as a user agent that sites have CSS files.

Every single website (HN included) makes CSS decisions for the user. What colors should be used, what is the default contrast. Every single line of CSS on a website is a designer decision by a designer 2000 miles away from you about how they think that content should be presented. And if you don't like that, turn off CSS in your web browser. Assuming you're using Firefox (which you should be using), it's trivial to do.

Of course, browsers should allow overriding CSS, and (imo) they should make it easier to do so and more accessible to non-technical users. And yes, part of making a website that respects the browser as a user agent is shipping HTML that can be viewed unstyled and that is easy to override styles for. Ironically, HN does a horrible job of this -- the HTML is not semantic, the use of tables is so egregious that even stripping the CSS out doesn't really remove all of the styling. The site is really messy if you want to override anything. So that HN uses a design that happens to more closely align with what you want does not make the site more respectful of your browser as a user agent. It just means that you and the designer(s) happen to like the same design.

And in comparison, putting `max-width: 45em` on a text column is not even remotely user hostile, it is a very simple CSS property to override -- especially for designs that use single columns because you can change that CSS property without even worrying about reflow. `max-width` is a default that statistically works better for the majority of users even on large monitors (I use a 32 inch 4K monitor and max-widths make text on that monitor easier to read). But of course, some people are different, and that's fine. Go yell at the browser makers to allow easier CSS overrides, or turn off CSS entirely, or install an extension that lets you add CSS to given pages or spend a weekend building an extension that strips max-width out of stylesheets for every website you visit, or customize Firefox's userContent.css file. There are options here. And if you had made an argument about those options, I'd be 100% on board. CSS for websites should be treated as a default setting instead of as a requirement and browsers should support CSS overrides more easily out-of-the-box.

But the idea that designers are denying user agency by not making a proactive design decision to present by default the specific format you want to read -- it's just ludicrous. You're not asking for user freedom, you're asking for designers to target your preferences instead of other people's. Those two things are not the same.