I don’t know about chess software specifically. But something I’ve noticed in general is tons of software and service development focus and effort has shifted away from empowering the user to do what they want and then (maybe) charging the user for that value. Instead, tons of effort now seems to go into nudging, dark-patterning, de-featuring, and outright coercing users into doing what you (the developer or, more often, the developer’s big-tech employer) want them to do so as to generate as much revenue as possible from some combination of direct user payments, advertisers, content owners, and venture capitalists.
A couple of areas I’ve especially noticed it in -
Music - 20 or so years ago Microsoft (and others, but I’m most familiar with Microsoft) were putting lots of development effort into library based music players. For Windows, this was Windows Media Player. The user owned the music (as files in an industry standard format). The software gradually got better and better at letting you do whatever you wanted with that music. The best feature was automated playlists with programmatic rules. When combined with individual, granular (star) ratings and tags for genre, sub-genre, mood, etc. it became possible to program an automated DJ that did exactly what you wanted, nothing more/nothing less. If it played a song you didn’t want to hear at that time, you didn’t just have to hit “skip” and hope some opaque and other-controlled algorithm insured it didn’t happen again. You could figure out why, and update the rules of the automated playlist so it didn’t happen again. If you heard a new song you liked on the radio, you could buy that song, tag it appropriately, and then it’d show up in all the correct automated playlists. You could keep running an old version of the software as long as you saw fit, and you could change player software itself (or even write your own) without re-buying all the media files, knowing all your music would play in the new software.
10-15 years ago Microsoft quit adding features to Windows Media Player. Nevertheless, it’s still what I almost exclusively use for playing music. I’ve expected any day to hear they are dropping it. Instead I recently heard they’re going to have a “new” version soon in Windows 11. I don’t have high hopes but we’ll see.
What seems to be getting most of the attention now is streaming services where as a user you don’t own the music and your control over what plays is limited. Sure, you can play an individual song or create a static playlist and you can thumb up/down songs. But (at least from what I’ve seen) you can’t exert the kind of absolute control over your music experience that a good library player like Windows Media has. Thumb up/down in particular is pretty useless for anything other than “I never want to hear this song again”. And you have to pay every month or you lose access to it all. And for everything non-static it gives the service an “in” to play you…whatever the service thinks will maximize its revenue. Which may or may not be what you actually want to hear at that time. And if you want to move to a different streaming service good luck taking your ratings (such as they are) with you - you have to start over trying to get enough metadata into that system to get it to behave the way you want. Also, maybe not all the music you like is there and if not it’s not practical to add it into your mixes. And the services can & do change their interfaces and features - as a user you have no control over if or when this happens.
The only advantages I see for users in the streaming services are not having to buy a bunch of music you like up front and not having to store & manage music files yourself. And I’m aware neither of those were issues for me by the time the streaming services came along but maybe they are significant issues for lots of people. So it’s entirely possible the streaming services work better than library players for the majority of people. But the lack of ownership and control in such services is also glaringly obvious and I don’t think it’s accidental.
Video - Netflix is the main example here although my impression of other video services is broadly similar. As a user you never owned videos at Netflix - something I found fine as (unlike music) I only rarely want to watch something multiple times, years apart.
When Netflix started it had two very cool user control features: A queue, which you could order as you wanted. And (like the music example) star ratings of what you’d previously watched (whether on Netflix or elsewhere). Once you’d rated enough videos, Netflix would get pretty good at estimating the star rating you’d give to other Netflix content you hadn’t yet rated. The algorithm was opaque, but at least it worked in so far as the predictions seemed reasonably accurate. You could then add a video to your queue (or not) and even put it in priority position based on the predicted rating. So when you had time to watch videos, you’d go to your queue and your highest priority items (Meaning: stuff you’re most likely to enjoy) would be right at the top.
Some years ago they did away with the star ratings in favor of (like the music streaming services) thumb up / down. Way less informational to their algorithm, and at the same time they dropped the predicted rating that made their algorithm particularly useful. Instead, they suggest shows based on general criteria like genres & popularity, along with some (opaque and in my experience not accurate) effect from what you’ve thumbed up or down.
But at least they kept the queue, and I could guess (not as well as the old algorithm, but better than random) how much I’d like a video and put it at the right place in the queue, and only watch stuff from my queue as opposed to what the service prompted on any given day. Lately they took even that feature away, removing the ability of a user to order their queue as they see fit in favor of an algorithmic queue ordering. So now what’s at the top is explicitly not what you as a Netflix user think you’re most likely to enjoy watching. What’s at the top is whatever the algorithm wants to nudge you to watch.
I’m not sure if, taken as a whole, the no-rating / no queue-ordering is better for Netflix’s subscriber retention than the rating system and self-ordered queue. I think it’s possible - maybe people want to be more passive about what they watch than I do. Or maybe not.
But I’m quite sure it gives their execs much more power over what people actually watch than the old system. It feels super manipulative, and my guess is that’s why they did it. I’d be surprised if it’s not heavily influenced by stuff like what agreements they have with content providers, what shows they’re trying to create “buzz” around, and other factors that I as a user do not want influencing which videos I watch. I have to keep my own list outside of Netflix to maintain the level of control over my video watching that I had under the old system, and near-zero people do that.
In both cases (music and video) I think it’d be easily possible to keep user control features intact while providing an “easier” algorithm-guided interface to users who didn’t want the control. But the developers (or their employers) seem to actively not want that. It seems like they’d explicitly rather manipulate users than give them control.
I don’t know enough to say whether this user-manipulation is economically productive or not. I just know as a user I notice it, find it super annoying, see it as a general industry trend and I’m skeptical about it being good in an economic sense.