“X viewed your profile” is an incredibly creepy pattern, especially when you can’t turn it off. Engineers and people building apps have accepted surveillance and abandoned privacy so thoughtlessly. They don’t even consider the negative implications of their actions.

“Wow thanks to all our insanely intrusive in-app spying mechanisms we noticed this drives engagement, let’s do more of that” 🤦‍♂️

Imagine walking into a store and there are 50 different cameras pointed at you from all possible directions monitoring your every move, used to collect data on what sells more products based on every action you make. People would be freaked out.

This is effectly what most apps do today, except the cameras are invisible. This would likely be illegal in meatspace, but few think about it when on their phone. Why would they? They hide it from you. Fuck in-app analytics.