Technology

While I think the basic idea of deliberately introducing friction is interesting, I'd say the philosophers cited are making what's really a psychology statement, and so exceeding their qualifications, which irks me. The essay itself is philosophy, at least in the "design philosophy" sense.

If you are designing friction in, how do you go about it without turning away users? BeReal is the first successful-ish example that comes to mind. Forcing you to post at an inconvenient time is arguably friction-y, but people sign up in that case because the friction is experienced socially all at once, and it's a statement against the atmosphere conventional social media creates. For more practical tools that might be hard to replicate.

A lot of the best communities to be in have a barrier to entry

The community of pilots, the people who work in medicine or on floor X, the people who are proud of what they can accomplish and recognize automatically that the value of the interactions they have are not worthless.

Idk how you bring that to the online space. But it is missing, yes. I like this essay.

it's an interesting article, but i think the authors are conflating friction for wanting genuine human interaction; its easier than ever for me to make friends because i can instantly connect with and message back and forth, quickly and in real time, over various platforms e.g. discord, the depth of which is only limited by our interactions and how we treat them. forcing us back to sms/email/paper mail doesn't make our interactions deeper, even though it adds friction. it means we can easily choose what the depth of connection we want is

that isn't to say that there aren't examples where less friction leads to less interaction. dating apps are a great example. but i think the authors are conflating the friction for the interaction. yes, you could add friction that would encourage interaction, but you could also add friction that doesn't. i think the more salient point would be, encouraging interaction often includes friction, but one shouldn't shy away from that, as a UI/UX developer

which, granted, isn't as catchy of a title. but they could have gone into greater detail for that in the article, too

regardless of this critique, i enjoyed reading it and the perspective it offered, even if i don't strictly agree