<b>"User intent" is the ethics word everyone weaponizes and nobody defines</b>

<b>"User intent" is the ethics word everyone weaponizes and nobody defines</b>

Hot take: both sides of the cloaking debate hide behind "user intent," and neither has ever actually measured it.

The affiliate says the user "intended" to find the aggressive offer. The platform says the user "intended" a safe experience. Both are projecting a clean story onto a click that was mostly impulse, boredom, and a thumb. We've turned an unmeasurable abstraction into the trump card of every argument. If your entire defense rests on what a stranger "really wanted," you don't have an ethic — you have a Rorschach test.

Intent is the fog everyone claims to see through.

Agree? Fight me in the comments.