That's a bummer, I was thinking this was more of a game to recognize design little details in widespread applications (Facebook, iMessage, iOS...) - so in that view the "subjective opinions" were not subjective but how those apps are doing design choices. Not saying they are good because, for example with the 'Skip' button in the Facebook example, people can't tell if that's actually a clickable button from the first sight, which is a terrible design in usability terms. Not sure who came with that "designing secondary buttons as if they were not buttons" thing, but the first time I saw them was with Android Lollipop and their then-new "material design".
Putting what you're saying in perspective only tells that even now employers are helping to the dribbblisation of design[0][1][2] - and helping developers hate us designers even more.
I misinterpreted OP's comment, thanks for the clarifications. A company deliberately choosing not to adhere to accessible web standards because dark patterns benefit the company by converting more users in their sales funnel.
This needs to be regulated against, it only grows and gets worse over time.
> and helping developers hate us designers even more.
This is off-topic, but since I have you... Would you happen to have an idea about why designers don't seem to engage in OSS much? There's a wealth of open source software (and developers), but I've never once seen a designer open a PR fixing some design/UX issue...
UX is rarely a very rewarding process. It's not nearly as much fun as writing new software. OSS often has the same problem with bug fixes, which are also less fun than adding new features.
It's even worse than bugs, since bugs are usually localized, while UX issues often require substantial redesign even for something that feels like a very specific issue. That puts you in front of a whole lot of stakeholders, and even more work, for something that isn't going to feel nearly as big an accomplishment as adding a new feature.
So unless you get a UX programmer who also happens to be interested in your particular open source project, things will stay for years. That's a lot easier for programmer's tools than for anything that requires domain experience.
I think it often boils down to everyone having an opinion about design/UX. When fixing a software bug in a PR there is often a fairly clear subset of "correct" solutions, but when it comes to design/ux the set is generally bigger and everyone (even non-designers) will have an opinion on how it should look.
Hm, maybe, bikeshedding is a killer in these things... I haven't even seen people attempt it, though. Maybe they all got scared away by us developers years ago?
Putting what you're saying in perspective only tells that even now employers are helping to the dribbblisation of design[0][1][2] - and helping developers hate us designers even more.
[0] https://www.intercom.com/blog/the-dribbblisation-of-design/ [1] https://medium.com/intercom-inside/the-dribbblisation-of-des... [2] https://graphically.io/blog/the-dribbblisation-of-design/