abusive and patronizing practice called A/B testing

Why? Practical data on the effect of a change is 1000x better than asking the user or more commonly, just guessing.

For most bad interface parts, when you ask the UI guy why it's like that, you either get:

That's just the way they made it

Some imagined use case literally nobody follows

They watched users using it wrong and stuck guide rails in

abusive and patronizing practice called A/B testing

this is absolutely unhinged. log off

Death to America