Defaults decide outcomes. They are soft law.
Most people live inside them and call it "choice".
At scale, safety/ease beats sovereignty unless the latter is defaulted into UX.
Opt-out vs. opt-in can 5–10x adoption with no persuasion. This is how governments and platforms steer behavior at scale.
Defaults lower cognitive tax and social risk — so people call them "convenient" while locking into long-term paths (payments, news feeds, storage, wallets).
He who sets the defaults:
- defines what "normal" looks like,
- defines what "consent" is presumed to be,
- defines who has to spend effort and social capital to deviate.
For most people, "My preference" = "whatever the default made least painful".
Defaults are the main interface of coercion that still looks voluntary.
Governments and platforms don't need to ban competitors; they just set defaults so that exiting them is slow, confusing, or socially suspicious.
If you care about real agency, treat every default as a deliberate bet against you, unless proven otherwise.
Assume defaults serve:
- the platform's revenue,
- the state's control and stability goals,
- and only incidentally your convenience.
Design your own personal defaults instead of accepting whatever someone selected for you.
If you're not actively setting or resisting defaults, you're not "choosing", you're being routed.
