Why CTA button
is not CTA Anymore

YouTube, Spotify, and half the internet replaced one of design's most honest interactions with a label that looks like a button. Here's what they broke and WHY they did it.

YouTube, Spotify, and half the internet replaced one of design's most honest interactions with a label that looks like a button. Here's what they broke and WHY they did it.

It used to be simple: you'd hit "Follow" on a YouTube channel or a Spotify artist, and the button would shift to "Unfollow." The label was doing two jobs at once — it was a confirmation receipt and a new call to action.

You knew the action landed, and you knew exactly what to do next if you changed your mind. Exactly… if you want to CHANGE your mind.

That's gone now. Today, you click "Follow" and the button becomes "Following." Which sounds fine, until you think about it for a second. "Following" is a status report. It tells you where you are — but it doesn't tell you what you can do. It's a label masquerading as a button.

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The difference might seem trivial, but it maps directly to one of the oldest principles in interaction design: every interactive element should communicate both its state and its affordance.

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=== WHY IT HAPPENED? ===

The argument for "Following" usually sounds like cleaner, friendlier language. Less confrontational than "Unfollow" staring you in the face. And sure, there's something to that — nobody wants to feel like they're being constantly offered an exit. But there's a difference between softening a label and removing agency from the interface.

A user who meant to unfollow but couldn't find how becomes a user who sees content they didn't want, ignores it, and slowly trains themselves to tune out the whole feed.

This is how dark patterns don't show up in post-mortems. They're too small to blame and too consistent to ignore.




=== THE REASON ===

None of this is accidental. Every "Unfollow" button sitting visible on screen is a quiet invitation to leave. Product teams A/B test these things obsessively, and at some point someone noticed that hiding the exit — replacing an actionable "Unfollow" with a passive "Following" — reduced churn. Maybe by 2%. Maybe by 0.5%. Doesn't matter. At YouTube's scale, 0.5% is millions of retained subscriptions. Just think about it… millions.

The button still changes state. It still looks like it's doing its job. Big platforms can afford to do this because switching costs are high. You're not going to leave YouTube because the Unfollow button got worse. And they know that.

Remember: the more inexperienced you are, the more you need to learn about business needs.

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