>You are the one who made the initial comparison to B2C apps, so it seems like a fair question to me.

The relevant part of B2C is the 2C part, not the B. Mass market apps are generally ridden with telemetry and SDKs. Moreover I'm not sure how you think it's a "fair question" to go from a remark about how other apps are equally bad, to thinking I want the US government to operate as a business. It's like doing:

A: "I called the IRS and was put on hold for 2 hours, can you believe that?"

B: "To be fair that's the experience calling into most businesses, like banks or the cable company"

A: "Wow so you think we should be running the IRS like a bank?"

>I think most people would except an official government app to be held to a higher standard than the average B2C app.

Is this a "yes, in an ideal world that's how things should be" type of statement, or are you claiming "yes, government agencies have a track record of delivering technical excellence on software projects, and this particular project was especially bad"? The former is basically a meaningless platitude, and I don't think anyone seriously thinks the latter is true.

It is sarcasm. I always get screwed by Poe's law, since dry sarcastic parodies of extremist views is one of my favorite methodologies for producing humor.

If only. It would be a far better state of of affairs if the US government sucks like every other first world country. No other first country are waging war in the middle east, having paramilitary forces terrorize residents, or are undergoing a partial government shutdown.

Just because an app embeds YouTube instead of creating their own video hosting solution that does not mean that does not mean that the app sucks.

For all our faults I am geniunely impressed by gov.uk. its not pretty, its not particularly fast, and its certainly not flashly, but I've never once not been able to find what I needed or have a flow not work.