Kevin Marks, writing on Medium:

There’s a widespread movement in design circles to reduce the contrast between text and background, making type harder to read. Apple is guilty. Google is, too. So is Twitter. […]

My plea to designers and software engineers: Ignore the fads and go back to the typographic principles of print — keep your type black, and vary weight and font instead of grayness. You’ll be making things better for people who read on smaller, dimmer screens, even if their eyes aren’t aging like mine. It may not be trendy, but it’s time to consider who is being left out by the web’s aesthetic.

I’ve always found this trend troubling, why wouldn’t designers want their text to be crisp? Instead, they settle for muddy grays on slightly-less-muddy light gray. I think it looks like trash and is difficult to read.