Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll • Hacker News Board

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#81

Post by throwanem » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 4:18 PM UTC

edwhitesell wrote: post #45

noxToken wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an example of that? That can't be a thing.

It's essentially another dark pattern. In accordance with the use policy of the Facebook APIs you can't require a like in exchange for something. If you see that, definitely report the offender to Facebook. Source: I used to be involved with a WiFi company that offered Facebook "login". Edit: clarified my involvement

> In accordance with the use policy of the Facebook APIs you can't require a like in exchange for something.

Unless you're Facebook, I guess: https://www.facebook.com/business/facebook-wifi

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#82

Post by Grue3 » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 4:19 PM UTC

Here's my most recent dark pattern fail.

I tried to use Uber for the first time yesterday (in Moscow). The car wouldn't come for way too long, so I clicked cancel and thought that was it. I even selected a reason for cancelling. As I was walking home, a driver called me saying that he had arrived. I said that I had cancelled the trip a long time ago. Then the app showed that my trip cost 0 and asked to rate the driver, which I did.

When I came home, I discovered that they sneakily took money for that trip! I complained to the support and they said it's working as intended, but they refunded me... in bonus points that can only be used to pay for Uber, which I never intended to use again after this "experience".

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#83

Post by otterley » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 4:20 PM UTC

Grue3 wrote: post #82

Here's my most recent dark pattern fail. I tried to use Uber for the first time yesterday (in Moscow). The car wouldn't come for way too long, so I clicked cancel and thought that was it. I even selected a reason for cancelling. As I was walking home, a driver called me saying that he had arrived. I said that I had cancelled the trip a long time ago. Then the app showed that my trip cost 0 and asked to rate the drive…

Write them back and tell them you don't want credits, and they'll refund your money.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#84

Post by maxxxxx » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 4:21 PM UTC

gthtjtkt wrote: post #57

Experienced this recently with Hello Fresh. The 'Cancel Subscription' button was so hard to find that I had to spend 10 minutes Googling it (the placement had changed over time and was always difficult to find, so a lot of the search results were no longer relevant). You had to click a button to reveal the cancellation link, and it was a tiny line of grey text on a beige background. Then, to make it better, they star…

AOL was notorious for almost being impossible to cancel. I remember when I had Netflix for a while and decided to cancel it was really easy to do so. Although I canceled that alone gave me a positive impression of Netflix.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#85

Post by partiallypro » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 4:22 PM UTC

Stamps.com is so scammy. You sign up for a free trial, then get enrolled without asking you into their payment plan. Then when you go to cancel, you can't. You have to call. But guess what? It has weird hours. When you finally do call during their hours it's a machine that you're talking to, not a person.

Ok, so you have hours of when I can cancel...clearly not because you have shift hours, since I'm talking to a machine. So why do you have specified hours?

Stamps.com billed me for 8 months before I noticed they were billing me. I only noticed it because I was doing my taxes. The billing size was just small enough to fly under my radar, but just big enough to hurt a bit. I feel that chose that pricing for that reason.

Anyhow, I saw they were in this story, so I felt I would expand upon their "dark patterns."

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#86

Post by ethanbond » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 4:23 PM UTC

nommm-nommm wrote: post #78

ethanbond wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out privacy.com! Easy burner CC numbers.

Old idea. There's banks and cc companies that currently and previously have offered this. It never caught on because there's not a market for it.

There's at least a market of one, the person to whom I replied. Thanks for the snark though.

And none of my banks offer this that I know of? If they do, the UX certainly isn't anything like this.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#87

Post by notatoad » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 4:24 PM UTC

wldcordeiro wrote: post #24

someone7x wrote: post #12

The thing about dark patterns is that feels like an abuse of the commons. Because of scummy practices like this I am absolutely less willing to explore a site that requests my email, or buy something from a random site (I just see if it's on amazon and buy it there). For example, a few days ago there was a Show HN about PlateJoy, which sounded really interesting. But, the only way I could learn about it was to enter…

Yep, AllTrails recently went with a dark-pattern, want to see any info on the trail? Sign-up. If you don't you'll get a brief flash of the detail page before redirecting to a sign-up form.

This is basically what any discussion on dark patterns i have ever seen devolves into: "a service i use has an interaction i don't like. it's a dark pattern." the whole term is basically a meaningless buzzword now.

requiring an email address to access a service is no more of a dark pattern than requiring payment to access a service. they're taking something of value in exchange for providing something of value. it's only a "dark pattern" if they trick you into providing your email address somehow.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#88

Post by mikeash » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 4:25 PM UTC

partiallypro wrote: post #85

Stamps.com is so scammy. You sign up for a free trial, then get enrolled without asking you into their payment plan. Then when you go to cancel, you can't. You have to call. But guess what? It has weird hours. When you finally do call during their hours it's a machine that you're talking to, not a person. Ok, so you have hours of when I can cancel...clearly not because you have shift hours, since I'm talking to a mac…

I always assume that any "free trial" where they have my payment information is going to automatically roll over into a paid subscription, and avoid the whole thing unless I already want to pay for the service.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#89

Post by blendo » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 4:27 PM UTC

JTon wrote: post #8

I'm happy to see mainstream technews bringing this topic to a wider audience. As I'm sure most HN regulars are aware, we've had many high ranking posts on this topic For those wanting to go right to the source: http://darkpatterns.org/

Things were pretty cool until 1994. Then Canter and Siegel unleashed one of the first commercial dark patterns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie...

It's been a race to the bottom ever since. Dave Egger's fine and breezy novel "The Circle" illustrates the ethical issues quite nicely.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#90

Post by mikeash » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 4:29 PM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #86

nommm-nommm wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Old idea. There's banks and cc companies that currently and previously have offered this. It never caught on because there's not a market for it.

There's at least a market of one, the person to whom I replied. Thanks for the snark though. And none of my banks offer this that I know of? If they do, the UX certainly isn't anything like this.

I don't think it's snark, it's just a factual statement that this isn't new. They were pretty common about ten years ago, but I haven't seen any recently.

I used to use them a lot. My favorite feature was that you not only got a one-time number, but you could set a limit for it so you couldn't be overcharged. Great for ordering stuff from shady web sites.

Well, it was my favorite feature until I did that with a shady web site and got overcharged. I called my bank to ask WTF, and they said they automatically padded the limit by 10% because people are idiots and forget to account for shipping charges and such.

I did get my money back after fighting with the scammers for a while. Threatening them with a chargeback tends to bring them to their senses.