Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 193 posts

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#111

Post by Bartweiss »

prplhaz4 wrote: post #94
chimprich wrote: post #92

One pattern I've seen recently that's been increasingly prevalent (but I haven't seen discussed anywhere) is of a form where a site gives you two options in a dialog box along the lines of: Would you like to sign up to our newsletter? o [[[ OK!! ]]] o No I'm an idiot and I don't want to save money or hear about the latest job offers that may change my life (Exaggerated slightly.) I'm not sure this if this technically…

From a previous HN discussion...IMO, obnoxious and genius. http://confirmshaming.tumblr.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11855787

I'd be more willing to call it genius if it weren't so popular with sites that can't deliver. Forcing people to click "I don't want to get rich" when your site is pushing crappy stock tips just seems like a way to make users hate you.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#112

Post by sp332 »

cookiecaper wrote: post #66
sp332 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think their end goal is to make money. And they're not going to do that if people don't like their products.

Practically speaking, people only need to like products enough to be able to tolerate them, even if they're gritting their teeth in anger the whole time they use them. Many people end up buying things they hate because they don't really have any better options (e.g. virtually every telco, cable company, or ISP). Microsoft would have to intentionally make Windows completely broken, meaning so broken it's very difficul…

That's a bit cynical, but even it's true, it has no explanatory power. Specifically, that's not a reason for MS to put time and money into making a feature worse.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#113

Post by nommm-nommm »

otterley wrote: post #83
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.

Its a dark pattern that you have to ask specifically to get your money back in the form of currency and not credit. I was actually really surprised about this too when I had to get a trip refund from Uber.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#114

Post by ipsin »

mikeash wrote: post #88
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.

This is kind of like "overdraft protection" used to be before they cracked down on it (somewhat).

If you're savvy or have had it happen before, you know to avoid it, but otherwise it's a financial landmine ("profit center") waiting to be stepped on.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#115

Post by fullshark »

FireBeyond wrote: post #72
mknocker wrote: post #10

Some of these cases are not only dark patterns, they constitute was it legally known as fraud. If you deceive someone in order to gain a financial advantage, it is fraud. The problem is that going against those gigantic companies is very difficult.

And then others aren't dark patterns. One of the first examples, British Airways, is pretty unfairly called out. The article says that they imply "cheapest at the top". No, the flights aren't shown "cheapest at the top", and they never imply they are. They're sorted in chronological order. There is a summary item that says the lowest fare for a booking class that day, but that's all.

Yeah I was struggling to understand that one. I don't even think it's bad design.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#116

Post by fullshark »

ViViDboarder wrote: post #99
FireBeyond wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then others aren't dark patterns. One of the first examples, British Airways, is pretty unfairly called out. The article says that they imply "cheapest at the top". No, the flights aren't shown "cheapest at the top", and they never imply they are. They're sorted in chronological order. There is a summary item that says the lowest fare for a booking class that day, but that's all.

The author used it as an example of something that may just be an unintuitive UI.

" British Airways lists flights that are the second-lowest price as the lowest,"

That sentence makes it sound like they deliberately always put the 2nd lowest price as the lowest every time. It was pretty misleading or poorly written.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#117

Post by nitrogen »

notatoad wrote: post #87
wldcordeiro wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Loading the content then redirecting to or popping over an uncloseable email form is a bait and switch, especially if you are coming from a search engine result.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#118

Post by nitrogen »

sp332 wrote: post #112
cookiecaper wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically speaking, people only need to like products enough to be able to tolerate them, even if they're gritting their teeth in anger the whole time they use them. Many people end up buying things they hate because they don't really have any better options (e.g. virtually every telco, cable company, or ISP). Microsoft would have to intentionally make Windows completely broken, meaning so broken it's very difficul…

That's a bit cynical, but even it's true, it has no explanatory power. Specifically, that's not a reason for MS to put time and money into making a feature worse.

Sometimes crippled features are deliberate, sometimes willful mediocrity is more profitable than excellence.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#119

Post by TeMPOraL »

rfrey wrote: post #49
wldcordeiro wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That does not sound like it's trying to trick you. They're offering something valuable in return for your email address. That is what every startup guru advises companies to do. Apparently the value wasn't high enough for you to sign up. That's fine. But why is it a "dark pattern"?

> That is what every startup guru advises companies to do.

A lot of things that "startup guru" advise are light shades of scams. A honest business deal is when a customer is given enough information to evaluate the proposal and then gets an option to decide - without influencing - to enter the transaction. One needs to keep that in mind.

In this case - it's what 'throwanem replied - "you can't fairly evaluate the offering if you can't see it until after you've already given away the item of value".

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#120

Post by nitrogen »

scholia wrote: post #103
noxToken wrote: post #11

AVG had (possibly still does) a dark pattern with their free AV software, and I fell for it once. I was in the middle of a game when the stupid ad for Web TuneUp[0] appeared from my task bar over the screen. The linked image is exactly how it appeared with the auto-confirm box pre-checked. In a rush to dismiss the ad to get back to my match, I accidentally clicked the OK button instead of the tiny decline. Of course,…

I install Unchecky on every PC that comes near me.... https://unchecky.com/

Then there was the dark pattern (in BitTorrent Inc's official client IIRC?) where you had to check some boxed and uncheck others to avoid all malware. Does Unchecky handle those situations?
Post reply on HN