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Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

arstechnica.com

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Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#131

Post by sliverstorm »

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.

They're in part a community-driven content site though, that's understandable. The trails, and feedback about them, is all user-derived.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#132

Post by hobaak »

I can chip in my experience for hour of code event. I volunteered to help run some sessions. Most of the things that we did was to give a bunch of website out of Hour of Code website. We made sure that the usage of coding exercise doesn't have to make the users register. Alas, in spite of instructions, many students and parents still were not able to skip the page asking for registration. Of course, some sites were more deliberate to place registration as if without it, nothing is going to happen. They say it is growth tactic. I say it is abusive one.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#133

Post by rfrey »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #119
rfrey wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 off…

I just looked at AllTrails, and it's pretty clear what the value is - you get to download and print the maps, and use them on your phone.

I appreciate what you're saying about an honest transaction, but "dark patterns" is a useful term that is being diluted to apply to any company that doesn't offer everything for nothing. If asking you to create an account to use the product is a "dark pattern", what do we call moving buttons to capture accidental tricks, getting you to open your contact list with tricky wording and spamming everyone, etc? Surely those aren't the same as "please create an account to use our product"?

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#134

Post by throwanem »

rfrey wrote: post #133
TeMPOraL wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 off…

I just looked at AllTrails, and it's pretty clear what the value is - you get to download and print the maps, and use them on your phone. I appreciate what you're saying about an honest transaction, but "dark patterns" is a useful term that is being diluted to apply to any company that doesn't offer everything for nothing. If asking you to create an account to use the product is a "dark pattern", what do we call movi…

Sure, those are worse, but it's a difference of kind rather than degree. I mean, I can download, print, and view offline maps from OpenStreetMap, too. That's free and it doesn't play cheesy games to get my information. Why should I care about AllTrails, which does?

(I feel like I should note that the default presumption here is of sketchiness, not uprightness. Maybe that's unfair, and maybe there are a lot of us out here who've been hosed often enough by bait-and-switch games that anything which smells of yet another one gets tarred with the same brush. I don't think that's an argument against the article's thesis, you know?)

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#135

Post by stanmancan »

EdHominem wrote: post #97
stanmancan wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring someone to log in to use your site or service is not a dark pattern though. There's nothing nefarious going on there. As another poster said somewhere in this chain, if upon signing up you have to give your life away via the TOS, or there's pre-checked boxes signing you up for mailing lists, those are dark patterns. Simply requiring a user sign up is not.

That's not what the users say. Sure, it could be darker. But when you see a bit of a crummy pattern you usually walk away instead of checking out just how bad it could get.

Then the 'users' are incorrectly using the term dark pattern; most likely because they don't really know what one is.

"A Dark Pattern is a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things."

Simply making a user sign up to use your service is hardly a 'carefully crafted trick'.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#136

Post by bluehawk »

jimrandomh wrote: post #125

People should use the credit card dispute process more often. If a company has made it unreasonably difficult to cancel, or charged money that you didn't actually agree to pay (because they hid the notice too well), that's exactly what chargebacks are for.

And the best part is that if enough people issue chargebacks, the credit card companies might threaten to stop doing business with them.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#137

Post by nommm-nommm »

Spooky23 wrote: post #124
ipsin wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh God, there's a special place in hell for stamps.com. I did not read the fine print, but made the mistake of thinking that it was a partnership with USPS and did not incur extra fees (like a crazy $13 monthly fee, even if you're not using the service). By the time I discovered that, I also discovered that you can sign up on line, but you have to cancel by phone (or "being on hold", I discovered it). Seriously. Neve…

I never understood why stamps.com existed. * Anything that isn't first class mail can be accommodated by USPS.com, Paypal and others. * If you mail enough letters to justify a label printer, you can get a better deal on a meter. * If you hate going to the post office, you can spend the same money that you spend on Stamps.com bullshit to buy a bunch of stamps from the post office, which are now good forever. My mom fe…

>* Anything that isn't first class mail can be accommodated by USPS.com, Paypal and others.

Even PayPal does first class mail too! and they allow you to buy shipping for non-ebay packages too! And the rates are better than stamps.com.

I too can't understand stamps.com other than to fool people who don't know better. I signed up for their free trial in order to get a $10 postage scale and cancelled right away. I got to talk to a human who tried to convince me why I needed it. I was like "ebay/paypal/amazon/usps are cheaper."

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#138

Post by edwhitesell »

throwanem wrote: post #81
edwhitesell wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sure, they can make/break their own rules. It's been a while since I've looked at this in detail, but my understanding is the "Like" aspect of it is optional. On that page:

>After checking in, people will be asked if they also want to like your Page so you can continue to connect with them on Facebook.

Of course, if using Facebook WiFi, you do check-in to the location which triggers a host of other "features" within your Facebook account and experience. Similar to if you check-in to a location with the standard Facebook App.

I can see the argument that it's an extension of that experience, while providing WiFi service in exchange for it.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#139

Post by acdha »

kardos wrote: post #59
acdha wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Make it open source, and the community will probably maintain it … or fill the issue tracker with troubleshooting requests, demands that someone else code something they think needs to exist, long rants about whether something should or should not be included, etc. Open source maintenance is far from free.

You don't have to be a BDFL, you can delegate maintenance work to community recruits as it scales up.

It's nice when that works out but it's unfortunately not uncommon to have projects which don't attract volunteers, attract volunteers who have time/interest in fixing one particular thing but not maintaining it smoothly over time, or which simply cycle through people as the cycle of enthusiasm->overload->burnout->resignation repeats.

As a community we tend to neglect this side of things since it's neither a fun technical problem nor something a one-time effort can fix, but it deprives the open-source world of too many good developers.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#140

Post by unfortunateface »

CM30 wrote: post #80

If you're in the UK, ordering a pizza from a chain gives you forms with a ton of these patterns. Like the incredibly misleading 'tick the boxes below if you don't want to receive an email/text message with future promotions' thing. Or the awkward auto coupon set up, which seems like it was designed to minimise the amount of money people were saving through codes. It's as if they realised "hang on, lots of people are…

If you're talking about the one starting with a D and ending in ominos - Put all fake data in except for address and pay cash on delivery. In my experience even thisisafakeemail@example.com and 00000 555 555 for phone number works a treat.
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