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

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#161

Post by schoen » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 9:20 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #93

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 have yet to work out whether "limited hours for an automated system" is a dark pattern, or sheer stupidity. The most horrifying variant I've seen recently was a government website that kept 9am-5pm hours. No human interaction or real-time events anywhere, but logins were locked after business hours. I'm guessing they didn't want to arrange special downtime periods for changes, and the only alternative they could th…

B&H Photo Video famously won't accept online orders on Shabbat (in the time zone of the business in New York). Not just not fulfil the orders then, but not allow users to place them, either. I don't know how they decided to use only the time zone of the company and not the time zone of the person placing the order, and indeed where they see the desecration(s) of the sabbath as occurring if they didn't enforce this policy. Interestingly, their web site is still online at that time; it's only the online ordering feature that gets disabled.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#162

Post by shostack » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 9:23 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.

If they are showing one thing to users, and another to search engines, that is expressly prohibited by Google and you can report them. This is what got Expertsexchange.com busted way back in the day.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#163

Post by shostack » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 9:24 PM UTC

mtgx wrote: post #26

sp332 wrote: post #2

Not just the web either. This morning Cortana turned green and said "Oh hey!" in my taskbar. I clicked it and it gave me the regular interface - there was no alert or anything, they just wanted to boost their Cortana interaction numbers for the day. That's wasting my time and making it less likely that I will pay attention if there is an actual alert later.

Pretty much all privacy-related settings in Windows 10 use dark patterns. And they've just made it much harder to disable Cortana in the upcoming Anniversary Update.

Harder, or impossible? My understanding was they were forcing it down your throat with no way to disable it.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#164

Post by s_kilk » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 9:38 PM UTC

Bartweiss wrote: post #93

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 have yet to work out whether "limited hours for an automated system" is a dark pattern, or sheer stupidity. The most horrifying variant I've seen recently was a government website that kept 9am-5pm hours. No human interaction or real-time events anywhere, but logins were locked after business hours. I'm guessing they didn't want to arrange special downtime periods for changes, and the only alternative they could th…

> ...a government website that kept 9am-5pm hours...

Sometimes this is done because the "opening times" are baked into existing process, (or in some cases, legislation), and so the digital replacement for the old meat-and-paper process must be subject to the same seemingly crazy time restrictions.

It seems mad, but if you're an underfunded branch of the state, trying to replace a paper-based process with a website, on a staff of junior developers and over-stretched project managers, well....

EDIT: or the process hinges on an aging perl/oracle/Solaris stack, with a pile of cron jobs which process the day's activities overnight. And of course, the definition of a "business day" is baked into the legislation, so the first job needs to start at 5:10 sharp.

Source: I've seen it with my own eyes.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#165

Post by greggman » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 9:41 PM UTC

Not sure if this is a dark pattern but on Airbnb the "report listing" link disappears the moment you scroll. Searching for it I couldn't find it.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#166

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 9:42 PM UTC

ccvannorman wrote: post #157

Is there such a thing as Yelp for websites where they are scored for their UX with DarkPattern being a scored attribute? I would love to check a new website against this list, and I would also spend my expensive time to add to this list to report dark pattern websites as they upset me enough to take action.

[deleted]

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#167

Post by benologist » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 9:43 PM UTC

gilgongo wrote: post #95

How does Harry Brignull get his dark patterns site covered so regularly? About once a year for the past decade, somebody does an article about it. Weird. Anyway. I'm a designer and my work has even featured on his site (after he did some freelancing with us - cheeky begger). His implication that people like me sit around trying to making life harder for customers is complete bollocks. We don't. Businesses just don't.…

I think he gets a lot of attention because nobody likes to be exploited and that is our default status online.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#168

Post by mech4bg » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 9:56 PM UTC

shostack wrote: post #162

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.

If they are showing one thing to users, and another to search engines, that is expressly prohibited by Google and you can report them. This is what got Expertsexchange.com busted way back in the day.

Is that true? Most pay-walled newspapers work this way.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#169

Post by shostack » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 10:19 PM UTC

mech4bg wrote: post #168

shostack wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they are showing one thing to users, and another to search engines, that is expressly prohibited by Google and you can report them. This is what got Expertsexchange.com busted way back in the day.

Is that true? Most pay-walled newspapers work this way.

Most pay-walled newspapers show you some content initially (which is what is getting indexed), or give you X number of free articles before hitting you with it. For others (like WSJ), they offer a "Web" link of some sort that they bury the hell out of, but that technically exists and is visible to users. So people from search engines don't get hit with the paywall, but anyone from social, email, referral, etc. does.

Re: Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll

#170

Post by talmand » Thu, Jul 28, 2016, 10:43 PM UTC

zeta0134 wrote: post #100

maxxxxx wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ditto to this. I realized I had an unused Netflix subscription, and not only did they cancel it, the rep apologized, said that happens a lot, and helped me negotiate a full refund with no questions asked. I came back a few months later when the Flash came out, re-subscribed, and have been happy turning it on once in a while to watch shows, then back off again when I'm less interested. It's been lovely. More companies…

I worked for a company that offered a software product that was paid on a monthly subscription. Since a number of the companies in this industry were seasonal, we made it possible within the software to make their own license inactive. No phone call was necessary, but they could if they wanted. So as long as their license was inactive they wouldn't be charged. If they reactivated their license they would start being charged again. They would also immediately get any updates they missed out on while inactive.