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Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

fil.forbrukerradet.no

121–130 of 168 posts

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#121
Im kind of torn on this.

On one hand, I agree that these "dark patterns" undermine what legislators and voters want in terms of consumer protections and rights. Consumers and legislators need to be aware of it.

On the other, I think it leads to a banal conclusion. Legislation tried to achieve something by putting responsibilities/restrictions on corporations. It did not achieve its goals, because companies "implementing" the law have different things they want to achieve.

One common sense conclusion is "moral failings." I expect most journalists and legislators refering to this report will be in this category. Google is greedy. FB is cynical. Nowhere to go from here but moral righteousness.

Another common conclusion will be "loopholes." This will send us down the legislative rabbit Warren that financial regulation and tax law has been down.

The right (imo) conclusion is that the whole approach is wrong. We cannot rely on explicit (or even implicit) contracts between a website and every person who visits it.

There must be rules, not contracts. Where users need control or an agreement has to be made, these need to be baked into browsers, where the party implementing "user empowerment" are not the ones losing from it.

Moving to a world where an average consumer "signs" multiple agreements with companies per day.. that's not what our legal conventions were made for.

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it turns out they were right - GDPR went into effect a month ago, Facebook didn't comply (and many other companies either, not offering privacy by default), and nobody paid any fee.

Wait, what? Why would you expect fines being levied within a month of the directive going into effect? The process from a first complaint to a payable fine probably takes a year or more.

the sites had a very long time to get into a state of compliance BEFORE it became law. they could have asked for help from legislators.

FB is being malicious, same as always. hopefully they'll get smashed by the fine when they continue to resist the law.

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need Win10 Enterprise LTSB, even Pro is not enough to get out of Microsoft telemetry capture, including crash dumps (memory with sensitive info), keystrokes, screen grabs.

> You need Win10 Enterprise LTSB The won't sell it to you. I asked about it a Microsoft store and they had no way of selling it to me.

Please correct me if I'm wrong because Microsoft licensing is convoluted. I think the procedure is to acquire a Windows 10 Enterprise license, and then you install LTSB instead of the standard enterprise edition.

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#124

Im kind of torn on this. On one hand, I agree that these "dark patterns" undermine what legislators and voters want in terms of consumer protections and rights. Consumers and legislators need to be aware of it. On the other, I think it leads to a banal conclusion. Legislation tried to achieve something by putting responsibilities/restrictions on corporations. It did not achieve its goals, because companies "implement…

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Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The press gets hold of it and realises that they're littered with Facebook and Google integrations, their consent policy is little better and then they decide that they're going to publish this? The press has been suckered into this whole mess in its sacrifice to keep revenue from advertising

„The media‘s” recent attention to digital privacy issues seems to disprove your conspiracy theories, and to show that journalists operate separate from their publications’ business departments.

How is this a conspiracy theory? I don't think that the business groups in publishing are any happier about the current state of affairs, but they have seen little option but to make themselves beholden to advertising companies. I doubt the irony of these articles escapes anyone in the media, but their failure to adapt early on has led them down this road (although gleefully embracing Facebook instead of their own sites as a way to spread content is not 100% Facebook's fault).

It should be clear to anyone paying attention that current business models to sustainably support journalism have failed, and we are approaching (or have already reached) a point where only low-effort 'clickbait' and recycled AP content is profitable.

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#126
post #117
post #93

God, I wish someone added Quora to that list. After you read the first article, Quora masks all its content and forces you down the throat to sign up or sign in, pretending to be part of an age verification process (irrespective of the topic). I remember when this happened - I was so pissed off that I made an add-on called "fuck quora" that will simply reset their cookies to have unlimited reading possible without si…

You can add ?share=1 to the URL to unblock Quora.

Blocking them from search results is far more effective.

Quora results are mostly saturated with thinly veiled spam now anyway.

Google:

how to use quora for traffic

how to use quora for marketing

how to use quora for SEO

The "hack" is well known and incredibly over exploited.

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#127

Im kind of torn on this. On one hand, I agree that these "dark patterns" undermine what legislators and voters want in terms of consumer protections and rights. Consumers and legislators need to be aware of it. On the other, I think it leads to a banal conclusion. Legislation tried to achieve something by putting responsibilities/restrictions on corporations. It did not achieve its goals, because companies "implement…

An enforceable "Tell websites I do not want to be tracked" would be nice. We saw quite clearly how that was ignored wholesale when it is voluntary.

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#128
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It used to be that Pro was enough when you could still turn the telemetry off (I seem to remember that being a thing in W10's early days, correct me if I'm wrong). But in the end, why should the user have to spend even more for a feature set that they'll never use to just protect their privacy? Greed and dark patterns are not acceptable.

Can you even buy enterprise as a private person? All I can see on their webpage is "request a quote" and the form requires a business name.

When I was researching this for personal use a while ago it looked like there should be a way to get a subscription for Windows 10 Enterprise E3 for $7/mo/user via third-party sellers [1] (CSP?). It looks like you can buy a subscription from CDW [2] (I've never used them).

[1]: https://blogs.windows.com/business/2016/09/01/windows-10-ent...

[2]: https://www.cdw.com/product/windows-10-enterprise-e3-from-cd...

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#129

Im kind of torn on this. On one hand, I agree that these "dark patterns" undermine what legislators and voters want in terms of consumer protections and rights. Consumers and legislators need to be aware of it. On the other, I think it leads to a banal conclusion. Legislation tried to achieve something by putting responsibilities/restrictions on corporations. It did not achieve its goals, because companies "implement…

> There must be rules, not contracts. Where users need control or an agreement has to be made, these need to be baked into browsers, where the party implementing "user empowerment" are not the ones losing from it.

Yes! This is the right way. Unfortunately it's also looks like it's going to be really, really hard, because the platform did not evolve with this foresight.

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#130
post #113
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they are not producing any kind of good for the world, never mind "the most". For the users, Facebook is just a means of communication, among many others. If it disappeared tomorrow 10 different platforms would replace it and the level of goodness in the world might even increase. Doing good is probably the lamest, least truthful excuse for working at Facebook, goes to show how self-deluded people can be.

What if you are working at Facebook on improving Linux's network stack for example? Sure, if you have the skills to do that, you will find work very easily. But is it easy to find a job that would allow you to make these kind of contributions?

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