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

Amazon Dark Patterns

netinstructions.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 278 posts

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#251

Post by sizzle »

SirHound wrote: post #47
mrtksn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your maybes are valid it simply means that these Amazon guys are new in the business and will figure out how to design user interface once they have the resources.Lets give them a slack, aye? Seriously though, I canceled my prime after I got a fake SD Card that was sold by Amazon. There was no straightforward way of returning it, had to contact customer support. Later I looked closely and I noticed the reviews war…

It's not necessarily a resource problem, from my time there there is an institutional lack of respect toward UX and front end and this is might still be the case. There's also a myriad of custom Perl templates that are essentially impossible to maintain. I once had to investigate where a feedback form sent feedback to, the answer was nowhere for about a year.

When were you there?

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#252

Post by CydeWeys »

akuji1993 wrote: post #39
Sharlin wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you at least anonymously reported that behavior to appropriate authorities. And started searching for a new job.

You don't always have the choice of just up and go. I developed a system for an american startup that gathered everything it could get its hands on through their Gmail accounts. Did I think that's unethical? Yes, but just quitting wasn't an option and it was perfectly legal. I switched to a new company when I could afford it and am now much happier. But suggesting to just quit the moment your company behaves unethica…

It's not perfectly legal if you ever do it to an EU user, now. This is why GDPR has some upsides -- it changes what was formerly just unethical into being illegal, which means that we as software engineers can push back against it more strongly.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#253

Post by CydeWeys »

arendtio wrote: post #125

Maybe we should build an independent, decentralized review page, where you can trust (PGP style) your friends and family and they can do so too. When suspicious reviews appear, everybody can track down the accounts which abuse our trust (and let the bots in). That way we could provide blacklists for accounts that are untrustworthy and everybody can decide who (or which blacklist) he wants to trust.

I love this idea. I don't see it being implemented because I don't think it's in Amazon's best interests, but I'd love to see someone do it.

Goodreads does something similar, at least out to the first degree. When you're looking at a book, it shows all of your friends' reviews (if any) before all of the reviews by randoms. It's really useful because there's some of my friends whose opinions I really trust, and who I know have similar tastes.

Goodreads is owned by Amazon now, it's worth pointing out.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#254

Post by alexwilliamsca »

phyzome wrote: post #176
2T1Qka0rEiPr wrote: post #3

Having recently unsubscribed from Prime, I can say their dark patterns don't stop there. About 5 pages to complete the process, in which the CTA to confirm bumps around the page, gets less prominent, and is given such lousy loss-aversion labels as "Give up my prime benefits".

They've really ramped up selling Prime in the checkout process. It's no longer easy to order from Amazon; it's this adversarial "spot the 5 traps" obstacle course where you have to avoid clicking the "sign me up for Prime" trick buttons.

I've noticed this as well. The trick is to _remove your credit card_ from your Amazon account. It significantly reduces the "traps" and prevents them from automatically subscribing you to Prime. I now purchase Amazon Gift cards instead (also, free shipping when using a gift card).

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#255

Post by victor106 »

At this point Amazon is a monopoly. And this is exactly why monopolies don't work. Self-regulation does not work.

"With great power comes great responsibility" --> We humans only like the power part.

Every monopoly that ever existed abuses its monopolistic power for its own benefit.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#256

Post by bmh100 »

benologist wrote: post #145
arrrg wrote: post #4

An alternative explanation for this is that Amazon is struggling with identifying fake reviews, which could explain both why there seem to be many fake reviews and why one would get blocked from writing reviews (basically falling victim to a false positive of their fake review detection). Obviously there is also some bad UX thrown in for good measure (being able to write a review without being able to send it), but w…

The only thing Amazon is struggling at is prying open their checkbook to pay for oversight and accountability because it would eat into their phenomenal profits. AWS alone generates $20+ million net profit a day (while we perpetuate the rumor it saves money LOL). It wouldn't cost very much to solve all of these problems with human labor, but not solving problems is incredibly important to companies too just like not…

One situation I found where AWS saves money is in over-capacity situations. If the a company builds a data center that is too large, they are incurring costs for under-utilization. Paying a 50% premium on 100% of resources might still be better than paying 0% premium on 200% of resources. The cloud versus on-premise discussion has many variables, so it all depends on the situation.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#257

Post by trallalla »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #111
seren wrote: post #60

Prompted by this post, I wanted to check what happened to the 1-star review I have left 6 months ago. (Product worked for 3 days and then stopped, and after a replacement, the same thing happened). Sure enough, I have 0 comment in my profile, and I just checked, it has also disappeared from the product page. This is shady as hell, because I am 100% sure I wrote this review. I even wrote it twice, once on amazon.com a…

Consider the other side of this argument: should reviews be timeless? Many times a (good faith) vendor will make small, incremental changes to a product that addresses concerns that low-star reviewers point out. However, the product page remains the same - it does not distinguish between "Seattle Coffee Beans - Batch A" and "Seattle Coffee Beans - Batch C". It simply says "Seattle Coffee Beans". So if you leave a rev…

Amazon already accounts for the date of the review to some extent. If you hover over the overall rating for a product you can read:

"Amazon calculates a product’s star ratings using a machine learned model instead of a raw data average. The machine learned model takes into account factors including: the age of a review, helpfulness votes by customers and whether the reviews are from verified purchases."

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#258

Post by paulddraper »

test6554 wrote: post #250
EpicEng wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Cause people have to sell to eat in our culture of step on the next guy to have a life. A bit hyperbolic, but also applies to pretty much every culture which has ever existed.

Wait... living organisms have to get food in order to eat? Next you are going to tell me that they are in competition for finite resources.

Not only that, but if they don't eat, they starve.

Re: Amazon Dark Patterns

#259

Post by nextlevelwizard »

numbsafari wrote: post #143
nextlevelwizard wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if people reviewd your product as bad or left warnings not to buy/use it based on things outside of your control. The product isn't bad because it arrived damaged, you can not argue against this. What you should do is contact Amazon and have the product replaced. If the next item also arrives damaged, then you can start claiming that the product is badly build.

Are you sure it's out of your control? Did you provide sufficient packaging? Did you pick a good distribution channel to partner with? Why should I have to deal with the whole process of ordering, reordering, customer service, voice-response systems, returns, etc. in order to get permission to leave a factual review of my experience with your product?

If I visit your startups site with obscure browser, with JS turned off and leave a bad review since your product was unusable is that fair?

There is only so many avenues of distribution and you literally can not affect who deliveres and handles the package on the way to the customer unless you roll out your own complete chain which is stupid to even suggest.

Just beause post office has a lot of temps and miss handles package doesn't reflect actual review of the product if you think it does then frankly you are an idiot

Post reply on HN