The video is a good example of why Linkedin's popularity is completely baffling for me — if a company has intentionally and malignantly mishandled your information in such a way a number of times, why would anyone want to hand over even more information? People you connect to, who you know, etc. It just blows my mind. Luckily I've had no problems with boycotting them, but I guess it might be hard in some industries?
Dark Patterns
11–20 of 69 posts
Re: Dark Patterns
#12[deleted]
Re: Dark Patterns
#13The king of dark patterns: https://www.viagogo.com (try with any listed event)
(edit: they recently got banned from AdWords IIRC)
Re: Dark Patterns
#14It's missing the one that I hate the most: the way Booking.com and similar sites create a fake sense of urgency. "9 people are actively looking at this hotel right now!" Yeah, right.
Also "1 room left at this price!"
Maybe... at this exact price. Maybe the next available will be higher. Maybe not.
Re: Dark Patterns
#15One thing I don't understand is why we are calling these patterns _dark_ rather than _manipulative_, or even just calling it straight up manipulation? I feel like manipulation has a clear meaning for a lot of people, which I would define as attempts at making you do things against your best interest. This definitely applies to booking.com's multiple practices of creating artificial urgency, various website's "opt-in"…
We could rescue the classic "evil" to define them. Short, to the point and less abstract.
Re: Dark Patterns
#16The video is a good example of why Linkedin's popularity is completely baffling for me — if a company has intentionally and malignantly mishandled your information in such a way a number of times, why would anyone want to hand over even more information? People you connect to, who you know, etc. It just blows my mind. Luckily I've had no problems with boycotting them, but I guess it might be hard in some industries?
Because they're "offering" an inelastic good (a potential job). People who need it will be willing to tolerate a lot of bullshit for a chance to get one.
Re: Dark Patterns
#17I still remember one of the first businesses I did a contract for in the early 2000s wanted a hit counter on the bottom of their page.
So I put one in but they wanted it to start at 10,000 instead of 0 to give a false sense that the site was popular. This stuff has been going on for decades.
Re: Dark Patterns
#18It's missing the one that I hate the most: the way Booking.com and similar sites create a fake sense of urgency. "9 people are actively looking at this hotel right now!" Yeah, right.
Or the everlasting "1 item remaining in stock" on amazon.
Yeah, that always makes me think: "Hmm, a high quality product would create some demand, why not keep the stock well filled?" Also it conjures up images of 1 last item lying at the bottom of a big box where it was squeezed and just lying around for the longest of it's entire batch.. No good!
So, why? In me it creates a sense of "no thanks, I'll wait".
Re: Dark Patterns
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I run a development agency, and on a few occasions, we've had clients ask us to build features similar to what you've outlined above. One of those clients had a pretty thorough specification document that outlined how this behavior should work. When you open the listing, it should wait a few seconds and then show you a number between 8 and 20 of people who are actively looking at this listing. If it was night-time, i…
Isn't this basically false advertising?
Arguably; it's not advertising the product itself (e.g. hotels). There's no rules against misreporting user or activity statistics as far as I know.
Re: Dark Patterns
#20The video is a good example of why Linkedin's popularity is completely baffling for me — if a company has intentionally and malignantly mishandled your information in such a way a number of times, why would anyone want to hand over even more information? People you connect to, who you know, etc. It just blows my mind. Luckily I've had no problems with boycotting them, but I guess it might be hard in some industries?
I see it like this: yes, it's a poor website which comes down to semi-legitimised spam.
However, recruiters already were semi-legitimised spam, and they like LinkedIn because it's easier/more signal vs noise for them. Employees like it enough not to quit if there's a potential new job. Signal vs noise is not much different from dealing with job hunting/recruiters outside of LinkedIn. Network effects take care of the rest.