51–60 of 69 posts
One 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"…
GMail seems to have opened a vector to amplify dark patterns by placing action buttons on messages. My least favorite is the LinkedIn accept invitation button, which I've clicked now several times by accident because I've spent years using GMail without it taking actions like opening GitHub PRs and accepting LinkedIn invites. I can't find a way to disable this feature. Does anybody know how?
Not sure this is a GMail feature. This would technically be possible with any HTML link styled like a button.
It'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.
Many years ago, I reviewed the code at Booking.com that implemented this (in the version thar existed at the time, there's many more variants of it today) and it had a clear enough definition and was roughly what you'd expect it to be if you tried to design/implement it faithfully but without crazy out-there amounts of work: "number of detected-as-not-a-bot page views for this hotel (page) within the last X minutes"…
It would just make the web a little more serene place if the said websites did away with these kind of pernicious practices which only induce stress and agony.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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".
There's one more: Suggesting that you lose benefits in a subscription business right away, when in reality, they run until the "contract" ends. Culprit: Amazon Prime. I just checked and they're still doing it (on Amazon.de). If you try to cancel your Prime Membership, they make it sound as if you lose all benefits right away, even though I pre-paid for the entire year and my membership will end with the billing perio…
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18722952
Also:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13116703 (3 years ago)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301378 (6 years ago)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5347543 (6 years ago)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4002625 (7 years ago)
One 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"…
I'm not sure why everyone chose to use the term. The idea of it being intentionally obscure is quite wonderfully Hacker News-eseque.
It'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.
Many years ago, I reviewed the code at Booking.com that implemented this (in the version thar existed at the time, there's many more variants of it today) and it had a clear enough definition and was roughly what you'd expect it to be if you tried to design/implement it faithfully but without crazy out-there amounts of work: "number of detected-as-not-a-bot page views for this hotel (page) within the last X minutes"…
I just did a search for nearby rooms for the end of September 2020. It shows me a bunch of listings with a bright red “Only 1 left!” As far as I can tell, these are Airbnb style listings where the property is really just a single apartment. The message is technically correct (there is only one left) but incredibly misleading (there’s only one to even be available at all, it’s not because of high demand).
Every listing I checked also shows me “Lowest price today!” Obviously that’s because the price has remained constant. In fact, I’m likely the first person today to check these particular dates at all. The claim is technically correct, but easily creates the impression that you’ve caught a price decrease and that it’s likely to go back up soon.
I didn’t see it in this search, but I’ve seen many times before where sites will say something like “5 rooms left for this date” and “12 people booked this today.” They mean 12 people booked this hotel in general today, but it’s easily interpreted as 12 people booked the dates you’re looking at where there’s only 5 left, so you’d better grab it now.
It’s misleading and they know it’s misleading. That is lying even if the statements are technically correct. After all, lying is about intent; making a false statement sincerely is not a lie, and making a true statement with the intent to deceive is.