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Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#71

Post by GordonS »

WrtCdEvrydy wrote: post #19
poisonborz wrote: post #10

So some manager came up with this, tasked a PO, who tasked a team, and a frontend developer implemented it - and in this chain, in the end, everyone complied. I know it's not like murder, but especially in a field where it's so easy to hop into another job/project, one should have greater integrity.

This is why real freedom is financial freedom. You don't like what's going on at work, find another job.

I have to agree. I know that for some people it's not easy to just find another job for various reasons, and I've had that problem myself over the years - but there is a line you just don't cross; this is such a line. Deliberately and purposely lying like this is never OK.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#72

Post by jawns »

raben_ wrote: post #42

Funny thing is that it works. 15% CR uplift in the last website where I tested it

There are some organizations (though I don't know how plentiful) that use real data to derive these alerts. And I'd say that as long as it's all above-board and not fake data, that 15% is legitimately earned.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#73

Post by GordonS »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #59

In a mobile app one wouldn't even have a way to investigate this.

I don't know about iOS, but at least on Android it's easy to decompile Java. Variable names aren't going to be the same, so you won't see the deliberate intent as you see here, but you'd still see that the number was randomly generated.

Now, if they generated the value server-side then we'd really never know, whether it's a mobile app or a web page... not that I want to give scumbags ideas, but this is pretty obvious.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#74

Post by dewey »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #59

In a mobile app one wouldn't even have a way to investigate this.

Why is that? You can easily look at the requests and see where the numbers are coming from. It's not as easy as right clicking in the browser but if it would be a normal Desktop app it would also not work like that.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#75

Post by barnaclejive »

Wow, if you are going to do this, at least have the JS call some endpoint like "/check-how-many-people-also-want-this/some-id" and name the element "how-many-people-also-want-this". As a dev tasked with implementing this dark pattern that is the least you could do.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#76

Post by rrrazdan »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #40
Insanity wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Booking.com is horrible to use in my opinion. It is handy but you need to ignore the dark patterns on every. Single. Page. Honestly it makes me want to use the website less, and does not urge me to buy.

I wonder about an app that just has phone numbers and a short description of hotels. If there are 50,000 hotels in the US, and you store 1K worth of data, that's only 50M. You could keep that on a phone no problem.

Do you frequently book hotels or travel? Just wondering because the app that you describe is so woefully short of even reasonable expectations, let alone what we have right now.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#77

Post by prawn »

lainga wrote: post #8
zzo38computer wrote: post #6

Yes, I think it is false advertising, so should be illegal.

The only way out of it I can think of would be: if the site could prove that some number of people, greater than 45, were hitting that specific query on that specific page, then vacuously, they could say that any number of people between 1 and 45 were also looking at the offer. But then, why wouldn't they just display "at least 45 people" or the exact number? I'm struggling to find some way of doing this which could…

My thought (giving them benefit of the doubt) was that perhaps they knew that somewhere in the vicinity of 28-45 had been looking recently, but not with per-minute confidence. So they fix that range and then randomly pick something from that range to display on each page load. But that is giving them a lot of benefit!

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#78

Post by theevilsharpie »

tomxor wrote: post #38

The responses in the redit thread are interesting: So many people claim they have experienced legitimate versions while making a purchase, although provide questionable evidence to support that it was valid. Is this some psychological bias for buyers?

You can look at practically any popular Reddit thread complaining about X, and find dozens of anecdotes about how they also had problems with X. Once you see these threads enough times, you start to wonder how many people are discussing an actual personal experience, vs. parroting what they've read or heard from someone.

I'd be interested to know if there was some type of scientific or trade name for this kind of behavior.

In any case, bear in mind that the plural of anecdote is not data.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#79

Post by elil17 »

GordonS wrote: post #63

Incredible that they would implement such a dark pattern using easily discoverable client-side code. I've seen these kind of messages before on several travel sites, and always immediately figured they were bogus, but I obviously can't be 100% certain they didn't influence me in some way - but how can it possibly be legal to deliberately lie like this to try to trick people into giving you money?

It’s not legal (false advertising) but it’s not something anyone will sue over because of how hard it is to show damages

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#80

Post by klingonopera »

bedros wrote: post #69

cheapoair.com did a similar trick on me few years back. I searched flights and after finding my flight, I clicked book. waiting for few seconds with a spinning thing , I got error message that the airline increased flight price, and I have to pay the new price. So, I went straight to airline website to check their price, and it was lower than the first low price cheapoair showed me. since then, I always check direct…

I've experienced the opposite case, got a flight suggestion by a booking agency, checked prices for the same flights directly at the airline, and they were higher.
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