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#111

Before anyone has any interest in replicating this - keep in mind that: Trust is earned. Credibility is built. Go long - don't create fake social proofs and ruin your own reputation. I can say with assurance that nobody in this thread will buy anything from OneTravel or their founders again.

Counterpoint: I had never heard of OneTravel and now in a little while I will have forgotten about this incident, but the name recognition will still exist for me, and therefore I'm more likely to trust them.

I don't think this lines up with memory research. It's true that people commonly make source monitoring errors, but generally feeling negative affect toward something enhances memory. People might forget the specific company, but I doubt they would feel more trust toward travel companies in general.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Source-monitoring_error

https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2011/10/positive-negat...

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#112
post #16

The Twitter thread pointed to a BBC article [1] that certainly suggests that the UK’s regulators don’t think this is okay. I’ve found that Booking.com legitimately treats independent rooms as “only one left” (e.g., the B&B has named rooms, so there’s always just one of a kind for each) but I suspect any investigation into most of these sites leads to “this is full of misleading dark patterns”. [1] https://www.bbc.com…

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 still use booking.com quite frequently, but the dark patterns are starting to annoy me. I wish there was a better alternative tho, yes, I could book from hotels directly, but I still need to find those hotels, that's why I use something like booking.com. I've had hotels outright tell me to just book through a third-party booking website, since they didn't have their own booking form.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#113
post #40

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.

Once I checked Agoda to get an idea of the room prices in the area I was visiting, but decided to get the room directly from reception assuming that the price would be the one I saw on Agoda minus their commision. I was wrong, the price was about 15% more expensive at reception and it didn't include breakfast. I pointed to them that I could get the room cheaper from Agoda and they told me to get it from Agoda then. I sat in the lobby and booked the room online.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#114
Lately, I found that booking directly with the companies was often the same price or cheaper that all site I could try. It might be different in US (I book flights from Europe, because, well, I live there). Lufthansa often has the best price directly on their site.

Same thing for hotels, you can get a better price if you book directly with the hotel, but of course you don't get all the booking.com (or similar site) niceties like free cancellation.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False advertising?

How are you actually going to prove the state of a distributed system in an legally actionable way?

In the OP case, the evidence is not a problem, right? There's nothing specially about "legally actionable", you just need to convince a judge or jury that it happened, as with any other fact. In this case, with the JS code cited.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#116
post #96
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't assume they don't have integrity. They might just have different moral values. I would gladly implement this any day. Its not illegal.

> They might just have different moral values. This is why "values" is a terrible word to use to describe morals. Values are subjective things like modesty or frugality. Those are values, because how you dress or spend your money generally have consequences only to yourself. Something becomes immoral when it deprives another person of their inalienable rights; it causes them harm. Others' rights aren't subject to neg…

Same thing with morality, its subjective.

There are no such thing as inalienable rights. Every right has to be earned and fight for.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#117
post #64
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is your definition of integrity ?

Integrity -- the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness . The definition of integrity requires honesty. Do you think it is honest to tell people "there are 38 rooms left" when you know 38 is a random number? The definition also requires you to act morally. Do you think that anything legal is moral, and vice versa? Slavery was legal. German extermination camps were legal. Were th…

Morality is subjective, according to my moral framework, telling people there are 38 room left, if I'm the business owner and the benefit > cost then yes.

Same thing with slavery, extermination camp, weed. To some people these are moral.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#118

A while back I was working at a web startup (since folded), and management decided they wanted to inflate the usage numbers reported on the home page. I was asked to write the code for it. I refused, telling my boss that I didn’t want to lie to our users. He said, “it’s not for them, it’s for the board.” “So we’re lying to the board, then?” I asked. He dropped it, and the task fell to another engineer. The first vers…

I'd pitch that to the board like the algorithm was just smart enough to detect the partial activity coefficient ranging in [0, 1].

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#119
post #114

Lately, I found that booking directly with the companies was often the same price or cheaper that all site I could try. It might be different in US (I book flights from Europe, because, well, I live there). Lufthansa often has the best price directly on their site. Same thing for hotels, you can get a better price if you book directly with the hotel, but of course you don't get all the booking.com (or similar site) n…

Pretty much same in the US. You get better treatment if you book directly, too (a room not by the elevator, for example)

I've gotten shafted with my reservation being lost by a 3rd party booking company enough that I prefer direct booking.

Re: 38 People are looking at this post right now

#120
post #29

A dark pattern implies something that is intentionally misleading. This is just lying. This is not a dark pattern because it’s Worse.

Lying is also intentionally misleading, so I'm not sure if your conclusion makes sense. Plus I would assume recurrent lying falls under the "dark pattern" category -- it certainly isn't a good or neutral pattern.
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