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Request for comments regarding topics to be discussed at Dark Patterns workshop

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Re: Request for comments regarding topics to be discussed at Dark Patterns workshop

#61

Post by pja »

Hah. Literally an hour ago I fat-fingered the “Sign up to Amazon Music!” button in the Amazon Music App on my phone whilst putting the phone in my pocket.

To be fair to Amazon though, they do let you cancel the subscription online with no bullshit & you still get to keep the 90 day free trial -- presumably they hope you’ll like the service enough to decide to pay for it anyway.

(The worst example I know of this “single button press sign-up” pattern was Nassim Taleb accidentally signing up to pay for a software upgrade to his Tesla in the Tesla App that cost $1000s & having no way to undo it except shouting loudly at Tesla / Elon Musk on Twitter.)

Re: Request for comments regarding topics to be discussed at Dark Patterns workshop

#62

Post by dylan604 »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #39

As a non-American: is this actually something the FTC has authority over?

Maybe? We'll see what happens when/if they actually try. Lobbyists' phones are probably going off right now with big tech trying to spur them into action.

Re: Request for comments regarding topics to be discussed at Dark Patterns workshop

#63

Post by ykat7 »

chrisin2d wrote: post #22
mimsee wrote: post #11

Ecommerce sites showing a "27 people are watching this right now" alongside the product but from source code it turns out to be a Math.random()

I expect an outcome similar to what happened between the European Commission and Booking.com. Booking.com pioneered a lot of e-commerce dark patterns like “X units left” and “Y people viewed this today”. The EC pushed Booking.com to change its online sales tactics to be more transparent.

Link to the European Commission's press release (2019) for anyone interested: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_19_...

Re: Request for comments regarding topics to be discussed at Dark Patterns workshop

#64

Post by tobiasSoftware »

The dark pattern I've been seeing a lot lately is billing services trying to make you go paperless. I've seen all sorts of dark patterns around it, from subtle things such as it being the second of three options where you need to check options 1 and 3 every month, to it literally being checked by default and buried in the middle of a "we are just checking up on you to make sure you have all your options set correctly" splash screen.

Re: Request for comments regarding topics to be discussed at Dark Patterns workshop

#66

Post by dqv »

vultour wrote: post #50
dqv wrote: post #21

Great I'm going to submit one about how the Apple iOS store forces you to get rid of your old devices and buy new ones. They make it extremely inconvenient to find out which apps are supported on your device. They don't hide the apps that aren't, so you are forced to download the app and wait to check to see if it's compatible or not.

There's a "Compatibility" section under each app which tells you whether it works on your device. You can also click on it so it tells you exactly which OS versions are supported.

So instead of filtering it out or graying out the "get" button, I need to click on the link in the app store and find the compatibility section (the last part of the page) to find out if it's compatible?

That's a dark pattern.

Re: Request for comments regarding topics to be discussed at Dark Patterns workshop

#67

Post by dqv »

wyre wrote: post #32
dqv wrote: post #21

Great I'm going to submit one about how the Apple iOS store forces you to get rid of your old devices and buy new ones. They make it extremely inconvenient to find out which apps are supported on your device. They don't hide the apps that aren't, so you are forced to download the app and wait to check to see if it's compatible or not.

You aren’t being forced to do anything. Apple already supports their devices much longer than the industry standard. If you don’t like Apple stop using their products.

Everything you said is true but it still has no bearing on the fact that it's a dark pattern to make it inconvenient to have an old device. They have the means and technology to filter out incompatible apps, but they've decided not provide it.

Re: Request for comments regarding topics to be discussed at Dark Patterns workshop

#68

Post by lostlogin »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #44
dmix wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 10yrs ago NBA did this to me. They made it impossible to cancel a $99/m sub. Their instructions were login and go to the cancel button but the cancel button was broken and said call this number. But no one ever picked up the number. I will never buy a NBA branded thing after that obvious bullshit scam.

New York Times does this also. As far as I can tell it's literally impossible to cancel a subscription. I had to close the card attached to my account.

Nicely timed, thank you. They have a sale on I was contemplating taking up. Nope.

Re: Request for comments regarding topics to be discussed at Dark Patterns workshop

#70

Post by nitrogen »

thow-01187 wrote: post #48
chiefofgxbxl wrote: post #8

Windows 10 does not respect the "default browser" setting when opening web-based content through apps. For example, clicking on "Help" links or search results from the start menu always opens in Edge. This seems far worse than their IE-bundling issue back in the day... at least users have a few web browsers to choose from, but what good is that when user preference is overridden?

Google does this even more egregiously with Android - my default browser is Firefox, but any links from Google News, Google Assistant and other Google software open in Chrome.

I wish Firefox provided two intents (does Android still call it that?), one for normal browsing and one for private browsing. Then any app that opens a link doesn't automatically get your active cookies from your main browser if you don't want it to.
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