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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

#251

Post by amluto »

jrockway wrote: post #177
amluto wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be in favor of a different approach: a merchant should not, under any circumstances, be able to remove money from an account, charge a credit card, or otherwise take money from someone without the explicit authorization of the customer. In this context, explicit means one of two things: 1. The customer intentionally authorized that specific transaction. A specific transaction means one transaction. If a merch…

I think the explicit authorization is the contract you sign that allows for the subscription. It's already pretty risky to loan people money, and your system makes it even riskier. (Consider the business model of cloud providers; you agree to pay for whatever you use, and then they charge you for last month's usage. If you could just not pay, then the business wouldn't really be viable. You'd have to figure out what…

I think there are a couple of issues. One is that most countries consider giant piles or fine print that no one reads to be binding contracts and that customers can’t credibly negotiate them. The other is that it’s far too easy for merchants to extract money from customers without the customers’ consent.

Attacking the latter might make a large difference even if the former remains unsolved. The New York Times can get away with making cancellation difficult because they have the power to unilaterally take money from their (former?) customers. But, if anyone could trivially revoke their authorization to charge them money, I doubt that the New York Times would actually try to sue or collect from their customers en masse. Sure, they could try, but that would be a fantastic way to piss everyone off and to recover very little money.

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

#252

Post by rosmax_1337 »

What is the most reasonable way that "we" and people like us on HN could do to prevent Dark Patterns as they are right now? Maybe the FTC will prevent some in the future, maybe they won't, I don't put much hope into it. Lawmaking on the internet right now is a mess, and GDPR whilst it might have had good intents ended up being a big mistake imo. (Certainly the whole consent-cookie thing is a mistake)

We can all promise not to implement Dark Patterns in the software we write. But the good old "personal boycott" isn't really working, and hasn't really been working since forever. If for example Youtube won't allow you to turn off your screen on a mobile device, unless you buy premium (turning off the screen is a hardware feature, not a website feature), then the solution isn't really to stop using Youtube. There isn't an alternative.

Man, when I think about this stuff I can get kinda jaded. Antidotes like youtube-dl, or ublock origin work, but they only work for "us", and not everyone else who has to live in the Dark Pattern hellhole that the internet is turning into. I meet people who have never heard of an adblocker, still in 2021.

And even if "we" all stop implementing Dark Patterns, there will be plenty of other cheap hires who will gladly implement the same features when we refuse to do that kind of stuff. And if you're in a bad enough spot it would leave you out of work even. What if there was some kind of union? Like say something called "union of ethical software", which may more technically be a international non-profit rather than a union, which does a few different things:

1) Establishes open standards for how things should work, in regards to "ethical software", rather than say technical standards.

2) Has a donation fund which funds

A) A small team of lawyers/tech-people, who will on a strategic basis defend cases where an employee might end up in trouble refusing to implement features which are in conflict with 1). Not to primarily save employees, but to primarily scare tech-giants from going for the "do it or ill fire you stick immediately".

B) A small team of educators and speakers, who would spend time creating educational content and essentially political content as to garner public opinion in favor of all this, the types of people to appear on say TV during a big case against for example Google.

I'm just throwing ideas at the wall here though. Saw another comment here about living in a off-grid cabin. That sounds very nice, and better each day.

...The ESITF, Ethical Standards for Information Technology Foundation. Did it have a ring?

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

#253

Post by Dayshine »

amaccuish wrote: post #195
amluto wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be in favor of a different approach: a merchant should not, under any circumstances, be able to remove money from an account, charge a credit card, or otherwise take money from someone without the explicit authorization of the customer. In this context, explicit means one of two things: 1. The customer intentionally authorized that specific transaction. A specific transaction means one transaction. If a merch…

>The merchant may register a subscription or other recurring charge arrangement with the customer’s bank or card provider. An advantage of Direct Debits in the UK is that I see them all in my banking app and can cancel them individually. A company is legally required to gain my consent again before charging again.

Of course, just because you cancel your Direct Debit doesn't mean you aren't legally on the hook for that payment.

They can still send demand letters and "send you to collections".

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

#255

Post by tobr »

jrockway wrote: post #75
shiftpgdn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm highly in favor of making this illegal. My credit card expired and I switched my NYT subscription from through their website to through Apple (so I could cancel), and they sent my account to collections! Working with the collections agency to get it removed was easy, however. I guess the law that I would be in favor of is twofold: 1) You must be able to cancel subscriptions from the same website that you created…

> You must be able to cancel subscriptions from the same website that you created it from.

More to the point, it should be required that canceling/downgrading is as easy as or easier than signing up/upgrading. Want to offer 1-click-buy, you also need to offer 1-click-cancel.

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

#256

Post by robinj6 »

Worst dark pattern IMHO these days is the free trial that requires a credit card and rolls right into subscription, especially when it defaults to annual and there’s an early cancellation fee. Canceling subscriptions is also a labyrinth that differs by site.

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

#257

Post by etripe »

gnicholas wrote: post #175

I can't believe that the Microsoft Teams software automatically reinstalls itself in my login items every time I open it. I don't use it often — mostly when I have calls with people at Microsoft — but this happens without fail every time. As far as I'm concerned, this makes the Teams software malware. I have never had any other software that repeatedly put itself into my login items that wasn't clearly malware. If I…

Is it at all possible Teams is coming back due to a company group policy?

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

#258

Post by edoceo »

andreilys wrote: post #139
shiftpgdn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can also open a temporary credit card linked to your real credit card using www.privacy.com If you have problems cancelling a subscription, you can simply cancel the temporary card that privacy.com created for you

someone upthread got sent to collections after a card-cancel way, so, still some risk

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

#259

Post by edoceo »

hhjinks wrote: post #202
shiftpgdn wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can change your payment option to paypal, remove your card from NYT, then remove your card from paypal. They'll complain to you for a couple weeks, but they'll cancel it for you after a while after that.

you can cancel auto-sub in paypal w/o removing the card

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

#260

Post by shkkmo »

fpig wrote: post #17

The worst one is probably trying to make it hard for users to stop paying for a service, like cancelling a subscription. That shit should be punishable by literal prison time.

If a company makes it difficult to cancel, you can always talk to your card issuer. They are required to allow you to stop all future payments to a recipient but may force you to request this in writing.

However in my experience, you can usually accomplish it with a phone call and can often dispute the most recent charge as well.

IMHO, chargebacks are the best way to fight back against companies that use dark patterns in their billing/cancelation process.

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