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The 'Fuck You' Pattern

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Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#241

Post by jraph »

bserge wrote: post #95
vimax wrote: post #72

Where are the developers implementing this stuff on large social media, especially Reddit who had such a user friendly founding? Surely they're here on HN. I'd love to hear their thinking in going along with this, assuming it's something better than "fuck the users I want to get paid." How do you join the dev team for a service you like and use, and then knowingly destroy it?

Hey, I would if 1. I got paid for it; 2. I'd justify it with "fuck this platform, everyone should go back to individual websites/blogs/forums".

Sabotage by executing the given orders?

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#242

Post by xmprt »

klyrs wrote: post #13

I love instagram. It's the best social media site. Last time I checked, I couldn't even make an account from my desktop computer. I'm not gonna even try to install their app on my G-free phone. When a friends sends me a link to Instagram, I know that I don't need to click on it -- the thumbnail contains all the information that I'd ever see without creating an account. When news articles consist of a bunch of embedde…

My favorite feature is how when someone shares an Instagram post of Whatsapp it's blurred out. I realized this today and it just hit me that they don't care about making the apps actually good. All they care about is that you go back to the main app where they can advertise to you.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#243

Post by jalgos_eminator »

mikestew wrote: post #47
axbytg wrote: post #5

Reddit is full of these patterns in order to drive users from mobile web to app. Reddit mobile web really sets the bar for user-hostile UI in my opinion.

I don't have a Reddit account, and every time I use it I am reminded why. Their patterns have taken me from "I should create an account one of these days" to "there is nothing on the Internet that I need to see so badly that I would let Reddit see anymore about me than my IP address." It's almost as if they are taunting users: "give up and create an account, or go home. Oh, and use the fucking mobile app while you're…

Use the old interface available at old.reddit.com. Its mostly fine. There are some really good corners of reddit, though the popular subs have been infected with the well washed masses.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#244

Post by cjohansson »

ipaddr wrote: post #182
js4ever wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact it's still forbidden by Google ... Except if you are very large like Pinterest

It might not be forbidden if it works. Google is famous for undocumented workarounds.

Only the most expensive SEO-experts know the occult methods of success on Google's search results

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#246

Post by shrimpx »

bob1029 wrote: post #126
vimax wrote: post #72

Where are the developers implementing this stuff on large social media, especially Reddit who had such a user friendly founding? Surely they're here on HN. I'd love to hear their thinking in going along with this, assuming it's something better than "fuck the users I want to get paid." How do you join the dev team for a service you like and use, and then knowingly destroy it?

> How do you join the dev team for a service you like and use, and then knowingly destroy it? You start with priorities that are fucked up before you even interviewed for the job. The world of today is not like the world of 10+ years ago. In 2001, if you met a developer, there was an exceptionally high % chance that they were fundamentally into technology in a very deep & personal way. In 2021, you will find that mos…

I think this is because "tech" is quickly becoming a business utility, and every company is becoming a "tech company" just by augmenting its business with an app stack. "Tech" has become watered-down by proliferating everywhere, and accordingly developers have grown in number and diminished in average passion and skill.

Coupled with this, everyone knows these tech-driven ad-distribution companies posing as "social media" are pretty shady, because they're based on coyly mining user attention for $. So I you get a job there, your moral bar is low enough that a dark pattern here and there is no big deal.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#247

Post by Groxx »

turtletontine wrote: post #46
nkingsy wrote: post #4

Q: But what about the unauthenticated existing users we might alienate? A: There’s no way to gather data on that so it’s not a thing. This is the problem with “data driven” decision making in a nutshell. It has annoyed me to no end at every company I’ve worked for.

... but if you can't collect data on them, you can't target ads to them or sell their data elsewhere, and therefore they're worth nothing to you. At the end of the day every company wants to make money, or will be bought out by cutthroats who think it's all there is, and this kind of thinking will take hold. Users you can't profit from = leeches.

You can still collect (a lot) more information than classical advertising in print or on TV gets, and that seems to work alright.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#248

Post by cyrux004 »

e12e wrote: post #174
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #57

"Wow, fuck you. I just wanted to look at cats." "Well, fuck you, too. We're here to sell ads." It's not about dark patterns, that's just a second-order effect. It was never about dark patterns. This is the implied agreement. You understand it, or you don't. And if you don't, I guess you haven't been on the web in the past decade or something. What? You thought it was fair that a company spends millions in technical i…

> You thought it was fair that a company spends millions in technical infrastructure and staffing so you can sit at home and spend your time looking at cats for free? No, they have your attention and they're going to connect you to organizations who will pay for it. "The infrastructure" to share cat pictures cost peanuts. It's the addictive dark patterns and montezation/tracking that costs millions. That's the irony.

Shouldnt you include engineers compensation in "The infrastructure" thats where a lot of money goes.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#249

Post by pessimizer »

tgtweak wrote: post #48
klyrs wrote: post #13

I love instagram. It's the best social media site. Last time I checked, I couldn't even make an account from my desktop computer. I'm not gonna even try to install their app on my G-free phone. When a friends sends me a link to Instagram, I know that I don't need to click on it -- the thumbnail contains all the information that I'd ever see without creating an account. When news articles consist of a bunch of embedde…

Pinterest and Reddit are not better these days. The amount of things you can view on reddit on your phone without creating an account or installing the app is dwindling daily. Every time my wife sends me a Pinterest link I just ask her to screenshot it as I can't see shit on the default mobile page. I don't even know why Google continues to allow them in the results when there is clear-cut policies around showing som…

> Ironically, a good workaround is setting your user agent to the Googlebot and suddenly all those modal/nag screens disappear.

Cloudflare slaps you for this, though.

Re: The 'Fuck You' Pattern

#250

Post by mdavis6890 »

e12e wrote: post #174
andrewmcwatters wrote: post #57

"Wow, fuck you. I just wanted to look at cats." "Well, fuck you, too. We're here to sell ads." It's not about dark patterns, that's just a second-order effect. It was never about dark patterns. This is the implied agreement. You understand it, or you don't. And if you don't, I guess you haven't been on the web in the past decade or something. What? You thought it was fair that a company spends millions in technical i…

> You thought it was fair that a company spends millions in technical infrastructure and staffing so you can sit at home and spend your time looking at cats for free? No, they have your attention and they're going to connect you to organizations who will pay for it. "The infrastructure" to share cat pictures cost peanuts. It's the addictive dark patterns and montezation/tracking that costs millions. That's the irony.

You make a great point that I hadn't considered before.

It's like rocket fuel! The faster you want to go, the more fuel you need. Which adds weight, so now you go slower, so you need more fuel...

I want to serve a cat picture, which would cost 1/100 of a cent. But at scale, it adds up. So now I show adds that generate 1.2/100 of a cent in revenue but add .5/100 cents in serving cost, which I can optimize with user data to add an additional .7/100 cents in revenue, but which adds .4/100 cents in serving costs....

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