Instagram gets worse with dark patterns lifted from TikTok • Hacker News Board

Re: Instagram gets worse with dark patterns lifted from TikTok

#51

Post by alisonatwork » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 5:11 AM UTC

rumori wrote: post #42

The top dark pattern Instagram employs is sending you internal notifications that you cannot turn off no matter of your notification settings. If you have multiple accounts it’s guaranteed you will have a little red dot sitting there making you switch to one of the accounts to clear it. I absolutely hate this and it’s going straight against their imaginary goal of being a responsible company that supports mental well…

This is one of the most trash patterns in software development, because it trains you to ignore in-app notifications altogether, so you end up having a feature that theoretically could've been useful made utterly useless by the fact the real signal is spammed out by a million tedious marketing things.

I don't know if these patterns were pioneered by Chinese software companies, but from at least 5 years ago they were already doing this in pretty much every mobile app. Infuriatingly, my online banking app did it too, so you couldn't even just log on to check your account balance without having a half dozen pop-ups and flashing icons and weird mini-apps trying to get you to click on something almost, but not quite entirely unlike a banking product.

Nowadays I even see it on ordinary western e-commerce websites like Booking.com, or (most recently, post-redesign) the account management page of my mobile provider. I have no idea what the product managers responsible for this are thinking, because it just makes using the app an exercise in disappointment. If I click on a notification I want to get something that genuinely is important to me, not some kind of alert from a half-assed feature I never wanted in the first place.

Re: Instagram gets worse with dark patterns lifted from TikTok

#52

Post by _zzaw » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 5:13 AM UTC

prawn wrote: post #24

Instagram was trending down but has taken a dive in recent months. Just an unbearable proportion of ads and lame suggested content. You end up playing whack-a-mole trying to get it to stop showing you rubbish. It had been a not-insignificant part of my work but now I just resent using it at all.

Yeah. It's horrible. I'm on there because that's where my audience is for now, but I despise both the platform and company to a degree that's hard to express in words.

It's weird. You'd think that inspiring customer loyalty by building a good product would be considered good business, but even as I'm typing that, I'm realizing how comically naive it sounds. Meta and its ilk are 100% about lock-in (and, to no small degree, addiction); you ultimately realize you're not using them because you want to, but because you have to. (Unless, of course, you're willing to sacrifice being able to share your work with friends and build a following. Some people are. I'm not.)

I've found that blocking every user that displays video ads, and reporting the ad as "offensive", does seem to cut down on garbage after a while.

Re: Instagram gets worse with dark patterns lifted from TikTok

#53

Post by wincy » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 5:24 AM UTC

musicale wrote: post #19

jondwillis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should specify that I am an iOS engineer.

I like iOS apps that aren't full of tracking nonsense (and the nutrition labels might help.) But dark patterns abound, and mobile gaming is largely a hell of monetization and slot-machine mechanics.

It’s so frustrating that my iPhone 12 Pro Max could be a perfect platform for playing serious games, but instead I have to haul around a Nintendo Switch.

I know my iPhone can render excellent graphics, I played to level 60 on Diablo Immortal then got out before they could extract more than $10 from me!

Re: Instagram gets worse with dark patterns lifted from TikTok

#54

Post by citizenpaul » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 5:36 AM UTC

ineedtoknowmore wrote: post #37

chii wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I tried to avoid doing these things for awhile but nobody pays me to be ethical. it's because any way to make money that is currently legal (but some might consider unethical) is the fittest agent in the darwinian natural selection of economic competition. So any ethical businesses who forgo a more profitable, but slightly less ethical method, would be out-competed. Over time, therefore, what remains must be busine…

- Many of these business models have been subsidized by governments. - I'm not sure, though the reasoning may be that their future existence is ultimately more valuable as a population control system than merely an ad network. - Some have argued that online ads are in a bubble. I don't know. - A free market does not seem to exist though. Thoughts?

I think its less an ad bubble and more like something similar to government use it or lose it spending. There is a sort of global hot potato/musical chairs thing going on. No one wants to be the first or last one to cut their ad spending so its a stand off.

I've looked at some ad spending stuff at companies in the past and while their official numbers always "added up" there always seemed to me to be huge logic gaps that missed lots of obvious overspending. Those things are always hand-waved away as some sort of force multiplier or other nonsense. AKA don't cut our budget or sales will go away we dare you!

I've posted a longer comment on here about an adventure in cutting ad spending at a company I was at because of a minor feud I had with the marketing manager. There were huge areas where the cost/profit from ads was destroying profit margin. I made some tremendous efforts to prove we could make major spending cuts on advertising without losing sales to the owner and ceo and was successful. I probably would not have been able to do it if the marketing guy was not constantly blaming their failures on IT so I stood up for us by spending my personal time making accurate reports and dashboards about the spending and proved him wrong. (he and a couple others lost their job) (no they didn't stand up and clap its a real story)

Re: Instagram gets worse with dark patterns lifted from TikTok

#55

Post by sorry_outta_gas » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 5:41 AM UTC

jondwillis wrote: post #13

TikTok and Facebook’s antics (existence?) have me seriously considering quitting tech. I feel like no matter what I do, I am feeding one of these societal cancers by implementing tracking for whoever is paying me currently, lifting dark patterns, etc, using the API of Google… I tried to avoid doing these things for awhile but nobody pays me to be ethical. My only marketable skill is software development and I pretty…

There's way to more to software than whatever it is you've been working on

Re: Instagram gets worse with dark patterns lifted from TikTok

#56

Post by princevegeta89 » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 5:46 AM UTC

jondwillis wrote: post #13

TikTok and Facebook’s antics (existence?) have me seriously considering quitting tech. I feel like no matter what I do, I am feeding one of these societal cancers by implementing tracking for whoever is paying me currently, lifting dark patterns, etc, using the API of Google… I tried to avoid doing these things for awhile but nobody pays me to be ethical. My only marketable skill is software development and I pretty…

You don't need to quit tech. You need to find a position that helps solve real problems for the greater good. If you think about it, companies like Apple are very pro-privacy and don't make money by selling data or tracking folks. Or look into other companies like those non-profits like Mozilla or Signal. Your pay will go down but you'll be content. Or maybe, you could look into building your own company.

Facebook is a cesspit of delusion and the "metaverse" initiative they took takes us to a point of no return for all their apps. Tiktok I would say is even worse given how we basically have millions of young teens oscillating on the borderline of being "famous" and sexualizing themselves. Stay away from such social media platforms or those that offer completely "free" products and you are good.

Re: Instagram gets worse with dark patterns lifted from TikTok

#57

Post by aendruk » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 5:50 AM UTC

rumori wrote: post #42

The top dark pattern Instagram employs is sending you internal notifications that you cannot turn off no matter of your notification settings. If you have multiple accounts it’s guaranteed you will have a little red dot sitting there making you switch to one of the accounts to clear it. I absolutely hate this and it’s going straight against their imaginary goal of being a responsible company that supports mental well…

I tried Instagram in 2020 but shortly deleted it for precisely this abuse.

Re: Instagram gets worse with dark patterns lifted from TikTok

#58

Post by winternett » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 5:56 AM UTC

princevegeta89 wrote: post #56

jondwillis wrote: post #13

TikTok and Facebook’s antics (existence?) have me seriously considering quitting tech. I feel like no matter what I do, I am feeding one of these societal cancers by implementing tracking for whoever is paying me currently, lifting dark patterns, etc, using the API of Google… I tried to avoid doing these things for awhile but nobody pays me to be ethical. My only marketable skill is software development and I pretty…

You don't need to quit tech. You need to find a position that helps solve real problems for the greater good. If you think about it, companies like Apple are very pro-privacy and don't make money by selling data or tracking folks. Or look into other companies like those non-profits like Mozilla or Signal. Your pay will go down but you'll be content. Or maybe, you could look into building your own company. Facebook is…

If apple is pro privacy, they wouldn't be putting lidar scanning on their phones.

Whether it's enabled or not, Lidar is military-grade tech that has no place on most cell phones,

Let's not act like the entire industry isn't heavily invested in data collection... It does damage to real discussions about privacy and consumer protection for everyone.

Re: Instagram gets worse with dark patterns lifted from TikTok

#59

Post by bobkazamakis » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 5:58 AM UTC

winternett wrote: post #58

princevegeta89 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to quit tech. You need to find a position that helps solve real problems for the greater good. If you think about it, companies like Apple are very pro-privacy and don't make money by selling data or tracking folks. Or look into other companies like those non-profits like Mozilla or Signal. Your pay will go down but you'll be content. Or maybe, you could look into building your own company. Facebook is…

If apple is pro privacy, they wouldn't be putting lidar scanning on their phones. Whether it's enabled or not, Lidar is military-grade tech that has no place on most cell phones, Let's not act like the entire industry isn't heavily invested in data collection... It does damage to real discussions about privacy and consumer protection for everyone.

> Lidar is military-grade tech

encryption is military-grade tech too.

Re: Instagram gets worse with dark patterns lifted from TikTok

#60

Post by winternett » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 6:02 AM UTC

bobkazamakis wrote: post #59

winternett wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If apple is pro privacy, they wouldn't be putting lidar scanning on their phones. Whether it's enabled or not, Lidar is military-grade tech that has no place on most cell phones, Let's not act like the entire industry isn't heavily invested in data collection... It does damage to real discussions about privacy and consumer protection for everyone.

> Lidar is military-grade tech encryption is military-grade tech too.

Yeah, but encryption is purposed as a security feature, Lidar is a data collection feature.

https://www.opentopography.org/blog/iphone-lidar-application...