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The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

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Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#181

Post by jitix »

iamleppert wrote: post #161
jitix wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great point, in the 90s people used to spend a fortune (relatively speaking) on taking, sharing and discovering pictures, consuming media and getting their news. Now everyone wants everything for free, but won’t give anything in return. And they also want market returns on their stocks, 401ks, etc at the same time. That being said, Meta/Google could implement a guaranteed privacy-first, ad-free option for something l…

If giving people the choice of an ad-free premium subscription was more profitable, they would do it. The issue with doing that is the users who pay are also the most desirable audience for advertisers. A premium model also eventually creates two separate products. The free product is (at first) built for the needs of the users to attract them and get enough volume to support an advertisement model. Then, it is gradu…

I understand how the market works and how the Gompertz curve looks for new product lifecycles. I have a (professionally useless) masters degree in that.

My question is, what’s your solution?

The shareholders/stock market (largely represented by the board) will replace any CEO who doesn’t employ patterns (dark, fu, whatever) to maximize revenue. And private companies can’t raise capital easily nor can they give Options/RSUs to employees.

We are in the current state due to market equilibrium driven by people’s willingness to pay, and since I personally don’t like meta or Zuck I use Reddit on Brave + Mastodon + Dev.to for my social media dopamine hits. OOP could do the same.

I don’t know how old you are but growing up in the 90s I certainly remember (parents) paying for many of these things we now take for granted. The net negative result is that independent journalism is dead.

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#182

Post by parentheses »

I don't agree with this at all. I do concede that some of these patterns use manipulation and visual trickery to send you down a particular (typically more profitable) path. That said, we all enjoy these services for free. The companies that provide them are for profit. I feel the intense hatred people have for these companies is extremely biased.

As a person who avoids Meta products for the most part, I still benefit from them greatly. I pay $0 and get a lot of conveniences. I do agree that it's not a nice feeling that they own the things I may post, but it's the deal that gets us what's app, facebook and instagram with near unlimited access to really nice social networking tools.

I similarly pay for YouTube premium because I don't want adds. I enjoy hours of video content ad free - often watching it more than I'd watch netflix or whatever other streaming service.

I agree that they're monetizing user content, but they're also providing access to compelling and often high quality content for free.

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#183

Post by indus »

Why not call it the ‘Coward pattern’

Why?

I’m a coward to not allow not logged in user.

I’m a coward to not let Ollie have a day.

I’m a coward to not allow good UX judgement prevail.

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#184

Post by ativzzz »

macNchz wrote: post #61

Reddit’s mobile web experience really embraces this–even as a logged in user there is a frequent “Use our app!” popup that has been made progressively more obnoxious. Once upon a time there was a preference option to disable the popup, though it would periodically become unchecked on its own. Then the option to disable it disappeared. Then the popup started appearing not just on page load, but after a period of time…

They probably have an internal KPI of increasing the number of mobile installs, and these patterns probably work to increase that number

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#185

Post by MikeDelta »

jitix wrote: post #134
guestbest wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a Trojan Horse pattern, really. They give away the service for free membership with billions of VC until their competitors collapse or fade away, then they start becoming more aggressive with ads and/or charging for premium access which used to be free.

This is not new, Gillette used to give out free razors to get people used to their ecosystem and get recurring revenue. It’s just more “in your face” now.

Well, I think Gillette's purpose was also very much in your face.

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#186

Post by TheAngush »

I had an experience like this today when I tried to use GlassDoor for the first time. As a student making my first ever job applications, I wanted to see what salaries and work environments were like at particular employers.

GlassDoor did the same scroll-locking tactic (so an element zapper like Ublock Origin's wouldn't resolve the issue), instructing me to register or sign in to view any information. So I registered an account. Only, it still covered the screen and locked the scroll position, now telling me that I needed to leave a review for my current employer if I wanted to use the website for information gathering.

I find this particularly egregious, particularly for a company ostensibly founded around the notion of transparency and freedom of information (in regards to workplace compensation and culture). Evidently one is only entitled to make informed decisions after first experiencing the potential consequences of making uninformed decisions. Joyous.

Suffice to say I will not be using GlassDoor in the future.

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#188

Post by drivebycomment »

boring_twenties wrote: post #156
drivebycomment wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn it off at https://myaccount.google.com/connections/settings

Except now you have to be logged in to a google account in order for that setting to work...

The automatic "sign in with Google" prompt only shows up if you're already signed-in. So if you're not signed-in, it doesn't (and can't) display - because there's no logged-in session, there's no existing user.

In case you're misunderstanding what we're discussing here - the feature in question is https://developers.google.com/identity/gsi/web/guides/offeri... .

If you use extensions like Privacy Badger or other ads/tracking blocking extensions, it blocks that by default so you may not have seen this on the web, though if you use certain apps on mobile, you may still have seen it.

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#189

Post by amelius »

janandonly wrote: post #70

I feel the same burning hate like a thousand suns for FB/Meta, Google/YT and other platforms that monetize their users. But, let's be frank here: They monetize you and me, us, the users because 1 they can and, 2, they have to. Yes, they have to. Imagine they provided access to their platforms for free. How would the shareholders (your retirement funds included) respond when less profit was made? You see, we view them…

We just have to take their stupid ad-based monetization scheme away, so we can just pay for what we use like in the good old times.

We can start with a law that applies to all social media systems that have more than 1M users.

Re: The 'fuck you' pattern (2021)

#190

Post by jitix »

benjaminbachman wrote: post #154
jitix wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not new, Gillette used to give out free razors to get people used to their ecosystem and get recurring revenue. It’s just more “in your face” now.

But there's no network effects with razors.

Exactly! This is a strategy that works even for markets without network effects. It just gets even more amplified (and profitable) when network effects exist.

In todays terms the equivalent would be an invite to a closed Gillette page/group/discord that has exclusive videos from the latest influencers (or whatever teenagers like and talk about).

For example OOP could get their daily cat based dopamine fix from a myriad of online sources, most open or easily bypassed but they want to see this one particular cat which is behind Meta’s wall and requires additional payment (in terms of data) from them.

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