Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups

iamvishnu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 217 posts

Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups

#71

Post by tredre3 »

_jal wrote: post #51
ianlevesque wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why Amazon is still winning. The competition needs to compete better.

Amazon is at least as awful. I cancelled Prime about a year ago - delivery sucks at my location with their logistics and I just don't want to deal with it. I still occasionally order some things that are hard to find elsewhere, I just ship it to an address where things won't be immediately stolen. And after the huge "subscribe prime" interstitial with the tiny "not now" button, they still add prime to the order, not…

I agree with everything you said and almost got tricked back into Prime myself. And yet, somehow, Amazon is still the least bad option for me.

Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups

#72

Post by koverda »

polysaturate wrote: post #66
matthiaswh wrote: post #60

I've been trying to order from non Amazon sites as a habit lately. A large percentage of them use the same platform, maybe it's Shopify? During checkout, they have a checkbox asking if you also want to receive promotional emails. It's annoying that this is checked by default, but I can tolerate it to some degree since I still have the ability to opt out. I always uncheck it. Always. Almost without fail, I end up rece…

This... My assumption was always that there are two separate systems at play, and once your email is entered, it gets put into some sort of cart rescue campaign..which sends...promotional emails.

cart rescue campaigns technically qualify as "transactional" campaigns, rather than promotional campaigns. that's why that happens

Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups

#73

Post by spdif899 »

wruza wrote: post #48
squarefoot wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about a browser extension doing exactly that: a distributed user populated database, karma based abuse prevention (because it will be abused) and a big indicator that turns on from yellow to red according to the level of garbage the site is throwing against its users.

What would stop them from abusing the karma itself and/or buying “influence” points from popular users?

Hopefully, the fact that the system would create its own loop, and would rely on the accuracy and usefulness of that loop. If it served inaccurate info to users, they might be tricked into opening something they wouldn't have, at which point they would lose trust in the tool upon seeing the thing it's meant to protect them from.

Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups

#74

Post by wruza »

JohnFen wrote: post #19
JoshTriplett wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grab a copy of netpbm or GraphicsMagick that's compiled for Windows. Or, grab a free image editor ( https://www.getpaint.net/ is popular for Windows), open in one format, save in the other.

This. I honestly don't understand why people use online image converters when there are high-quality OSS programs that will do the job locally. I'll bet that the majority of the online converters are using these programs to do the actual conversion anyway.

https://www.google.com/search?q=convert+jpg+to+png

That’s why. And also because sometimes it just works. I’ve done some packet-level work recently and wanted to decode text. The tools I’ve used were some online converters, not iconv or base64. Because experimenting with their modes adds mental overhead even if I more or less can use them without man. Choosing from-to and pasting text into a textbox takes no brain capacity.

25+ years ago, when internet wasn’t very accessible, there were multiple simple windows apps to do small things like this. Now they are online, but open source and new apps world in general never figured out that users still need it - simple, discoverable, easy to use tools. I’m not gonna scroll through pages of magick options and (in case it just works based on .ext, which I also should re-figure out from the lack of such option) try to remember if there’s -i and -o required for input and output.

Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups

#75

Post by mattigames »

falcolas wrote: post #56
fishtoaster wrote: post #43

I hate those too. On the other hand, I've been adjacent to the decision to add them before. You're under a lot of pressure to increase conversion in your onboarding funnel, so you test out moving your email capture up a bit in your conversion flow (ie to before you deliver results) and it works! Conversion increases throughout the funnel! So you keep it. Dark patterns like this persist because they measurably work. S…

Just because a psychological trick works doesn’t mean you must use it. Have some respect for your users, developers. ‘Cause you’re one of them.

You are new to this "capitalism" thing aren't you? /s

Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups

#76

Post by chongli »

tomrod wrote: post #65
tamimio wrote: post #49

Yesterday I was using a website to generate a logo (not mentioning them they don’t deserve any publicity), and after entering the details, refining what to emphasize on, description, my email and logo requirements, they generated some and refused to show it unless I pay, not just signing up.. literal scumbags, why would I pay before even seeing the logo ffs, what if I didn’t like it? How about all the time and detail…

Inkscape has been a godsend

They just released a new version too! A bunch of really nice features!

Long live native desktop software (FOSS and perpetual licensed proprietary)! SAAS-ified desktop apps and subscription software can’t disappear fast enough, if you ask me. I think most of it will, besides the big players (Adobe and Autodesk), because it relies too heavily on traffic from Google (slowly drowning in SEO spam).

Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups

#77

Post by duxup »

fishtoaster wrote: post #43

I hate those too. On the other hand, I've been adjacent to the decision to add them before. You're under a lot of pressure to increase conversion in your onboarding funnel, so you test out moving your email capture up a bit in your conversion flow (ie to before you deliver results) and it works! Conversion increases throughout the funnel! So you keep it. Dark patterns like this persist because they measurably work. S…

We want everything for free and we get what we deserve.

The web is a brutal place for everyone.

I’m not a fan of these choices but we as users demand a lot for free and sites are going to do what they can to try to survive.

Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups

#78

Post by dheera »

duxup wrote: post #77
fishtoaster wrote: post #43

I hate those too. On the other hand, I've been adjacent to the decision to add them before. You're under a lot of pressure to increase conversion in your onboarding funnel, so you test out moving your email capture up a bit in your conversion flow (ie to before you deliver results) and it works! Conversion increases throughout the funnel! So you keep it. Dark patterns like this persist because they measurably work. S…

We want everything for free and we get what we deserve. The web is a brutal place for everyone. I’m not a fan of these choices but we as users demand a lot for free and sites are going to do what they can to try to survive.

No, I'm okay with things not being free, but that needs to be stated upfront.

Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups

#79

Post by kredd »

falcolas wrote: post #56
fishtoaster wrote: post #43

I hate those too. On the other hand, I've been adjacent to the decision to add them before. You're under a lot of pressure to increase conversion in your onboarding funnel, so you test out moving your email capture up a bit in your conversion flow (ie to before you deliver results) and it works! Conversion increases throughout the funnel! So you keep it. Dark patterns like this persist because they measurably work. S…

Just because a psychological trick works doesn’t mean you must use it. Have some respect for your users, developers. ‘Cause you’re one of them.

Unless the playing field between the companies are on the same level (reads: dark patters are deemed illegal, and I think it should be!), or you are in some sort of monopolistic industry, to my understanding you will lose to your competitors. I've never been in a situation to implement such patterns, but play these mental gymnastics to give the implementor some benefit of the doubt.

Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups

#80

Post by duxup »

dheera wrote: post #78
duxup wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We want everything for free and we get what we deserve. The web is a brutal place for everyone. I’m not a fan of these choices but we as users demand a lot for free and sites are going to do what they can to try to survive.

No, I'm okay with things not being free, but that needs to be stated upfront.

Consider the “ransom” your notice.
Post reply on HN