The only problem is - it works well. Websites get you invested before sigup on purpose to increase their conversion rate. I'm afraid it's gonna fall on deaf ears.
Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
101–110 of 217 posts
Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#102Also: TV companies, please don't show me advertisements instead of the TV show I want to watch. Car dealers, please tell me about all the expensive feeds and add-ons before I agree to buy the car. Phone companies, gyms, fucking everyone, please tell me about the $50, $150 "sign up fee" in addition to the $X a month cost. etc. I mean, good luck guy. You are a human on a planet run by humans with all the power imbalanc…
Completely agree.
Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really - the market tempts you with free to hook you in. You cannot honestly say that the market has asked for every abusive free product that existed.
Users don’t pay up front. You don’t get any traction that way. User behavior is a part of this mess.
It was normal to pay up-front for software until about 10 years ago, just a few years after the 2008 crash where startups decided MRR/ARR was the metric for success
Enter the subscription model, holding your tech hostage for periodic payments and predictable cash flow
It’s not a coincidence that MTX happened in gaming at the same time, post 2008. Before then it was horse armour in oblivion.
Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#104I 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…
Yeah it's unavoidable, if you rely on growth (especially if you have a free or freemium service) you need to do this crap (though the author describes the most hostile form of it).
The business models of the web trap everyone within these incentives in order to be competitive - everyone hates it, but moloch demands it [0].
To escape it you have to escape the business model, to do that you have to escape the incentives, and to do that you have to boil the ocean and hope it works out [1].
[0]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
[1]: https://moronlab.blogspot.com/2010/01/urbit-functional-progr...
Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#105[deleted]
Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#106I don't really understand who this post is addressed to. The people that decide to do this just want more money. they won't stop because of some rant by a random stranger on the internet. The programmers who implement this have to do what their boss tells them to, or change jobs, and this isn't something worth changing jobs over. Everybody else already knows that it's a thing, knows why it happens and can't do anythi…
What a bizarre attitude. If you change people's minds they behave differently. Hell even in your example, there is a difference between some programmer who tells themselves this and some person who raises a stink; suddenly doing unethical shit slows you down, costs political capital, and approaches being more trouble than its worth. Fewer shit things will get done because there will be less energy to pursue them. I'm…
It's ultimately on developers as the last, ethical line of defense: They're the ones typing in the code at the end of the day. Without them, the bosses couldn't implement these things. Unfortunately, for every good developer who draws a line in the sand, there's Bob, two desks down, who is happy to implement whatever dark pattern boss tells him to. Fuck Bob.
What we really need is some kind of Hippocratic Oath for Software, that we all agree to and can collectively use to resist this shit. Not going to happen, but one can dream.
Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Users don’t pay up front. You don’t get any traction that way. User behavior is a part of this mess.
Users have always paid upfront for software, until software companies with lots of capital started this non sense. All copies of Microsoft Office were paid upfront. Users are just reacting to what the software industry did.
Indie shareware vendors predate "software companies with lots of capital" by decades. The big fishes seldom innovate anything.
Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Users don’t pay up front. You don’t get any traction that way. User behavior is a part of this mess.
Users have always paid upfront for software, until software companies with lots of capital started this non sense. All copies of Microsoft Office were paid upfront. Users are just reacting to what the software industry did.
Not really. There has always been shareware, aka trial demos.
Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn't it trivial for websites to strip out the +? I feel like between this, and the various sites that don't support + in email addresses for whatever reason, this trick isn't worth doing.
Yes, and any spammer will do this anyways. This is the digital equivalent of spelling your name backwards for anonymity. I don’t know why people still suggest it.
It still works, in my experience. Also, stripping out the plus is risky for sites, as it might actually be a part of the address, especially if it's not @gmail.com.
You can get a tad fancier and automatically mark mails without + as spam (only works for new addresses, obviously) or use a dash as separator (if your mail provider supports it). This won't block a targeted attack, yes, but it's usually sufficient to filter a lot of low quality spam and to identify companies that sell or leak your data.
Re: Dear websites, stop asking for ransom sign-ups
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
This is absolutely it!
In the marketplace, only results matter and companies that deliver them displace those that don’t. In this case, result mean profit or at least conversions.
The same was true for banks who were over extended on risky loans in the late aughts. If you didn’t do that, you were criticized by analysts and Wall Street for being too conservative, and anyway look how much these other banks are making. And by the government: you’re being too stingy with loans to the buyers who need them most.