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

121–130 of 217 posts

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

#121

Post by criddell »

Gigachad wrote: post #89
Sylamore wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The faster a web site asks me for an email address determines how fast I bail on even looking at their product/tool, or if I have no choice I put in a bogus email address to get past it, if it is one of those damn forms that sends you a link I use one of the various public inbox/temporary email address sites so I don't have to deal with the attempts to bring me back into the conversion funnel when I was just seeking…

The site owners don’t care. If something works on 99% of people and pushes away 1%, they will keep doing it.

Are you saying ransom sign-ups can convert 99% of a site’s visitors?

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

#122

Post by butlerm »

gonehome wrote: post #104
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…

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 incentive…

Incentives are fine. Misleading and deceiving people about them is not.

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

#123

Post by Nextgrid »

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…

What does “conversion” actually mean in this context? Does it mean bullshit “growth & engagement” aka the numbers of (mostly non-consensual) subscribers in the spam list going up, or does it mean actual profit?

I could definitely see it working for the first case, which is all that your typical product/marketing person needs to justify their salary thus why the practice is popular, but I wonder if this actually ends up translating to actual profit (whether the spammed people end up buying stuff they wouldn’t have otherwise bought, and whether any prospective buyers that would’ve converted otherwise were driven away).

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

#124

Post by Gigachad »

criddell wrote: post #121
Gigachad wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The site owners don’t care. If something works on 99% of people and pushes away 1%, they will keep doing it.

Are you saying ransom sign-ups can convert 99% of a site’s visitors?

The actual numbers are made up, but the point is that more people are either signing up or ignoring, than people leaving the site.

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

#125

Post by lamontcg »

ryandrake wrote: post #106
burnished wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 So…

Or a Union like the writers/actors guilds.

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

#126

Post by falcolas »

kredd wrote: post #79
falcolas wrote: post #56

Earlier 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.

> but play these mental gymnastics to give the implementor some benefit of the doubt.

No.

Using psychological tricks to get people to act against their best interests is immoral.

“But if I don’t implement it, someone else will.” That’s merely a justification to make you sleep easier at night. Let that someone else do it.

And if you lose your job over not implementing a dark pattern, was it a job worth having? If they’re willing to let you go for refusing to a task you view as immoral, they aren’t worth your loyalty in the first place.

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

#128

Post by nullfield »

Gigachad wrote: post #90
rjbwork wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this on gmail myself. I have my own domain and pay for gmail on it. I have a wildcard set to go to my mailbox and wildcard stuff gets sorted per usual. So for instance, if I buy something at target, I use/sign in w/ target@mydomain.com. I know I should probably get off of gmail, but it's a really good service for my needs. It's also reasonably priced and there's no limit for those email addresses since it just c…

I used to do this but ended up in too many situations on the phone where someone says “what’s your email” and I can’t remember what email I gave them and I look like an idiot who doesn’t know what their email is. Now I just mark any marketing email as spam and let the email service automatically move all future emails to spam.

I did too, and I’m not sure what the best fix is.

Proton has SimpleLogin after buying it, but then they own me forever as much as the next company, with the caveat that they can raise fees. Just your username and (ridiculously crazy, 26 character) password isn’t good enough anymore-“oops, we need to send you an email before you can log in” is rapidly becoming normal.

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

#129

Post by falcolas »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #110
kredd wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> 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.

Were this the unalterable truth, mom and pop shops wouldn't exist. Companies who invest profits back into themselves would not exist. Public companies who pay living wages wouldn't exist.

But they all do.

Which means there's more to the formula; and that formula can include things like respecting their users.

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

#130

Post by WeylandYutani »

ianlevesque wrote: post #18
nickthegreek wrote: post #9

My biggest current peeve is not allowing me to see shipping costs until I’ve given basically all my information to a company before I’ve checked out.

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

Amazon actually didn't win in my country. And it's because of their terribly shitty website. And their terrible commercials.
Post reply on HN