Very well written. When you turn against your customers' welfare, you're almost always going down a path of failure in the long run.
The slippery slope
11–20 of 137 posts
Re: The slippery slope
#12[deleted]
Re: The slippery slope
#13Great article. This reinforces the "Data informed, not data driven" mantra - you can optimise a feature on your site for a single metric but always take the human effects into account.
It also shows the importance of talking to your users in person. An A/B test may prove that ticking a box by default will get so and so many more users opting in, but it can't show you the look on their face when they realize what you just did to them.
Re: The slippery slope
#14All I'm going to say is that even though it's awful The Ladders have all those tricks, they're successful.
Not saying the ends justify the means, but I wonder how their business would look otherwise.
Re: The slippery slope
#15To disable Ad Tracking under IOS, go to Settings > General > About > Advertising > Limit Ad Tracking to On This is a worthwhile read (with excellent examples) on the ubiquitous "Click here to not receive third-party messages" pattern.
Let's not forget about disabling "Interest-based ads," for which there is no path to get to... other than going to a link in Safari. The link is oo.apple.com
This KB article explains the process. http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4228
Interestingly, this launches some sort of stealth app, not a hidden page in the "Settings" app.
Also, there is another setting for including your location with iAd calls. That one is Settings > Privacy > Location Services > (Scroll all the way to the bottom, yes, past every single app that uses your location, about 35 in my case) > System Services > Location-Based iAds
Re: The slippery slope
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would suggest that the article makes a very good case for it being done to explicitly trick the user. Apple particularly gives a huge amount of consideration for making an intuitive and obvious UI. It's not a big leap to assert that in this case, they've made it as difficult as they can to opt out while still offering the choice.
More than likely it was done to protect the users privacy while keeping the exact same user experience. The protections were made behind the scenes with additional options made available to the user, but disabled by default. The transitions from guid had the potential to break many apps so encouraging users to disable it would have likely caused many unintended side effects in addition to cluttering the ui and annoyi…
I've read this three times now and I'm still not sure I get it...
Re: The slippery slope
#17All I'm going to say is that even though it's awful The Ladders have all those tricks, they're successful. Not saying the ends justify the means, but I wonder how their business would look otherwise.
Well that's the kinda the point of Dark Patterns? Companies use them because they work. They are unethical, but they achieve success (in the short term at least, sometimes long tem). This is why there is law, to level to play in field so the ethical groups can be not disadvantaged.
Re: The slippery slope
#18It's funny. I'm on the phone trying to reach a student loan representative right now. I keep pressing 1 for English, 4 for a student loan representative, 1 again for the type of loan, then I'm back to pressing 4 for a loan representative. It's an infinite loop!
I try hitting 0 for an operator but then I'm prompted to give a 4 digit extension for the party I want to reach.
Re: The slippery slope
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would suggest that the article makes a very good case for it being done to explicitly trick the user. Apple particularly gives a huge amount of consideration for making an intuitive and obvious UI. It's not a big leap to assert that in this case, they've made it as difficult as they can to opt out while still offering the choice.
More than likely it was done to protect the users privacy while keeping the exact same user experience. The protections were made behind the scenes with additional options made available to the user, but disabled by default. The transitions from guid had the potential to break many apps so encouraging users to disable it would have likely caused many unintended side effects in addition to cluttering the ui and annoyi…
And how does this solution achieve that better than putting the option in the Privacy menu, labelled "Disable unique identification (this may break some apps)"?
Re: The slippery slope
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
More than likely it was done to protect the users privacy while keeping the exact same user experience. The protections were made behind the scenes with additional options made available to the user, but disabled by default. The transitions from guid had the potential to break many apps so encouraging users to disable it would have likely caused many unintended side effects in addition to cluttering the ui and annoyi…
I've read this three times now and I'm still not sure I get it...
When on the shakier side of a heated discussion of anything Apple, you can always fall back upon the nebulous "user experience" argument.