The slippery slope

I'm going to nitpick a bit here, mostly because it's entertaining to play devil's advocate on a topic that's always met with such one-sided responses on HN (in this case: dark patterns).

My question is: Why should a company make it easy for people to do exactly what it doesn't want them to do?

Sure, outright trickery and lies are almost unarguably immoral. And the author definitely identifies many examples of that. But there are other instances where I just can't agree with classification of the UX as a dark pattern.

Let's take The Ladders, for example. In order to cancel, you have to fill out a form with a few required fields. What a shady, underhanded, and downright spiteful trick! Or is it? Most cancellation forms online will take you through an intermediary confirmation step, anyway. What's so evil about requiring a small form to be filled out? The questions are directly relevant to the act of canceling, and if you truly don't give a shit, you can fill it in with gibberish. Even if you give honest answers, you could be done with this form in literally 5 seconds. It almost certainly took you longer to fire up your browser and navigate to their site, anyway.

My point is: The company is not attempting to trick you or obfuscate the truth. They know that the presence of the form will likely lower their cancellation rates by a marginal amount, yes, but there's nothing immoral about lowering cancellation rates. And the form isn't nearly long enough to be considered difficult or unreasonable, so it's not like they're attempting to frustrate people into staying. In the end, it convinces some people to change their minds, but nobody gets hurt.

Compare that to, say, The Ladder's decision to auto-renew monthly subscriptions while hiding that fact at the bottom of the page in small gray font. Or to email subscriptions with no unsubscribe link. Or to burying opt-out checkboxes within gigantic forms. In these cases, companies are outright tricking people.

To give an example: In line with Google's mission statement of "Don't be evil", I figure that it could extend to "Don't be annoying".

> My question is: Why should a company make it easy for people to do exactly what it doesn't want them to do?

Because its just plain annoying to users. Running a business and designing your application / system to trick people into behaving in a certain way is one thing, being transparent is another.

I think users these days are becoming a lot more educated and wiser to these techniques, as a result their loyalty is beginning to side with companies that offer a more honest level of transparency.

It was even more interesting to me as a set of 'canaries in a coal mine'. If you are working for a company and start to see many, or one, of these patterns, it should serve as awake up call. Move on or don't, but be aware of the corporate behavior.

That's a great question. I like the experience of simple. I get push notifications when I swipe my card. I enjoy the "Safe to spend" amount that takes into account my goals. Photo check deposit is great too. It's early days for them, but I like backing that horse.

USAA is a great company. They give you ATM fee reimbursements which is a huge benefit over simple. I feel guilty getting them since they have to eat that cost. In dealing with them, they're always pleasant and friendly, but they have policies like photo check deposit is only available if you're ex-military.

Hope that helps!

yes, all bad practices... I think of this like when you buy something at the store at the advertised price and it comes up at a different price at the register (almost always higher)... this is wrong.