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The slippery slope

90percentofeverything.com

71–80 of 137 posts

Re: The slippery slope

#71
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source?

I can confirm this. The language is "limit ad tracking" instead of "disable," which worries me a bit.

I think a better word would be "refuse", as it more accurately portrays the situation. It too is not perfect though, as your "refusal" can still be ignored.

Re: The slippery slope

#72
post #55
post #52

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. B…

Acting shady hurts your brand. Harry Brignull(the author) discusses this in a talk[1] that I found on the dark patterns website(I checked out the website after loving the article). He makes the argument that sure, many of these tactics might increase your conversion rates or make you some money, at least in the short run. But it also causes you to come off as seedy, to come off as a back alley discount store instead…

.... actual premium services are usually under contract. Even when they're not they still want you to call into a real live human being to cancel because finding out about your concerns that lead you to cancel a $10,000+ contract is certainly worth the minor possibility that you'll be offended that cancellation is not a push button process.

Re: The slippery slope

#73
Spotify came up with a sneaky one.

I recently signed up and it only asked for some basic info. By default, of course, all email notifications are turned on. When you try to turn them off and save changes - it won't let you save because one "mandatory" field is incomplete [1].

So you're forced to add more info if you want to turn off email notifications.

It's not a big deal, but it falls in the same category. I like the company less now.

[1] http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/4800/jfgt.png

Re: The slippery slope

#74
post #52

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. B…

Again, its a slippery slope. Making the user hover over for some more time over his/her decision is not very far from a dark pattern. In case you need a feedback the best you should be going for are optional fields.

We're seeing 'one-click unsubscribe' link in many emails these days. I think that is one good indication for a spam filter to let through. This is a proof that only the right approach prevail eventually.

Re: The slippery slope

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can confirm this. The language is "limit ad tracking" instead of "disable," which worries me a bit.

I think a better word would be "refuse", as it more accurately portrays the situation. It too is not perfect though, as your "refusal" can still be ignored.

Ugh, I hate these. Instead of disabling it at the OS level, where they should do it; they create a "let's give unethical companies another bit of information" option.

Re: The slippery slope

#76
post #23

Enjoyed the article, but I had to read it using the Clearly extension because the native web page is extremely laggy for me. I'm on a Win8 machine running current Chrome. It seems like such a simple design but hot damn does it chug when I scroll.

That would be the 300px radius inner box-shadow set to 5% opacity on the body tag, which happens to be over 40,000px tall.

Re: The slippery slope

#77
Not to defend but for context most of this stuff isn't new and just looks like the direct marketing industry applying their well-honed scammy techniques. If you look at the old record and book clubs that used to advertise in magazines it's the same story.

Re: The slippery slope

#78
post #54
post #52

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. B…

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 transpar…

Would you like to send that extension to the google integration team? This is the 6th time they've asked me to merge my account with google plus.

I'm starting to think the only way to get them to stop is with violence. I wonder if those nag screens come up in a standardized way...

Re: The slippery slope

#79
Amazing post. I have a pitch for a startup: It's an NGO which regulates email-marketing. To receive a certification of fair practices you have to abide by certain rules.

Users can see a badge indicating that you are a member or not. Eventually gmail and others will have to add a setting on whether to allow emails from non-members or not and until then, browser extensions will do the work.

Like?

Re: The slippery slope

#80
post #52

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. B…

I think it isn't moral to lower cancellation rates by making the cancel action difficult.

The best way to grow is to have users that love you. I believe the inverse is also true, having users that hate you will limit your growth.

I once had a terrifically hard time cancelling a gym membership that turned from a free trial into a 2 year, $500 membership automatically. I still express strong feelings any time I hear the gym's name.

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