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The slippery slope

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Re: The slippery slope

#91

Post by Spearchucker »

true_religion wrote: post #72
eieio wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

...finding out about your concerns...

That's the benefit to the service provider. What's the benefit to the service consumer?

The point at which a user cancels a service is the last chance a service provider has to end the relationship on a positive note. The provider might earn a little more goodwill, and the consumer has a frustration-free experience.

Match.com wanted a whole herd of information when I cancelled. The information I typed in was complete fabrication. As such tactics gain popularity I suspect more people will balk at it, making it a net loss to the service provider.

Being nice to your customers is called win-win.

Re: The slippery slope

#92

Post by adrianhoward »

buro9 wrote: post #84
eieio wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Acting shady hurts your brand. These companies are not silly, they understand the damage to their brand can be quantified as $x and that the benefit to their bottom line can be quantified as $xx . Sometimes you do things you know have a negative, because you believe that the positives outweigh it. Not that I agree with these dark patterns, but I understand why companies choose to implement them.

These companies are not silly, they understand the damage to their brand can be quantified as $x and that the benefit to their bottom line can be quantified as $xx.

Actually - they often are silly. It might be $x right now, but it turns into $10x later on as the consequences of that initial damage roll on and affect future interactions, recommendations, etc.

It's very easy to quantify the short-term gains being sneaky get you. It's much harder to quantify the longer term consequences.

Re: The slippery slope

#93

Post by grey-area »

buro9 wrote: post #84
eieio wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Acting shady hurts your brand. These companies are not silly, they understand the damage to their brand can be quantified as $x and that the benefit to their bottom line can be quantified as $xx . Sometimes you do things you know have a negative, because you believe that the positives outweigh it. Not that I agree with these dark patterns, but I understand why companies choose to implement them.

If you scroll right to the end, you'll find a great example of a site who thought they were being smart by being shady, and instead annoyed their users enough that people just went elsewhere (experts exchange), even though the measures were easily worked around.

If, as you acknowledge, these are user-hostile patterns, using them is going to lose the trust of your users, and in the end you will flounder, even if in the short term they provide economic benefits. That's the premise of the article, and yes the companies are silly for employing these dark patterns because they're trading long-term trust in their brand (and thus long-term profits) for short-term economic advantage.

Re: The slippery slope

#94

Post by weland »

csallen wrote: 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…

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

The problem isn't when a company makes it hard for people to do exactly what it doesn't want them to do. Apple probably doesn't want its users to electrocute themselves, so they make sure the charger is properly isolated and all that.

The problem is when a company makes it hard for people to do what they want to do. That sucks, because it's usually why people are paying money for.

In this case, some people will want to make sure they aren't tracked (the other people don't care about it, so the option's placement is irrelevant to them). Hiding that option so well is simply useless: it achieves nothing for the people who don't care about it, and annoys those who do care about it (who tend to be tech-savvy enough that they'll find it no matter how well it's hidden). It's simply a defect in design: a misfeature that was grafted there for the glorification of someone who needed a contract signed. It provides zero advantages for the contracting parties, and huge disadvantages for the users.

Re: The slippery slope

#95

Post by kawsper »

6cxs2hd6 wrote: post #27

I thought in the EU you're legally required to do opt-in. You're not permitted to do opt-out. How can the UK Post Office do opt-out? Is this some UK exemption from the EU law? Or is it the typical government exemption from its own law (like e.g. how politicians exempted themselves from the US CAN-SPAM law)?

Depends on the country, I think it is up to all member states to implement and manage the laws internally.

My former employer did the following "trick" to boost the amount of newsletter subscriptions (and angry customers):

In Denmark you are allowed to create a competition where you write "By participating in this competition you will be subscribed to our newsletter".

And then they write in the legal text under the form that you agree to them (and their mother-company) contacting you on phone, email and SMS.

And you also agree that two separate companies owned by the same company is allowed to contact you.

You are also allowed to leave the following checkbox checked as default, making it opt-out:

[x] Subscribe me to the newsletter.

Re: The slippery slope

#96

Post by grey-area »

aspensmonster wrote: post #68

>"Brand relationships are like human relationships." No. Brands, corporations, and other legal fictions are not human. They're tools explicitly designed to generate profit. This is their fundamental purpose, and as such, they can never bear any significant resemblance to human relationships. Aside from that, it's certainly an excellent write up. And I like the term too: Dark Patterns.

I found this statement confusing at first too, but perhaps the way to look at it is that most customers do treat their relationship with brands by analogy to human relationships, whether they should or not.

We get mad at brands, vow we'll never use them again, break up with them, come back to them, expect them to behave coherently, criticise the behaviour of one representative as if it were the firm as a whole, demonstrate our loyalty to them in the hope of reward, and generally treat them as human counterparties in a relationship. Of course none of this is realistic or justified, but if you're running a company it's not something you can ignore.

If you're a user/consumer/customer of course, it makes sense to step back and realise that your loyalty means nothing to a corporation, they are not a person but composed of people, that they have their own internal goals, and they are rewarded by shareholders for some behaviour we'd call sociopathic in a person.

Re: The slippery slope

#97

Post by maaaats »

Too wrote: post #82
shurcooL wrote: post #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 t…

Spotify is known for its shady tricks. Try figuring out that the client consumes a very large portion of your upload bandwidth. Another one is when they enabled the "local files" feature via auto update a few years ago, this feature not only allowed you to play mp3 files via the client but also phoned home to mama with a list of all your local music. There was no way to opt out of this, the client just auto updated a…

When they introduced the option to play local music, it was a pretty big launch and you were notified. And it has always been easy to select where to grab local files from, or disable it. I think your point here is invalid.

The fact that they remove songs is not unethical, so not really relevant.

Re: The slippery slope

#98

Post by rmc »

kvcrawford wrote: post #24
rmc wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except, law is invariably perverted to provide an advantage to a select group.

Sure, bad law. I'm not saying law is perfect or flawless. There's a ton of bad law. We should fix the bad law. Unfortunately making law is tied up to politics and PR and minefield of stupidity that is.

Re: The slippery slope

#99

Post by troels »

MiguelHudnandez wrote: post #15
casca wrote: post #3

To 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 Settin…

Wow. You didn't make that up. That's past ridiculous ...

Re: The slippery slope

#100

Post by Zakharov »

weland wrote: post #94
csallen wrote: 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…

> My question is: Why should a company make it easy for people to do exactly what it doesn't want them to do? The problem isn't when a company makes it hard for people to do exactly what it doesn't want them to do. Apple probably doesn't want its users to electrocute themselves, so they make sure the charger is properly isolated and all that. The problem is when a company makes it hard for people to do what they want…

The distinction between the two groups is not that clear. I suspect many users don't care too much, but if they stumble upon a "don't track me" option, they'll select it.
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