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Some Dark Patterns Now Illegal in UK

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Re: Some Dark Patterns Now Illegal in UK

#221

Post by michaelt »

orblivion wrote: post #177
idlewords wrote: post #8

A good example of beneficial government regulation, for people who refuse to believe such a thing exists. (Another good example is the Internet itself, but it's best to start small)

Actually as one of the people I think you're talking about (though as someone else noted I don't know if your description of radical free-market types is perfectly accurate, it's really about net benefit) this concerns me. In principle it seems to be banning fraud, and if that's all it does then I can't really complain. But to say "you can't structure your site in such a way" I think it's rather heavy handed. I guess…

  Given the way governments generally are, there's going to
  be some sort of government agency with an official review
  process for websites
With a lot of consumer rights in the UK, the principle is that you don't need prior approval or proactive monitoring, instead relying on complaints from the injured party to identify violations.

So assuming 99% of websites comply with the law, 99% of websites have no need for any sort of official review.

IMHO your assumptions are far from evident.

Re: Some Dark Patterns Now Illegal in UK

#222

Post by lotharbot »

Perseids wrote: post #191
lotharbot wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "people are using the down arrow as a "I disagree" button.." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171 "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness." - pg, 2382 days ago http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=392347 "Downvoting has always been used to express…

> FWIW I did not downvote you in this thread (I actually upvoted you.) I'm just informing you of the principle -- downvote for disagreement is totally cool on HN. I disagree. From what I've come to expect from the voting behavior, downvotes are reserved for comments that are badly written (missing punctuation etc.), insulting or objectively false in an easily verifiable manner (like "Java does not include floating po…

> "I disagree."

Sure, some people disagree. But the site founder has said it's OK and expected.

To be fair, I (and most people) don't downvote out of mere disagreement very often. I downvote comments that fail to add value -- because they're overly insulting, or wrong in ways that are not mere opinion, or so poorly expressed as to be useless.

Re: Some Dark Patterns Now Illegal in UK

#223

Post by TomGullen »

cessor wrote: post #38

I feel really bad about the fact that this is a thing. Apparently there are a lot of "entrepreneurs" that will always choose to annoy and damage others for a little currency. Why do these things have to be made illegal? They were immoral to begin with, that alone should stop people from doing it. Shame on you, people who sneak insurance into shopping carts and Ask-Toolbars into Java installers.

> Why do these things have to be made illegal?

To stop people doing it.

Re: Some Dark Patterns Now Illegal in UK

#224

Post by kuschku »

saosebastiao wrote: post #64
dzhiurgis wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they don't: * Can't get shipping charges before the last step (after selecting the credit card which implies I am about to pay) * Sneaking in Prime * Fucked up search

Nobody can give you shipping charges without knowing your address. The credit card step exists because most of the time the billing address and shipping address are the same.

Hmm, I am paying here on amazon.de with direct bank transfer, and it shows shipping costs even directly on the article page as long as I'm logged in.

Why is that?

Re: Some Dark Patterns Now Illegal in UK

#225

Post by TeMPOraL »

Kalium wrote: post #214
TeMPOraL wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say: it's amazing how ideology can shut one's mind down. But then again, isn't that written into definition of ideology?

I'm not sure I agree that ideology automatically shuts a mind. After all, being open-minded is an ideological position as well. I was just thinking that some ideologies seem to exist for the purpose of allowing people to justify their greedy behavior.

I was thinking about ideologies that work as a proxy for evaluating facts. It's kind of like saying that scientific method is also an ideology. In some sense, it is, but it's the one thing that's not like others.

> I was just thinking that some ideologies seem to exist for the purpose of allowing people to justify their greedy behavior.

Maybe. I try to be more charitable, especially that I know many friends that are (by their own admission [0]) borderline libertarian and are definitely neither greedy nor selfish. I think that it's a way how people respond to governments clearly overreaching with their regulations. It's a kind of cultural backlash, but if you treat it as an ideology, thinking that e.g. Free Markets Are The Best And Government Is Always Evil, then you're throwing baby out with the bathwater and trying to replace a bad hell with a worse hell.

[0] - I try to avoid using such labels, because I think they shut down the mind. I personally might be more liberal on topic A, and lean more conservative on topic B, just because different methods work for different problems. Labeling things by political ideas make people lose that distinction. I've personally been called Marxist And Therefore Wrong by bringing up in a discussion the topic of tragedy of commons, which was immediately labeled as The Part Of Marxist Economy, Not The Real One. sigh

Re: Some Dark Patterns Now Illegal in UK

#226

Post by orblivion »

michaelt wrote: post #221
orblivion wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually as one of the people I think you're talking about (though as someone else noted I don't know if your description of radical free-market types is perfectly accurate, it's really about net benefit) this concerns me. In principle it seems to be banning fraud, and if that's all it does then I can't really complain. But to say "you can't structure your site in such a way" I think it's rather heavy handed. I guess…

Given the way governments generally are, there's going to be some sort of government agency with an official review process for websites With a lot of consumer rights in the UK, the principle is that you don't need prior approval or proactive monitoring, instead relying on complaints from the injured party to identify violations. So assuming 99% of websites comply with the law, 99% of websites have no need for any so…

Okay. Well, pending learning anything else about it, I'll assume that it's likely not so bad a law, then.

Re: Some Dark Patterns Now Illegal in UK

#227

Post by TeMPOraL »

V-2 wrote: post #181
TeMPOraL wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then people are "increasingly" using it incorrectly. Europe is a continent, the EU is a political alliance. Well, it's exactly the same as with America (the continent) and United States (a country). You can either argue that both calling EU Europe and USA America is wrong and we should stop, or accept that in both cases, people can figure things out from the context.

Yes, it's a common metonymy, but whether its use is valid or misleading for no good reason depends on the context in my opinion. If somebody said "let's hope this law spreads throughout America", you wouldn't assume they meant just the US, would you? Calling the United States "America" is often handy, but it's sort of a sloppy language all in all. Personally I rather avoid it if ambiguity is likely. People are also o…

I agree.

Disclaimer: also European / EU / Polish citizen :).

Re: Some Dark Patterns Now Illegal in UK

#228

Post by TeMPOraL »

baddox wrote: post #147
TeMPOraL wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And I would point to game theory (and economics more generally) to support that view. Please do, this sounds interesting.

I think the primary idea is that the economic issues that plague markets also plague governments. Public choice is the discipline of applying economic principles to governments. You can't treat government as a black box to solve economic issues without recognizing that economic issues affect government as well. For example, to theorize a law, regulation, or form of government to solve some economic problem like the p…

You have a good point here. I agree that governments are not exempt from the game-theoretic rules that affect everything else. While they are an effective solution to coordination problems of society, they suffer from coordination problems of their own (I think that might be one of the reason governments tend to develop layered structures; it's like turtles all way down, but here we have governments all way up).

> But it's necessary to argue why, if the society cannot produce the flood control systems, why it should be expected to produce a government that will produce the flood control systems.

I think one of the arguments for this would be the fact that it actually happens - i.e. people left alone tend to form governments that then make flood control systems :).

From what you wrote in your previous comment I understand that you believe, that if one would sum up all the benefits and all the costs of government regulation, one would end up with a negative number. Have I undestood you correctly? If yes, could you elaborate on why you believe the effect is net negative and not net positive? I.e. what makes the costs bigger than benefits?

Re: Some Dark Patterns Now Illegal in UK

#229

Post by TeMPOraL »

ZoFreX wrote: post #169
Padding wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this basically what Amazon does? I've always felt very comfortable and safe when pushing the buy button on their site.

Here's my Amazon challenge: Find a phone charger on Amazon that: * Isn't one of Amazon's own * Doesn't have a single review saying it caught fire or exploded Amazon is completely happy selling poor quality or even counterfeit goods, phone chargers are a particularly bad area of the site but others exist as well. There is no way Amazon could claim ignorance of this - there are 100s of reviews on some products such as…

> Doesn't have a single review saying it caught fire or exploded

Well, it is a case of every mass-produced good that if it has 0.001% of catastrophic failure, and a million of people will buy it, it will explode in the hands of ten of them, and maybe one will get and write that review. The others probably won't bother writing 999990 reviews saying "it worked as intended".

Re: Some Dark Patterns Now Illegal in UK

#230

Post by M2Ys4U »

vacri wrote: post #219
Someone1234 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then people are "increasingly" using it incorrectly. Europe is a continent, the EU is a political alliance. There are too many countries within Europe but not in the EU to use the terms synonymously. For example: Albania, Andorra, Belarus, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Norway, Russia, San Marino, Serbia, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, Vatican City I think…

So in that list you have three large countries that are famously not part of the general european political bloc, noted for usually being part of their own bloc. Then you have a bunch of countries that are so miniscule, that diplomatic relations are handled for them by diplomats assigned for other countries (Monaco? A couple of square kilometers. San Marino? Fewer people than my suburb). Then there's Turkey, which ha…

>I mean, you're so desperate to find counter-examples, you've even included an island nation (Iceland) that is nowhere near Europe, especially given your own definition that 'Europe' is specifically a continent. Iceland isn't even on the European continental shelf.

Plus Iceland is an EU candidate country and a member of the EEA (European Economic Area) so is a member of the EU's internal market.

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