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Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

fil.forbrukerradet.no

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Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#101

Post by eurticket »

scrollaway wrote: post #62
rickycook wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some people work for charities, some people work for facebook. the employees make the company, and are complicit if they don’t react harshly to decisions made by their board like google employees did... if nobody wants to support the scummy tactics that “the company” is pushing, it won’t get done. sometimes you need to have a spine to get anything changed otherwise we are just heading for a blade runner distopia, and…

I don't think it's crazy either, I just think it's totally inappropriate to tell people to think less of their friends when they don't have the full context. There's a lot of FB employees on HN and I wager a lot of them know how scummy their employer is. Yes, many are staying for the paycheck (and because leaving a job isn't an easy thing for everyone), but I know several who are staying because they feel that their…

I agree, you can't say that to someone to just drop their friends because the company they work for is evil. Hell, I'd actually like to see where all the people calling for this work — them lets see if we can hold their companies to the same light, and if they would actually be willing to quit. I'm saying this a non-facebook user for a number of years, this sounds pretty ridiculous to expect.

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#102

Post by glenneroo »

swebs wrote: post #64
minpur wrote: post #10

What a surprise! Microsoft villianised over the decades seems to be better than Google and Facebook. This brings us to the question. Have you paid XX money for a service that doesn’t show ads. Are you happy with it?

This is the most ridiculous comment I've seen all month. I don't know if it's due to ignorance or some PR department in Redmond. Microsoft is the worst by far when it comes to privacy violations and dark patterns. And it's obvious to anyone who's ever heard about Windows 10 in the news over the past few years. But let me break it down anyway. First of all, Windows 10 is constantly stealing your personal info. To an e…

My firewall is constantly going off that either Microsoft Photos, Microsoft Video or Microsoft Outlook is trying to send some data, even though I am definitely NOT using any of those products. I always permanently block the requests, but a few days later I get another firewall warning that one or more of these processes is trying to call home.

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#104

Post by CaptainZapp »

malka wrote: post #96
scrollaway wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That flow was really scummy. I remember going through it. The entry point was an email claiming you have to "read and accept the updated policies in order to continue using the site". And the first thing you're presented with was that two-choice "Manage data settings" / "Accept and continue", implying for the user who is less than extremely careful that if you don't "Accept and continue", you won't be able to use the…

Facebook will never care about Privacy. People like Zuckerberg are scum, and deserve jail. As an individual, I really do NOT want to live in the same society as this kind of person.

Mr. Zuckerberg cares a lot about privacy.

Privacy for him and his family, that is.

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#105

Post by CaptainZapp »

emilga wrote: post #46
dsco wrote: post #23

I was expecting "dark patterns" to be a hyperbole but these are clear violations of GDPR. This will probably catch public attention when the press gets hold of it and makes the screen shots more accessible (not hidden deep down in a PDF).

As I recently learned, a dark pattern is a term used to describe deliberately misleading or manipulative user interfaces. This twitter-account includes many screenshots for illustration: https://twitter.com/darkpatterns

There's also the website (referenced in the paper) :

https://darkpatterns.org/

Edited to mention : the Hall of Shame seems to be down.

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#106

Post by okanesen »

ckastner wrote: post #54
WorkLifeBalance wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed Twitch is doing the same thing, if you "manage your choices" you get the banner to "manage your choices" on every page load, the only way to get rid of the banner was to "accept" which accepts everything. (I hope it was just a 'bug' but it didn't feel like it.) I don't get it though, if companies are so scared of being fined 4% of revenue that they put up these banners, aren't they inviting the worse end of…

The worst offender I've encountered is imgur.com, where "click here to manage your privacy settings" brings you to a page with literally hundreds of advertisers. About half are on "allowed" by default. If you want to disallow, you have to select each entry individually . The other half only specify "requires opt-out", apparently imgur expects you to contact some third party to do so. How on earth they expect to wease…

Same goes with Tumblr and Yahoo for example, where everything is enabled by default and you have to go one (I'm not talking about 10-20, it's more like +300) by one to enable the tracking done by advertising/marketing companies.

One of the better thing is, though I don't want to advocate the behavior of auto opt-in at all, that most of these sites are at least using something like TRUSTe or Oath, where you only have to disable hundreds of marketing services once and are done with all the sites, which are using the same service for cookie consent.

It's against the law to make the options opt-out but these companies are still trying hard to don't obey by the law, it's really comical.

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#107

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

scrollaway wrote: post #51
lancewiggs wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By staying at Facebook your friends are explicitly supporting these and other scummy actions. They have decided to hold their noses and prioritise themselves over humanity. Think less of them.

This is a totally inappropriate thing to ask of anyone. Please rethink your view on life. Edit: Also, that's not what "explicitly" means. I think you meant "implicitly".

Superior orders, often known as the Nuremberg defense, lawful orders or by the German phrase Befehl ist Befehl ("an order is an order"), is a plea in a court of law that a person—whether a member of the military, law enforcement, a firefighting force, or the civilian population—not be held guilty for actions ordered by a superior officer or an official.[1]

The Nuremberg defence is widely regarded as invalid.

1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superior_orders

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#108

Post by Deestan »

cs702 wrote: post #103

Yes. Yes. Yes. Dark patterns ought to be illegal : They exploit the innate weaknesses of human perception and cognition to get human beings unwittingly to do things they otherwise don't want to do.

We already have functional laws against misleading (not just obvious lies) advertisements, so it should be no stretch to have similar ones for misleading instructions.

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#109

Post by kyboren »

yAnonymous wrote: post #61
tyfon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now we are in the worst position. We have to accept all EU rules but we don't have any influence over it. I'd take full membership over that any time but the politicians don't want to risk a 3rd referendum. So we're stuck between the "bark and the wood" as a Norwegian proverb goes.

You have a pretty great country, so I'd say what you're doing works and I'd advise against changing it. The current agreements give you the freedom to renegotiate should the need arise. You can't do that when you have full membership.

That means very little. As the UK is demonstrating, members can invoke Article 50, begin negotiations on the parameters of future relations, and exit. Luckily for the UK, the EU very much does not want the precedent of secession, which gives the UK a small but workable amount of leverage.

In either case, changing the relationship with the EU will require negotiation, with the EU in a position of strength due, among other reasons, to the size of the single market and the awful BATNA virtually ensured by the guillotine clauses. However, full EU members looking to leave have a better negotiating position than Switzerland or EEA members.

EEA or EU members can leave any time. But when you leave, you lose access to the single market, and your economy will take a nosedive. If you're not willing to pay the price to leave the single market, you're going to have to follow EU directives and regulations. If you're going to have to follow EU directives and regulations anyway, isn't it better to at least have some say in those promulgations and insist on full EU membership?

Re: Norwegian Consumer Council report on how tech companies use dark patterns [pdf]

#110

Post by fsloth »

lancewiggs wrote: post #47
scrollaway wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That flow was really scummy. I remember going through it. The entry point was an email claiming you have to "read and accept the updated policies in order to continue using the site". And the first thing you're presented with was that two-choice "Manage data settings" / "Accept and continue", implying for the user who is less than extremely careful that if you don't "Accept and continue", you won't be able to use the…

By staying at Facebook your friends are explicitly supporting these and other scummy actions. They have decided to hold their noses and prioritise themselves over humanity. Think less of them.

"Think less of them."

That's a horrible metric to apply measuring 'human worth', whatever that is. Humans are by default wired to do what everyone else is doing. Just using Facebook because everyone else is doing it as well is what humans do. They flock to the communities and forums where the action is. They cannot comprehend graph theory intuitively and what power Facebook potentially wields in interfering in their lives.

Governments are supposed to protect people from threats the masses cannot comprehend. Like example taking care of vaccinations.

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