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

fil.forbrukerradet.no

111–120 of 168 posts

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

#111
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?

Villains comes in all shapes and sizes.

MS was, and possibly still is, the classical abuser of market position. The kind that age old antitrust laws were written to combat.

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

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is the most blatant malcompliance with GDPR IMO, when will data protection authorities start fining FB? The GDPR fans on HN have said over and over again that GDPR wouldn't result in instant fines, that companies would be given a warning and an opportunity to make changes. We'll soon find out if that's true or not.

So it turns out they were right - GDPR went into effect a month ago, Facebook didn't comply (and many other companies either, not offering privacy by default), and nobody paid any fee.

Wait, what? Why would you expect fines being levied within a month of the directive going into effect? The process from a first complaint to a payable fine probably takes a year or more.

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

#113
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

No, they are not producing any kind of good for the world, never mind "the most". For the users, Facebook is just a means of communication, among many others. If it disappeared tomorrow 10 different platforms would replace it and the level of goodness in the world might even increase. Doing good is probably the lamest, least truthful excuse for working at Facebook, goes to show how self-deluded people can be.

What if you are working at Facebook on improving Linux's network stack for example? Sure, if you have the skills to do that, you will find work very easily. But is it easy to find a job that would allow you to make these kind of contributions?

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

#114
post #97
post #93

God, I wish someone added Quora to that list. After you read the first article, Quora masks all its content and forces you down the throat to sign up or sign in, pretending to be part of an age verification process (irrespective of the topic). I remember when this happened - I was so pissed off that I made an add-on called "fuck quora" that will simply reset their cookies to have unlimited reading possible without si…

Please do! Though wouldn't it work to just never accept the cookie at all? I got very pissed off at Quora for the same reason, and made an account just to read (knowing full well they'd use it for profiling).

Not sure about Quora, but I've noticed that many sites start you off with a big "Accept and Continue" popup and set cookies when you accept. So if you deny cookies, you can't get past the popup (it just refreshes).

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

#115
post #114
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do! Though wouldn't it work to just never accept the cookie at all? I got very pissed off at Quora for the same reason, and made an account just to read (knowing full well they'd use it for profiling).

Not sure about Quora, but I've noticed that many sites start you off with a big "Accept and Continue" popup and set cookies when you accept. So if you deny cookies, you can't get past the popup (it just refreshes).

IIRC you can read one article for free on Quora. But yes, that accept and continue is common and annoying.

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

#116
post #115
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure about Quora, but I've noticed that many sites start you off with a big "Accept and Continue" popup and set cookies when you accept. So if you deny cookies, you can't get past the popup (it just refreshes).

IIRC you can read one article for free on Quora. But yes, that accept and continue is common and annoying.

Private mode works fine with quora

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

#117
post #93

God, I wish someone added Quora to that list. After you read the first article, Quora masks all its content and forces you down the throat to sign up or sign in, pretending to be part of an age verification process (irrespective of the topic). I remember when this happened - I was so pissed off that I made an add-on called "fuck quora" that will simply reset their cookies to have unlimited reading possible without si…

You can add ?share=1 to the URL to unblock Quora.

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

#118
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft _still_ does not let me turn off "Basic usage data/telemetry" being sent to them. I tried to call them about it a month ago and they hung up on me. The one computer in my house running windows is still blocked with this popup.

You need Win10 Enterprise LTSB, even Pro is not enough to get out of Microsoft telemetry capture, including crash dumps (memory with sensitive info), keystrokes, screen grabs.

> You need Win10 Enterprise LTSB

The won't sell it to you. I asked about it a Microsoft store and they had no way of selling it to me.

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

#119
Those flowcharts and color coding are amazing.

Everyone: even if you skim the rest of the article (mind, it's ALL worth reading), scroll to the last few pages and LOOK at those.

They're color-coded by ease of flow (and yes, a definition of that was selected and clearly explained).

I'm excited by this because I feel that often when we talk about Dark Patterns, conversations often devolve into a "both-sides"-ism pattern -- something which is as useless in UX discussion as it is in politics. These clear visualizations and starkly color-coded call-outs of flows that add extra work make it easy to compare flows, and point out ones which are obviously arcane.

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

#120
post #64
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…

I had to learn and setup a firewall so that the following can be blocked in my home network from going out unnecessarily.

1. Microsoft 2. Google 3. Chinese IP cameras

Among these, Microsoft is the most scary. Then Google.

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