121–130 of 137 posts
If you're making an empirical argument that these techniques provide more harm than good, you need evidence. If you're making an argument that they are just evil and if you do them you should have trouble sleeping at night, that's another argument altogether. I'm not sure which of these two arguments the article is trying to make, but it's very short on the empirical side.
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Attempting to change people's minds by frustrating them rather than by actually presenting them with reasons to stay is, in a word, evil. I'd have no problems with a page that says, "We're sorry to see you go, won't you reconsider? Here are some reasons why we think you should stay." I have a big problem with a page that says, "We're sorry to see you go, so we're going to make your life a little bit harder in the hop…
I addressed this pretty explicitly in my post. I agree with everything you're saying (intentionally frustrating users is bad), but I don't agree that a simple, straightforward form that can be filled out in under 10 seconds is an attempt to frustrate anyone. I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that a significant number of people, upon seeing this form, decided not to cancel because filling it out was too much a…
This isn't really something that is subject to argument; it's an empirical question. It's measurable; a known quantity to people who have implemented it in an A/B fashion.
I'd be very surprised if additional friction to a cancel process had zero impact. That would be sufficiently surprising to be worthy of an article or paper.
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Attempting to change people's minds by frustrating them rather than by actually presenting them with reasons to stay is, in a word, evil. I'd have no problems with a page that says, "We're sorry to see you go, won't you reconsider? Here are some reasons why we think you should stay." I have a big problem with a page that says, "We're sorry to see you go, so we're going to make your life a little bit harder in the hop…
I addressed this pretty explicitly in my post. I agree with everything you're saying (intentionally frustrating users is bad), but I don't agree that a simple, straightforward form that can be filled out in under 10 seconds is an attempt to frustrate anyone. I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that a significant number of people, upon seeing this form, decided not to cancel because filling it out was too much a…
I'd have no problem with the form if you could just skip it and click Cancel at the bottom. But the moment you force users to fill out anything is the moment you turn evil.
I agree that it's not anywhere near the same magnitude as it could be. But that doesn't make it OK.
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Easy solution: send a certified letter with your cancellation notice; any charges after that can be legally reported as CC fraud. Enough people do that, and maybe they won't be pulling that bullshit anymore.
If you can sign up on the web, you should be able to cancel on the web. Factoring in the cost of my time, sending a certified letter costs me $200.
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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.
If enabled is NO, then the developer can use the identifier for "frequency capping, conversion events, estimating the number of unique users, security and fraud detection, and debugging". Notice that compliance with these restrictions is almost impossible to determine.
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/AdSupp...
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I addressed this pretty explicitly in my post. I agree with everything you're saying (intentionally frustrating users is bad), but I don't agree that a simple, straightforward form that can be filled out in under 10 seconds is an attempt to frustrate anyone. I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that a significant number of people, upon seeing this form, decided not to cancel because filling it out was too much a…
I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that a significant number of people, upon seeing this form, decided not to cancel because filling it out was too much a waste of time. It's just not a plausible argument. This isn't really something that is subject to argument; it's an empirical question. It's measurable; a known quantity to people who have implemented it in an A/B fashion. I'd be very surprised if additional…
Does this site really need to be over 15MB large?
Well, considering 97% percent of the page load is images (average size: 400 kB), and the page contains slides that explain and complement the article... yeah, I think it does!
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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…
And ofcourse following the link in the KB article just produces a timeout from my ipad (though i do get a proper message that i'm not on an iOS device when accessing it from my mac). You wonder why they even bother? If you have no intention of opting people out, why even put up the page?
I actually had to design one of these dialogs for LinkedIn for the new who viewed my profile when we flipped it to a tit-for-tat system (you show me your name and I'll show you mine). We spent weeks changing the language to be as clear as possible without being overly verbose. I admit that the first (unreleased) rev probably was a bit shady, but in the end we ended up with something that's primary goal was to inform.…
What happens if you keep the setting off most of the time, and only switch it on for a few minutes to check out your profile visitors, then switch it back off? Would you still stay anonymous (unless others happen to check their visitor lists in those few minutes?)
Also, changing your profile visibility setting only affects your visibility on future visits to people's profile pages, not past visits.