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Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

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Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For what it's worth, marketplace sellers don't have access to your email address, Amazon relays email messages through their servers. I am a seller on Amazon. I didn't think I have access to email addresses but you got me curious. I just went into an order and clicked "contact buyer." It gives a contact form that has the receivers address as something like dq22t5nz9n27qma@marketplace.amazon.com with a note "IMPORTANT…

Going forward, you can append "+whatever" to the username portion of your email address, e.g. You+spam@gmail.com, and gmail and most other providers I've used will ignore that part. Use it to trace the sharing of that address. I used that when signing up for a particular mailing list and found that my address was shared with about a dozen other marketers.

People have learned that you can simply strip that part out of the address... it's in the standard. If you want to know where your data leaked out, you should use a different email every time (e.g. use your own domains).

Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but what incentive do companies like LinkedIn have for doing this? They don't have any incentive and I suspect they will hold onto that data until it's "pried from their cold dead hands". I think that companies like LinkedIn and other massive data silos are going to atrophy and die as users migrate to new platforms that treat them better and give them more control over their data and experience. I'd like to point o…

I think at this point we've amply demonstrated that the overwhelming majority of people--and I think that's probably a critical mass of people, from a social sense--don't really care about their data and only minimally care about experience. What do you view is the meaningful reason for users to switch to these other platforms with some kind of better underlying data model? In addition, what's the meaningful reason f…

> What do you view is the meaningful reason for users to switch to these other platforms with some kind of better underlying data model?

I completely agree that people don't currently care about their data in the sense that people are complacent about their privacy and aren't likely to change very much in that regard.

I think people care about UX but to what level?? Might be minimal.

There are a few compelling reasons why I think these new open platforms are likely to succeed and I'll try to capture them succinctly.

1. Data Economy: People choose options that save them money or make them more money. While people don't care about owning their own data, they will care about a new platform that lets them earn money for passive things like keeping their smart phone location services turned on, or allowing access to their browsing habits.

2. Account Portability: Currently if you transition from selling on Ebay to Amazon, or from driving for Uber to Lyft you have to start back over from zero. If you own your data then you just bring it with you over to the new platform and all of your reputation and whatnot can come with you.

3. Network Effect: These types of open platforms are capable of robust cross-platform integration. Right now we see the power of this in things like the suite of products that Google provides. We can have these types deep inter-connectivity without needing the applications to be from the same source.

I also want to acknowledge that this isn't going to be a smooth ride and there are big challenges to overcome, but the potential exists and it won't happen if we don't try.

> what's the meaningful reason for a company to adopt such a better underlying data model instead of keeping a data silo and just making better features on top of such a silo?

I believe that the article linked below titled "The Golden Age of Open Protocols" is the most compelling argument I've seen.

- http://avc.com/2016/07/the-golden-age-of-open-protocols/

Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#225
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My solution was to give the iPad to my kid and get an Android.

And you will never get an OS update again. Android products seem to be orphaned at whatever OS is current at the time of production. Just bought a new Android table and it had lollipop. Turns out you cannot get the most recent OS for it so I am stuck with a 2 year old OS.

Ditto 4.4

Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#226
post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going forward, you can append "+whatever" to the username portion of your email address, e.g. You+spam@gmail.com, and gmail and most other providers I've used will ignore that part. Use it to trace the sharing of that address. I used that when signing up for a particular mailing list and found that my address was shared with about a dozen other marketers.

People have learned that you can simply strip that part out of the address... it's in the standard. If you want to know where your data leaked out, you should use a different email every time (e.g. use your own domains).

Using Postmail's virtual aliases and a nice web interface to manage them, I create a random virtual alias (h9jle20gavs32@domain.tld) associated with a site name for every place I have to input an email address, it makes spam tracking pretty simple.

Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#227
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, if they're requiring you to pick 1-5 stars to get the dialog to go away, it must be a custom dialog built by them, right? I bet they take your one star and just hide the dialog, but take people who rate it as 5 stars to the "real" app store rating page.

On Android, apps can't self rate like that, all they can do is take you to the store page and let you rate their app. The app can't know what rating you gave. Does iOS let apps self rate like that? This seems inconceivable to me. Bottom line: when an app keeps pestering you to rate it, say "Yes fine I'll rate you", they take you to the app store and there, you do nothing (or one-star them). The app should register th…

It's absolutely possible on Android. Just show the user a dialog which contains 5 star buttons. If they press the fourth or fifth star, take them to the app page on Google Play, otherwise don't do anything.

It's not allowed in the Google Play TOS, and it's one of the darkest patterns there is, but it's technically possible just as it is on iOS.

Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#228
post #176

Does it count if there's no user interface? Amazon has my email address, I've been a customer since the late-nineties. They keep inventing new email lists and signing me up for them. Each time I get a new "newsletter" it says something like, "You got this message because you're subscribed to the 'Tablet News' newsletter." I click the unsubscribe link to remove myself from it. Along with the unsubscribe link there's a…

In general, I'm disappointed how Amazon went from being a store to a "marketplace". Sometimes I want to buy somebody who'll actually curate their list of products and has a reputation to stand behind that they don't want to sully by selling garbage or price-gouging on items they don't normally stock. But maybe that's just me.

I buy a lot of used, old, obscure things (mostly books). Very often, Amazon is the only place I can find it reliably; my other options would probably be asking my Japanese/German/etc friends to dig through second hand shops and mail it to me.

I love the Amazon marketplace. (I also hate the 3rd party seller feedback emails but I have strict email filters so who cares)

Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#229
post #27

One pattern that I consider "dark", but don't see in this list, is using loaded options on a dialog box. One that I often see in apps is like: Rate our app! Those really get under my skin because the developer is clearly trying to play a psychological trick on me, but it's so brazen and obvious that it just pisses me off. And bigger companies do it too (e.g. Google).

There's another brilliant app rating pattern (perhaps a dark one). A dialog pops up and asks if I loved their app. A "yes" takes me to the marketplace for rating, but a "no" only allows me to send them feedback. It both positively skews the ratings and collects feedback from disgruntled users.

There are hundreds of apps that enable this behavior and an entire industry built around them. I know because I helped refine the UX of one such app.

Re: Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

#230
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a tumblr for that! They call it "confirm shaming". http://confirmshaming.tumblr.com/ And yeah, it's UX cancer.

This one might be the best: https://copyhackers.com/2014/01/fallen-scuzzy-design-trend-p... (Note the content of the article, then move your mouse up to try to go to close the tab. Irony!)

Did you read the content yourself? They are saying that the "show before close" is a good thing, so what's the irony?

Read the "Step Into The Light" section.

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