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Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

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Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#51
post #13
post #4

Who came up with the term dark patterns? It's psychological manipulation and fraud, pure and simple

Would you consider the fact that bread and fruit and veg are always at the start of a supermarket journey a dark pattern? Supermarkets have gotten customers to spend more than they intended with all their patterns as well -- just like social media sites get customers to spend more time online. It's just what they optimise for. The concept is much older than the coined word.

>Would you consider the fact that bread and fruit and veg are always at the start of a supermarket journey a dark pattern?

No, because the term seems superfluous or euphemistical to me. But yes in the sense that it is psychological manipulation.

Is an entity intentionally deceiving or manipulating the customer/user/etc. using their understanding of psychology? Psychological manipulation

>The concept is much older than the coined word

Indeed, we already have a name for it as I've been trying to say!

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#52
post #38

My favorite deceptive pattern I encountered is "double click the checkbox to disable". Literally a checkbox but it wouldn't do anything. I got a little frustrated and started clicking furiously just to discover that a double click would reliably disable the items... (I don't remember if this was on desktop or mobile, on mobile s/click/tap/g) Also, I personally lean towards being in favor of GDPR and cookie law (wish…

Yes, seems as though those opinions are the loudest and perhaps it encourages the dissenters to stay quiet for fear of down-votes. Ive noticed that with certain viewpoints and have adjusted towards censoring myself a bit. The crowd seems bimodal but perhaps that's the nature of the conversations and the voting tool reinforces that.

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#53

For me personally - all these popup banners and modal walls for websites about cookies and stuff just really make the internet a worse place. I suspect that empirically, they don't accomplish what the GDPR intended to - and they make the internet less enjoyable. Thanks GDPR.

That's like accusing the flashlight of making rats scurry under the floorboard

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#54
post #41
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes: I don't care about cookies https://www.i-dont-care-about-cookies.eu/

An Android version would be great. The mobile web is becoming harder and harder to use.

You can use it on Android with Kiwi Browser, a Chromium derivative. It used to work with Firefox, but it looks like Firefox still hasn't un-broken extensions on Android.

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean developer or website manager who do not apply the law properly. All those deceptive patterns are not part of the GDPR, they should clearly label accept and refuse. I think it will take time for people to stop gathering so much information from users. Once a competitors start to figure it out, users might start using them (i.e. New York Times & GitHub.)

> . All those deceptive patterns are not part of the GDPR GP isn't talking about deceptive patterns. Point is that no one really understand what these popups are for and everyone just blindly clicks ok. I don't think i've ever declined a cookie popup. have you?

Every time I see one I go to the options to refuse all, if they do not allow me this option, I leave the page and add their domain name to my no cookie blacklist. It's strenuous, but I prefer to do so.

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#56
post #4

Who came up with the term dark patterns? It's psychological manipulation and fraud, pure and simple

Your comment lacks any explanation at all. Why is the term 'dark patterns' 'psychological manipulation and fraud'?

That is not what the sentence says at all. It simply says that "dark pattern" is a euphemism/harmless wording for what is done.

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#57
post #52
post #38

My favorite deceptive pattern I encountered is "double click the checkbox to disable". Literally a checkbox but it wouldn't do anything. I got a little frustrated and started clicking furiously just to discover that a double click would reliably disable the items... (I don't remember if this was on desktop or mobile, on mobile s/click/tap/g) Also, I personally lean towards being in favor of GDPR and cookie law (wish…

Yes, seems as though those opinions are the loudest and perhaps it encourages the dissenters to stay quiet for fear of down-votes. Ive noticed that with certain viewpoints and have adjusted towards censoring myself a bit. The crowd seems bimodal but perhaps that's the nature of the conversations and the voting tool reinforces that.

Much of the audience benefits from this sort of manipulation and tracking, so it's normal they would be hostile to any cookie law

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#58
What absolutely infuriates me is this "legitimate interest" crap that is almost always hidden away, and often you have to scroll through literally hundreds of opt-outs with no way to disable them all in a single click.

If I'm so damn "legimately interested", why is it on by default and basically impossible to turn off? Find me one person on this earth who is legitimately interested in being tracked by marketing companies who sell their information on to whatever giant collections. This should be illegal.

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#59
post #19

I recently purchased something from the official UK Nintendo Store [1]. I did not opt-in, and was not asked to opt-in, to marketing emails. Several days after purchase I received a marketing email with an Unsubscribe link. I submitted a GDPR enquiry and after a few weeks I get: Having investigated this matter fully, we can see that you were opted in as a result of a small technical difficulty which we are now fixing.…

I have a different issue myself. Despite having opted-in to marketing e-mails I never have obtained a marketing e-mail from Nintendo since then. Nintendo's website shows that I have agreed to "receive promotional e-mails". At one point I did in fact unsubscribe, but later I resubscribed. I think that there is a bug that sometimes causes promotional e-mail setting to not be updated in newsletter database (maybe the server was down when I tried to change the setting, and Nintendo Account website quietly ignored the error).

Re: Dark patterns after the GDPR: consent pop-ups and their influence

#60
post #48
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EVERY WEBSITE I visit from my location in the USA seems to have these stupid cookie popups. We added one to OUR WEBSITE even though nothing is hosted in the EU - simple cargo-culting "everyone is doing it so we must do it also". I doubt it actually does a @#$@$ darn thing.

> We added one to OUR WEBSITE even though nothing is hosted in the EU Location of the host is irrelevant, it depends on the target audience. Serve pages to the EU? You get to follow it. > simple cargo-culting "everyone is doing it so we must do it also". If your site is cargo culting everything it probably also has a ton of third party trackers for the same reason.

> Serve pages to the EU? You get to follow it.

What can the EU do about it if the company has no physical or legal presence in the EU? Have there been any serious attempts at such enforcement?

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