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The slippery slope

90percentofeverything.com

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Re: The slippery slope

#81

Post by snogglethorpe »

shurcooL wrote: post #73

Spotify came up with a sneaky one. I recently signed up and it only asked for some basic info. By default, of course, all email notifications are turned on. When you try to turn them off and save changes - it won't let you save because one "mandatory" field is incomplete [1]. So you're forced to add more info if you want to turn off email notifications. It's not a big deal, but it falls in the same category. I like t…

That smells like a bug to me...

[I've encountered similar issues, e.g. where I had entered my home address on Amazon using a format which at some point started being considered "invalid" by their input-validation code. The old address remained in the system (and worked fine when ordering), but I couldn't change any other personal info without also re-entering that address, because the input-validation wouldn't accept the old one (it apparently still validated all the old data at that point, even stuff I hadn't changed). Unfortunately the new system was much more restrictive about what it allowed in addresses, so I didn't want to... >< ]

Re: The slippery slope

#82

Post by Too »

shurcooL wrote: post #73

Spotify came up with a sneaky one. I recently signed up and it only asked for some basic info. By default, of course, all email notifications are turned on. When you try to turn them off and save changes - it won't let you save because one "mandatory" field is incomplete [1]. So you're forced to add more info if you want to turn off email notifications. It's not a big deal, but it falls in the same category. I like t…

Spotify is known for its shady tricks. Try figuring out that the client consumes a very large portion of your upload bandwidth. Another one is when they enabled the "local files" feature via auto update a few years ago, this feature not only allowed you to play mp3 files via the client but also phoned home to mama with a list of all your local music. There was no way to opt out of this, the client just auto updated and started importing everything from windows default music directory. It seems as though they update their TOS every time i restart the client also, who would read that when you are in a rush to start your music.

The way they remove songs from the library is also a bit disturbing, some songs become gray and some just silently disappear. The frequency of removed songs is also quite high, for a free service i don't mind but if i pay premium and tons of my favorite songs disapear for each day i'm not going to be happy.

Re: The slippery slope

#84

Post by buro9 »

eieio wrote: post #55
csallen wrote: post #52

I'm going to nitpick a bit here, mostly because it's entertaining to play devil's advocate on a topic that's always met with such one-sided responses on HN (in this case: dark patterns). My question is: Why should a company make it easy for people to do exactly what it doesn't want them to do? Sure, outright trickery and lies are almost unarguably immoral. And the author definitely identifies many examples of that. B…

Acting shady hurts your brand. Harry Brignull(the author) discusses this in a talk[1] that I found on the dark patterns website(I checked out the website after loving the article). He makes the argument that sure, many of these tactics might increase your conversion rates or make you some money, at least in the short run. But it also causes you to come off as seedy, to come off as a back alley discount store instead…

> Acting shady hurts your brand.

These companies are not silly, they understand the damage to their brand can be quantified as $x and that the benefit to their bottom line can be quantified as $xx .

Sometimes you do things you know have a negative, because you believe that the positives outweigh it.

Not that I agree with these dark patterns, but I understand why companies choose to implement them.

Re: The slippery slope

#86

Post by Aloisius »

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.

I'm super glad we went that way too. Being upfront and clear turned out to be the way to go. Sure we didn't get instant benefit like you'd get with an opt-out, but the conversion rates were very good even when we spelled out what we were doing.

Re: The slippery slope

#87

Post by mattm »

effbott wrote: post #70
mariusz331 wrote: post #18

It's funny. I'm on the phone trying to reach a student loan representative right now. I keep pressing 1 for English, 4 for a student loan representative, 1 again for the type of loan, then I'm back to pressing 4 for a loan representative. It's an infinite loop! I try hitting 0 for an operator but then I'm prompted to give a 4 digit extension for the party I want to reach.

Most automated phone systems will connect you to an operator if you press 0 repeatedly (as in 10 to 20 times in a row). There's almost always a way to get around automated phone systems.

Or when you call don't press anything. The system may assume you have an old rotary phone that can't make the correct tones and automatically forward you to a person.

You can also try http://gethuman.com/

Re: The slippery slope

#88

Post by Adirael »

6cxs2hd6 wrote: post #27

I thought in the EU you're legally required to do opt-in. You're not permitted to do opt-out. How can the UK Post Office do opt-out? Is this some UK exemption from the EU law? Or is it the typical government exemption from its own law (like e.g. how politicians exempted themselves from the US CAN-SPAM law)?

Speaking of Europe, lately I've been using iOS on my native tongue and the translation is "Limitar seguimiento..." I don't know what's behind that ellipsis, but the direct translation of what I see would be "Limit tracking", without double negative.

Re: The slippery slope

#89

Post by 0x0 »

Aloisius wrote: post #86

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?)

Re: The slippery slope

#90

Post by gfodor »

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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