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

https://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/125.html

Bulk email can be split into two categories: Opt-in and Opt-out. Opt-in is email that an individual requested or agreed to receive. Many legitimate mailers use opt-in methods for marketing. Individuals are responsible for reading and understanding a company's privacy policies and acceptable use policies (if applicable) before submitting an email address. If a privacy or acceptable use policy clearly states that signing up for the service results in receiving marketing or commercial email, then the individual has "opted-in" to receive email and that email is not spam.

A company emailing you when you have given them your permission to email you, but about certain topics you decide you don't like is not spam.

Real spam however, rarely makes it into my inbox - it gets filtered out and deleted without ever being opened.

I find AbeBooks to be very good for that. Ironically, they were acquired by Amazon, but they are still a separate system.

eBay and AliExpress do what Amazon Marketplace does better than Amazon Marketplace, but Amazon wins because they've leveraged their success as a store for it.

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 that you rated them and stop pestering you with that dialog.

This is what makes the IT part of my heart die a little inside even more: when even the "good folks" in this industry feel like they have to do obnoxious things just to get ahead or keep up.

Folks, this is why the bigger arguments about competition or arbitration and so on always come back to the same point ("there's no meaningful choice"): Eventually, everyone winds up doing the same thing because it's the only way to simply not lose ground to the others who are doing the obnoxious-overall-but-good-for-just-me-in-the-short-term tricks. If I uninstalled every app that demanded this...well, I'd have very few apps. And that's even worse because it's just obnoxious enough to help the individual app developer but not so obnoxious as to spur people onto meaningful action, yet the annoyance is still present...always grating on nerves...disrupting just a little bit of productivity or happiness...needlessly.

If we ever meet, I might ask you if you want to be hit in the face now or later. I hate doing it, but it's a necessary evil.

Like many users, I as well have fallen victim for having a temporary fit of rage and leaving a 1 star review with a 1 liner of nonconstructive feedback for an otherwise useful app.

As if to say "Fine, you want it? Here's your god damn review!"

Otherwise I don't mind such dialog boxes.

And Google is really shitty app publisher in more ways than this. Has anyone ever seen a meaningful changelog in any major app of theirs?

I now use HERE WeGo or OsmAnd (on non-GAPPS devices, from f-droid). While the experience is not nearly as cool, I love the fact that I am not participating in uncontrolled monitoring and unexpected battery drainage.

Their piping of apps' access to things like location through Google Play Services to force you to give them access makes a mockery of the permissions system. I really don't like the way they've been doing things the past few years.

Edit: Gmail complains about lack of access to camera and microphone, not location services. Fixed.

The worst is that if you accept it once, this setting is saved and there is no obvious way in the UI to change it back (which was possible in the past I think).

To reset it, go in the Applications manager in the settings, choose Google Play Services and reset all its data.

There is no way it is a bug, someone had to think and put this deceptive behaviour as a feature (and someone had to design its deceptive UI, someone had to do unit testing for this deceptive behaviour, someone had to QA it…).

The tollways here are especially heinous when you don't use them often enough to justify the hassle of getting an I-Pass, since the cash toll is twice the I-Pass toll.

1. Comply with whatever they want you to do

2. Lie (say that you are going to comply later without intending to)

3. Walk away from the product (perhaps forever).

Holy sh*t! That's really low.

The only one where I can give an honest answer is "No, I love my laptop too much to upgrade." I'm actually having exactly this problem. I would like to upgrade to a new notebook with more RAM (4 GB soldered in is becoming a bit claustrophobic these days), but I have several rare autographs on my notebook cover and don't want to abandon it.

Read the "Step Into The Light" section.

Not to mention, the pre permission dialog is usually deceptively similar to the Apple one.

Potential scenario: someone makes a browser plugin that blocks dark patterns as if they were ads, so companies who use them don't see any traction with them.

Or 50 years out when everyone is computer literate, users are aware of dark patterns and punish companies who use them by not buying their products.

(I'm iab ad ops certified)

"Bureaucrats" already tell you how to design your website. There is already laws against some forms of deceitful advertising, unfair trade practices, and information sharing and the like. For example, let's say I was working to design an airline ticket booking site...

https://www.transportation.gov/policy/aviation-policy/airlin...

>For both domestic and international markets, carriers must provide disclosure of the full price to be paid, including government taxes/fees as well as carrier surcharges, in their advertising, on their websites and on the passenger’s e-ticket confirmation. In addition, carriers must disclose all fees for optional services through a prominent link on their homepage, and must include information on e-ticket confirmations about the free baggage allowance and applicable fees for the first and second checked bag and carry-on.

How about those hotel "resort fees?" Currently they FTC says they are OK as long as they are disclosed before booking. So a hotel can advertise $20/night but when you go to book say "lol btw there's also a $30 resort fee." This of course makes comparison shopping impossible and exists for no other reason to deceive you. Rumor has it the FTC is going to backtrack on the policy and disallow separate resort fees.

Kill Analytics looks more offensive. It actively sends garbage data to the analytics platform, thus destroying its value proposition to the site operator and discouraging its continued use.

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 out that while there is little incentive for current companies to adopt this architecture, it doesn't mean that new companies won't be successful implementing their business under this architecture. Admittedly, almost all of this is utterly unproven given the newness of blockchain based application platforms.

One way to look at this is that the current model of internet companies is highly anti-competitive. The data they "own" is really the data of all of their users who can freely give it to any other source they choose. The fact that they have control over the database is what gives them the competitive advantage. These new application platforms which have open public databases can change the game such that the previous closed-data model can no longer compete.

Too bad dozens of your contacts did not care about it and they have your data anyway.

Also tried a different browser with a clean slate, no issues.

Maybe the link was edited?

(of course, that's not true here and you don't have to sign in)

I watched a bunch of folks sign up on the flight and it made me feel really badly; the same way that check-cashing places scam their, mostly not-affulent, customers. These folks are even more vulnerable to these kinds of dark-patterns.

The prices were just crazy too. They depend on people overlooking fees and getting screwed over to make them profitable. I got away with paying nothing over what I was quoted on the website. I will still never fly them again.

So it is a case of these people not knowing what they are doing, far from knowing the customer psychology and deliberately deceiving them, there is just no thought beyond doing some silly marketing campaign for the month end results.

What is also wrong with dark pattern is that the customers have to be churned - they will not be coming back after the customer service disaster that goes with the sale.

I don't care about quarterly results, I care about building a business that does not need marketing beyond word of mouth and white-hat SEO. So, in ten years time, customers will return for customer service provided to them, not to facilitate whatever silly offer is needed for my marketing clown's month end. I want customers to want to come back for a great product and great service, this is not compatible with 'dark patterns'.

We often give intellect where there is none. Notably in TV dramas where the 'killer' is supposed to be clever, in reality most people that commit crime really are not thinking at all, they have not thought it all through. 'Dark patterns' is a bit like that.

They're refined by evolution-- ones that make money get kept, ones that don't get removed. That is about as much genius as is really needed.

Better, in fact-- if no one really knows whats going on then no one can have any pangs of ethics, no one can turn whistleblower after getting fired, etc.

There's no shame because there are no consequences. "Oh, you were the guy at Company X that wrote that annoying Dark Pattern Y, huh? Can you walk me through the ethics of that?" - Said no interviewer ever.

/sarcasm Don't do this. http://contactx.test.com/contactX/contact-spam.cfm

Although, if I think of it, I have also PayPal tied (but you can cancel that from their interface). Maybe Uber thinks I do have a payment method and they don't know I'm not allowing the charge from my PayPal anymore.

The one exception is the British Airways site. That page is very confusing. At best is awful UI. At worst it was created to trick the user into purchasing a more expensive ticket.