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Comment by viraptor | Hacker News Reader

> If a deliberate delay is added to a UI to make it clear to the user that actual work is being done, this is not deception.

It is deception. It's less obvious in case of a program, but imagine it when you're using some service in real life. You bring in a car for repairs, the mechanic says "right, I'm doing it now", goes to the other room and starts reading a newspaper. After some deliberate delay, fixes an obvious issue in a minute and comes back to you saying the job is done.

Still think that's not deceptive?

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I think the difference is the amount of time. In your mechanic example, I have to wait probably a few minutes extra. Maybe total time goes from 15 to 25 minutes. 10 minutes is a significant time.

When dealing with computers however, the time goes from 100ms to 2 seconds. People generally don't mind.

Absolutely this. It's the time difference.

The mechanic could say "I'm very experienced with this kind of repair and was able to perform it quickly" in a lot less time than it would take to read a newspaper in the next room.

The computer can say, "We checked your taxes against 2,683 rules in 0.002 seconds" but the user would take as long to read this as it would take to insert an artificial delay.

But stepping back a bit for context, the only reason I'm pointing out the benevolence -- or at least harmlessness -- of this kind of artifice, is to also point out that the article lumps it in with real deception. This looks to me like an attempt to create a slippery slope toward excusing all kinds of deception.

It's not deceptive - there's no commitment or understanding that the only thing he's doing when out of sight is work on your car. (And they don't bill based on how long they're gone - they bill based on how long they actually work on the car, in theory.)

On a computer, however, users generally assume that results are being delivered as fast as possible, even though in reality there's usually other things eating cycles.

I think it depends. If the mechanic is attempting to mislead the customer by insinuating longer or more difficult work then it's deceptive. But if it's because customers refuse to believe that their car could be fixed so quickly and assume that no work had been done then I don't think so.

Only if he's billing me for more hours worked. He can both say that he's working on it right now and go to the break room to read a newspaper and be truthful. Lunch breaks and small breaks before/after lunch are a thing in some workplaces.

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