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Comment by perfunctory | Hacker News Reader

> It's hard for people to understand or care about ethics in programming. One possible reason for this is that the issues are too nuanced

Oh. "too nuanced". The author is too soft. Most probable reason is that business owners are assholes.

EDIT: oh, and because most developers are spineless creatures not being able to stand up for their principles, unlike the author. If everybody really cared about privacy as they say they do we wouldn't have so many issues. I mean, somebody is implementing all those features.

sorry for the harsh tone but I don't know how to say it any other way. When developers - professionals who enjoy royal treatment on the job market at the moment - are too afraid to upset their employers over an ethical question, it makes me mad.

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Our best bet for dark patterns to disappear is via legislation, not putting the onus on developers. The initial premise that everyone cares about privacy simply isn't true, and with the influx of developers in the job market, it's just a matter of finding someone with similarly lax ethics.

The saying “a sucker is born every minute” kindof applies here. Just because you and a majority of people care about ethics, doesn’t mean every programmer does. And all it takes is one who doesn’t for the company to be able to implement it.

The free market only works to an extent, and harm to consumers is a valid reason for the government to step in.

Long ago in my career, I was asked to essentially cheat benchmarks. Our software was often benchmarked by third parties to compare the product's performance across competitors. Our product was not as good, so after squeezing in every legit performance improvement we could possibly find, I was eventually asked to write code that queries the application running, and if it was a known benchmark program, just drop expensive API calls in a way not very noticeable. This would produce incorrect, but fast, output but only for benchmarks. I told my manager respectfully that's where I draw the line. He said, that's totally OK, I kept my job and he just assigned someone else who didn't care about the ethics. Quit a few months later for this and other reasons.

I'm a big believer in being part of the solution, not the problem, but there are always plenty of developers who don't care at all and are fine with "sure, boss, whatever you say, boss".

You reminded me of a saying I've heard a while ago which May be roughly translated to "the mother of suckers is always pregnant"

I love these non-sequitur literally-mostly-correct-but-conceptually-totally-wrong translations of aphorisms and titles.

One of my faves: in a Spanish-speaking country, an Ernest Hemingway book published (legal status unknown) in English, titled "Goodbye to the Weapons".

Another: from a customer service rep in Southeast Asia: "If I am in your shoe..."

If OP's client is in the EU, then what was asked is already illegal.

The fact that legislation exists has done me wonders fending against dark patterns.

Real example:

Client> We want the "I agree" button checked by default

Me> I'm not a lawyer, but I think this goes against the GDPR in that users must give their consent by action, not by inaction. I would advise to at least check with your lawyers first.

Client> Oh! I'm so tired of those laws, we'll get back to you after checking.

(a couple days later) Client> Yeah you were right, lawyers say we'd better leave it unchecked.

I know that client very well. I would have _never_ been able to convince them on a morality argument.

What's more, after a few interactions like the above now they don't bother going to the lawyers anymore. I just say "I'm not sure this is acceptable" and they immediately agree to whatever non-shady alternative I propose.

>Our best bet for dark patterns to disappear is via legislation

And what would the language you propose look like for this legislation that doesn't have loopholes, caveats, etc for people to get around once the lobbyists are done with it?

The knee-jerk reaction that writing good legislation is just too hard seems to always come up. But it's harmful. We don't need to have model language ready to ship just to be allowed to discuss whether an individual or collective solution is appropriate for the problem, and "you haven't perfected the details" is an unhelpful conversation stopper. It represents the worst kind of cynical resignation. In the long run, that's just as fatal to democracy as the lobbyists you're worried about, because it shows you've already given up.

The knee-jerk reaction is a knee-jerk reaction to the thought that legisilation is the end all be all of a problem. Marijuanna legilisation in the early states made it so difficult that it was better to stay underground. I remember in California the pro-marijuana people were actually opposed to the rules as written and being voted.

Talking is cheap. We've been talking. Most of the congress critters in office now do not understand most what's being legislated (if they've even read the full bill past the talking points). That's why most bills are actually written by lobbyist groups, and the congress critter just puts their name on it. Surely, there's nothing that could go wrong with that now is there?

It's not the be-all-end-all but it's also not a knee-jerk thought. Legislation (and government) is how we solve the collective action problem. That's what it's there for.

Sure, individual developers should stop deploying dark patterns. Many many developers do, though, and saying they shouldn't isn't going to change things. Change requires collective action, rather than expecting a huge number of developers to magically reorder their priorities. And unless you think a nationwide ad campaign is more feasible, that means legislation.

>And unless you think a nationwide ad campaign is more feasible

On a tangent, I wonder what the response rate of Facebook's nationwide ad campaign looks like. Not really sure what the point of Facebook's campaign is, but it's a really lame ass commercial. I hope they are paying above market rate for it too. Any laws being passed to regulate Facebook would immediately be suspicious to me wondering how much FB spent to write said legislation. Just like when the rules regulating TV owners could only own a certain percentage didn't make anyone actually sell anything. So many pieces of legislation are like this. I don't see "Don't be evil on the interwebs" regulations being any different. Maybe I'm cynical, maybe I'm too pessimistic, but it's not like I'm grabbing my hesitancy from air.

So the law is likely to get watered down. But what's a good goal? What would be an effective limitation on online advertising companies?

Wasn't trying to derail conversation into ad companies. Just used some examples on how laws aren't always about public interest, but more the interest of those being affected by the law so the effect is the least disruptive as possible.

Personally, I just think specificity makes for more interesting discussion. It's easy to say "there oughta be a law" but it's kind of empty calories, intellectually. Responding with aggressive negativity to people asking you to be more concrete is a real conversation stopper.

I don't mind a specific discussion. I react with negativity to two things: the expectation that the next step in the conversation can't happen without some fleshed-out perfected proposal, and the demand for someone else to come up with that solution, rather than making a positive contribution oneself. The problem isn't "asking you to be more concrete" because you can do that while avoiding those two negative contributions.

For example, a response could have been:

> How would you tailor that law? I have a hard time describing exactly what's wrong with dark patterns in a way I think would be enforceable, even though I know it when I see it.

> I think a law would have to be carefully written. One starting point might be requiring cancellation to be available using the same process as subscription - for example, if there's a signup form online, there must be an equivalent cancellation form.

which are at least contributions rather than just an insistence that there's a problem that has to be addressed before these ideas can even be considered.

Even just "what language would you propose?" without all the baggage of the original comment at least moves the discussion forward.

The conversation stopping seems to be the agenda of modern day. Nobody actually wants to solve issues, because then they can't argue on the issue any longer. So when the questions get tough, pivot, gas light, whataboutism, whatever to avoid getting pinned down.

For actual furthering of the discussion on wording, something vague like 'any dialog presented to user must be done in the most consumer friendly manner' isn't very good because it's too vague. Getting specific like 'automatically checking/highlight/enabling the options vendor prefers' is too specific because then the vendor would use something not a check/highlight/etc. These kind of things are ripe for "spirit of the law" interpretations, but we've long since given up that kind of good intentions.

Writing good legislation is really easy. The issue is that the more power you concentrate in one decision making body (in this case, legislators) the more important the issues they deal with are.

That consumes bandwidth, and means that these sort 'they should step in and decide how people write software!' ideas are going to get corrupted by pressure groups who want to use the power to achieve their own ends.

If I have to vote for someone who is going to enact policy I actually want, and the trade off is they are shady on web implementation policy - I don't care about web policy that much. No-one does. The government can't possibly put out reliably good regulation on the range of topics that people want good regulation while that dynamic is in play.

The government can't possibly put out perfect legislation in every area, no. But it's ridiculous to assume that everything is inherently corrupted and that there's never any hope. I mean, sure, if every member of Congress is shady on web policy but shares your views on more important issues, then web policy falls behind. But that's just your cynicism speaking - you've got no reason to think that web policy is automatically lacking support.

The other fault in your model is that Congress actually delegates the vast amount of lawmaking to administrative agencies, who are equipped to deal with the less important issues. The FTC, the CFPB, or the FCC could all credibly claim some authority over dark pattern regulation, though I don't know enough admin law to know who would be most appropriate. Agency rulemaking isn't a perfect process either, but it doesn't have the concentrated power problem you're describing and it deals with tons of lower-priority topics. Go read the Federal Register: https://www.federalregister.gov/

There are 10s of voters, maybe low hundreds, to whom web policy is important enough to change their votes. There is never going to be any accountability for the policy on dark web patterns.

> The other fault in your model is that Congress actually delegates the vast amount of lawmaking to administrative agencies, who are equipped to deal with the less important issues.

Those bodies typically end up full of industry insiders who lock out new entrants and promote the status quo. They aren't going to stop dark patterns, it is more likely they'll want everyone to have a license before starting a website (which is the obvious enforcement method).

If your cynicism were correct SOPA and PIPA would be law. They aren't.

I don't think it is reasonable to cite 2 successful attempts at fighting off legislation in favour of passing more legislation/the integrity of the legislative system. That is an argument in favour of less regulation - so far 2 attempts have been so bad as to produce mass outcry.

That is exactly the sort of corrupting force that will gather to any power that gets gathered to the regulators in the name of pushing back on 'dark patterns'. It isn't a case of 'of this is too hard', it is pointing out that you're implicitly advocating the creation of a point of failure for these people to attack in an arena where they have an advantage.

The knee-jerk reaction is running to the government to try to make whatever you don't like illegal. Which is getting more and more common. On college campuses it's getting more common for kids to call the police when they see something that offends them, including speech that offends them. They just assume that they have a right to a higher government power to make illegal whatever is bad in the world. That is the knee jerk reaction here.

The idea that software patterns can be made illegal is just absurd, and goes against the early vision of the free software movement which recognized the most important thing was the freedom to write software, rather than the freedom to get a job writing exactly the software you think you should be writing, and the right to throw employers in jail if they fire you for not doing what you're told on the job.

> The knee-jerk reaction is running to the government to try to make whatever you don't like illegal.

The things I advocate the government to ban are things I believe are bad for society.

I don't like ice-cream, but I don't advocate for an ice-cream ban because I don't believe ice-cream is tearing apart our society at the seams.

Dark patterns are bad for society, and prey on people's miscalculations and inefficiencies of our chemical-brains. In the same way that child labour came up because it was profitable short term, but it was decided against that it was still a bad thing for society.

The government's job is to steer society to a better place, god knows we'll take it down a bad path left unsupervised.

> The idea that software patterns can be made illegal is just absurd, and goes against the early vision of the free software movement

The free software movement has never been about a libertarian, free-for-all, wild-west. In particular, it has always been about taking power away from developers, and giving it to users (e.g. see gnu.org/philosophy ).

Whilst FSF, GNU, etc. don't advocate banning certain software (AFAIK), they're certainly not averse to government intervention for social good. GNU Taler is a good example: a cryptocurrency which offers anonymity to buyers, but sellers remain identifiable for tax collection.

Also note that 'freedom 0' (freedom to run the software for any purpose) only requires that a license itself doesn't impose restrictions on users. It's taken for granted that users are already restricted by other mechanisms. For example, a license with a clause like "the software must not be used to commit bank fraud" would be non-free, but that doesn't imply that the free software movement approves of bank fraud; simply that (a) in places where bank fraud is illegal, such a clause is redundant, and (b) in places where bank fraud is legal, such a clause would constitute a developer exercising unjust power over users.

Sometimes it comes down to a judge simply deciding "I'll know it when I see it."[1] I think the bigger problem is our judicial and legislative system doesn't have the periphery to fully grasp how vast and damaging of a problem dark patterns present.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it

Do judges have this kind of power any more? Thinking in terms of all of the mandatory minimums and what not that tie judge's hands in deciding cases.

Judges being able to "know it when they see it" would be the only way "spirit of the law" type of legislation would work. Then you have the problem of Judge A in District 1 being much more lenient than Judge B in District 2. Not sure if that's a bad thing or not, just mentioning things.

I would guess that EFF would do the hard work of combing through the text, and sound the alarm if it has such glaring issues.

> And what would the language you propose look like for this legislation that doesn't have loopholes, caveats, etc for people to get around once the lobbyists are done with it?

It already exists - it's called GDPR. It deals with the root cause of this design pattern which is collecting data about clients secretly. It's enacted in the EU and it's excellent. It's not perfect - there's still some oddities and extra work for implementers (and the 'accept cookies' on every page thing is a faff for users) but the overall effect is extremely positive.

The GDPR is absolutely not enforced. I've reported this exact dark pattern to the ICO over a year ago and nothing happened.

Lax enforcement is a separate issue from saying it's not possible to even write a useful law in the first place. Both are needed but the rules need to exist before we can even consider enforcement mechanisms.

> EDIT: oh, and because most developers are spineless creatures not being able to stand up for their principles, unlike the author. If everybody really cared about privacy as they say they do we wouldn't have so many issues. I mean, somebody is implementing all those features.

Why holding only developers responsible for non-ethical features? What about the actual decision makers and legislation.

By the same logic, if only factory workers decided it's immoral to build weapons, there would be no wars. But those spineless creatures just want bread on the table and don't care about world peace.

The only way to avoid these dark patterns is a set of laws that punish them. The reason why we don't have such laws is that we as a society don't know and don't care. It's we all, not only "spineless developers".

> By the same logic, if only factory workers decided it's immoral to build weapons, there would be no wars. But those spineless creatures just want bread on the table and don't care about world peace.

I think the question is, are developers engineers or just programmers? The responsibility of an engineer is to give pushback when it is deserved.

As you say, the responsibility is on decision makers. But they care about the politics. They will try to make it look like you're on your own. But if you clearly demonstrate the mood of the company's employees, they will reconsider their position. The result will be compromise not capitulation but it's better for something to be better even if it isn't great yet.

I don't agree. Responsibility lies with the doer in this case -- the person who types the dark pattern into the code. If my manager tells me to slap my coworker, she's only barely to blame for demanding something dangerous and unethical. I'm the asshole if I do it.

There's plenty of blame to go around. But at current, we really do have to do better as a community and refuse these requests far more often than we currently do.

>When developers - professionals who enjoy royal treatment on the job market at the moment - are too afraid to upset their employers over an ethical question, it makes me mad.

I feel like a lot of people saying this lately haven't tried to get a job since the pandemic.

Invitations to apply from recruiters whose job it is to get people in the door are not job offers, nor royal treatment.

When your industry isn't on this list, https://www.aarp.org/work/job-search/info-2020/coronavirus-o...

it's understandable why people feel that way.

There are many people that have made quiet choices and can't talk about them for numerous reason. NDAs for example, or, my favourite: Sometimes there is no defence for a certain type of technique. It's just something nobody thought to do but any company could do it, and yet nobody seems to realize it. There is this huge knowledge gap between software developers and almost all business owners.

Most probable reason is that business owners are assholes.

Some business owners are. Some of us do try to run our businesses in ethical ways, despite knowing very well that we could probably make a lot more money if we included a dark pattern or two. It would be nice if people could at least not insult us while we're doing it by lumping us in with the $$$ crowd and normalising the bad behaviours we want to resist.

> sorry for the harsh tone but I don't know how to say it any other way

You shouldn't have to apologize. Nothing wrong with being harsh. We should be harsh, especially with people who perpetuate these unacceptable practices. Indignation is a perfectly valid response when faced with this.

> When developers - professionals who enjoy royal treatment on the job market at the moment - are too afraid to upset their employers over an ethical question, it makes me mad.

Sure, that’s understandable.

But to be understand it, also remember that when highly paid experts that get royal treatment so long as they conform confront employers over ethical issues...you get the Google Ethical AI massacre.

“Royal treatment” isn’t unconditional, and means you have a lot to lose.

>spineless creatures not being able to stand up for their principles

Why assume they have principles?

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