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Comment by GavinMcG | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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