Comment by ratww | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ratww | Hacker News Reader

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Yeah, that's the thing.

You can't really fight against results. Putting an annoying modal asking for an email will give you lots of email leads. Sending newsletters will give more returns to the website. Sending desktop notifications whenever there's a new article works and gives more visits. A website that takes 20 seconds to load is not an issue. Advertisements give more than zero moneys.

The reason it gives positive results is because this is "fine" for enough people. Some people are totally okay with having 5000 unread emails. The web is slow because computer/OS/ISPs are greedy. Ads? Look at television. Just blame cookie banners on the government.

Why it's fine for a segment of people, I don't know. Maybe they have no choice, maybe they don't know better, maybe they are completely fine with it. All I know is that they are the target users and I'm not, and companies are ok with either losing me or forcing me to go trough this bullshit. Or maybe they don't even have to worry, since there's no competition.

We can look at earlier consumer-hostile experiences which were generally solved by consumer rights regulations.

You can fight against results - lying in advertising by saying that your Patented Snake Oil Tincture cures everything really does "work" and bring in money, but it was stopped by regulation; lying that this knock-off is really SuperBrandItem does work and bring results, but trademark laws significantly reduced it; selling things that look ok but break immediately are solved by various warranty and fit-for-purpose laws, etc, etc.

This is fundamentally a coordination problem that can't really be solved by individual users separately "voting with their wallets" (as past experience shows - none of the problems listed above were solved by consumer choices) but can be solved by coordinated requirements, with the users as a community voting in standards and regulations for commerce that are mandatory for every seller.

A lot of this is also caused by following the leader. And the leaders are fueled by adtech or spyware...

Yes, this is primarily a regulatory problem not a technical or design one. Most user hostile actions do work to bring in more users or make you more money. If they didn't then companies wouldn't be doing it would they? But just because something makes sense for a business does not mean it is ethical, moral or legal. Snake oil and counterfeit goods are solid examples. Things like auto charging, difficult to cancel subscriptions and the trade in user information should also be handled in a similar way.

100% - even annoying "promotional" email blasts. I've worked for companies where, when we did surveys, customers overwhelmingly said that we sent them too many emails or that the emails were not relevant. Yet time and time again we would do a bulk email send and watch in-store sales climb up proportionally. So naturally then we had to make email address a required field when making an account online. One more step for users, and specifically something that most users don't want to give...but the money says otherwise.

This reminds me of JC Penney's attempts to switch from bullshit discounts to "everyday low pricing"[1]. Sales dropped 20%.

I think the sad reality is that, despite how people like to think of themselves as rational actors who consider the pros and cons of each purchase, these tactics work. The only way to curtail stuff like this is by interfering in the free market - i.e. regulation.

[1] https://business.time.com/2014/01/31/j-c-penneys-pricing-is-...

> an email will give you lots of email

This is why I rarely use the same email address longer than 1 year now or try to manage different accounts for different spam. I just change the password to random crap and forget about that email account, while setting up a new one.

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