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Comment by kuba-orlik | Hacker News Reader

> But Bolt is not a monopoly. There are many taxi services in Riga.

My experience is that if you don't speak Latvian, Bolt is basically the only choice to order a ride in Riga. Oh trust me, how I've tried. I never use those ride hailing services unless there's no other option left.

> No thanks I will not boycott Bolt because you chose to violate some ToS and hack their product and somehow become outraged.

Well, I'm not inviting people to boycott Bolt because I "hacked their product". I'm inviting to boycott Bolt because they are using dark patterns to take control away from users.

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At the end you talk about having laws passed. What sort of law do you want passed exactly (and do you mean EU, specific EU countries, US, elsewhere)?

I guess one thing could be to force businesses of certain scale (or ideally, of any scale) to not offer services exclusive to a particular digital ecosystem, unless that's the only way to provide that service.

My local restaurant uses an app to do loyalty stamps... I really wish tey would come back to the traditional paper-based ones

this will never happen.

outside of the imperial centers, "big tech" have already reached into governments.

for example, latin america governments make it very difficult to schedule a dmv visit without a cellphone number AND a meta/facebook's whatsApp account. While all public universities accepted a free google meet account for covid time remote classes, and now got a surprise multimillion bill to access material uploaded to the system after the original offer period.

things are already way past the point of no return.

while rich engineers are busy fiddling with websites to solver their own problems (could your immediate family have hailed that ride when in a similar situation?) companies have already encroached themselves in the very foundation of the institutions that could solve this via public policy.

Why should the government mandate something like that? Why don't you just give feedback to the businesses that they should make these changes and if you and enough other people feel the same way, they probably will. I understand government intervention in cases of dark patterns that harm consumers (e.g. the recent Intuit settlement in the U.S.) and to protect certain groups that are likely to be harmed or neglected (e.g. the handicapped, blind, etc.) but I'm not sure I understand the need for government to intervene in a case like this where it is a business choice and the consumer while annoyed is not really harmed and there is no monopoly (as far as I remember in Estonia when I lived there a few years ago it was quite easy to hail a normal cab anywhere and was the same when I travelled the Baltics), and personally I get very nervous when the government starts regulating very specific things.

Which control are they taking away from you? You choose to use their service and yet you complaint because they don't allow you to use it as you see fit. As far as you know, the web client is not as well developed and maintained. I can't fathom where this sense of entitlement comes from.

Agree with this part.

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