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Comment by fortran77 | Hacker News Reader

They also warn me EVERY TIME with a dialog I have to dismiss that my watch history is turned off--and tries to trick me into turning it on.

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I was tricked once--and only once--into signing up for Premium.

I was setting up the app anew on a new account, and IIRC it was my school account, of all things. And I was just mindlessly tapping through dialogs to get it set up ASAP, and I hit a button that probably read "Let's Do It" or "Sounds Good To Me" or some other sort of stupid, slangy, unclear thing, and that was the "consent" to sign up to the service and so I got the Free Trial.

Thankfully I did notice and I properly cancelled and had no billing issues.

That was definitely a dark pattern. I see them wording the buttons all the time so you're not quite sure what you're agreeing to.

I also once "consented" to a Walmart+ subscription, and I had a bit of a crazy time recovering the money they charged for it. I believe that my bank had flagged it for fraud and so I contacted them and said no, I certainly did not authorize this. And then we had a little, er, discussion on what "authorization" meant. Because what I think had happened was a recent purchase that I made had an "opt-out" checkbox clicked for me, and I didn't notice, failing to opt-out of the subscription, and thereby "authorized" it in the financial opinion of my financial institution. Hey, that's not consent, that's a deception.

Anyway, I did pursue a refund and I did get satisfaction from that, and strangely ever since, it's been an opt-in checkbox and not opt-out. I'm still not entirely sure how it happened.

Has there ever been an age where it's easier to accidentally spend money? I suppose any time that a wink and handshake (or :thumbsup:) suffice for a contract, anyone could give away the farm unintentionally.

It used to be that the government protected its citizens. Laws were written to force companies to make disclosures, certain contracts had to be in writing, some documents require notaries, even fair credit reporting standards allowed citizens to see the data banks kept and shared about us.

We used to be safe because the government protected us.

Now you can consent to be spied on for an eternity because you clicked "ok" once.

You have no recourse to do anything with the data SV keeps on you and our government simply doesn't care. As long as SV plays nice with government demands to curtail 1st and 4th amendment protections there will be lax regulation.

That doesn’t sound right. It should’ve brought up the standard Google payment sheet where you would’ve had to confirm your payment method.

On the Gmail app in iOS, when opening a web link I get the option to choose Chrome or Safari, I choose Safari and set the checkbox for "Don't ask me again" but the app keeps asking ... dark patterns are common in Google products.

My favorite was the old android location services dialog-- there was a "and don't ask me again" checkbox on by default ... but it greyed it out if you disabled location services. So it was just a matter of time until you fat fingered the wrong button and got it stuck on and no longer prompting you.

Gotta make sure the user does the "right" thing, after all.

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