TradingView's Emotional Subscription Cancellation | Hacker News Reader

TradingView's Emotional Subscription Cancellation

hallofshame.design

39 pointspopcalc10 comments

I had also submitted a complain about the dark pattern that tradingview uses so that people get subscribed to $600+ annual subscription without being notified.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38347832

Does anyone subscribe to tradingview have you seen the dark pattern when you want to disable auto annual renewal. Need to confirm at least 7-8 times and most of the dialogs make it sound like you are canceling the subscription not the auto renewal. Like wtf I am not allowing you to charge me $600+ and renew subscription unknowingly

I know I'm taking the wrong takeaway from this, but that jenga metaphor animation is kind of genius.

I think it's delightful(and maybe that influence me not to cancel the sub, because it's too cute? maybe..) Personally I think it's just normal-mildly-manipulative marketing trick and that's all. If we're talking about real dark pattern, there are much more malicious examples than this one out there...

Is urgency really a dark pattern? To me it seems like basic sales and is present on everything from TV infomercials (buy now, limited stocks, only for the next 15 minutes + operators standing by) to brick and mortar sales that only last until the end of the week. Granted, it's a different version of urgency and the other stuff looks shady, but urgency isn't something I'd automatically put in the 'dark pattern' box.

It is perhaps more useful to consider “fake urgency” as defined here: https://www.deceptive.design/types/fake-urgency

I’ve long felt that “dark pattern” isn’t the right term. It obscures the intent behind purposeful decisions made by real humans, by describing a malicious action as an abstract outcome.

The use of urgency here is absolutely a manipulative pattern designed to influence user behaviour for the benefit of the manipulator.

I wish there was more formalism around the idea of "dark patterns" it strikes me as a term for mechanistic configurations that encourage or elicit specific behaviours yet in practice it's more like intentionally hostile design/ux.

It is a dark pattern if unsubscribing is more inconvenient than subscribing. If I can get a subscription where you are able to verify my credit card information and my identity with a click of a button. Then I should be able to unsubscribe with the same 1 click. If you hamper me in any way from unsubscribing no matter if it is a speed bump or a road block both are dark patterns.

> Is urgency really a dark pattern? To me it seems like basic sales and is present on everything from TV infomercials (buy now, limited stocks, only for the next 15 minutes + operators standing by) to brick and mortar sales that only last until the end of the week.

Those are dark patterns too. In many places such scams are illegal.

It's a bit sad how people have started to just accept the pervasive and fundamental dishonesty and inefficiency of the market.

Personally this kind of thing is like water off a duck's back to me, as long as there is indeed a button to click. The real 10x worse thing is if there is no button and you have to email or call to cancel.

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