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Comment by rozenmd | Hacker News Reader

You ever notice how Apple never really lets the user say "no" to their nudges?

It's always "maybe later" and never "no seriously, I don't want this, go away"

I don't have a solution, but on this topic I let Fable write a browser extension I called "Nee, krijg de tering". It's "No, fuck off" in English, but the Dutch feels more visceral for me. It's really rough, but it tries to find these "Maybe later", "No, thank you" etc. buttons and replace the No button.. I guess it's kind of self-explanatory. Does not really do anything, but it is cathartic (and also messes with a lot of UIs to the point where unfortunately the blocklist of domains this should not be used on is growing a lot :'( ).

I feel this pattern is really abusive. Like I am offering to slap you in the face, giving you two answer options: Yes and "Maybe later/no, thank you". As though you have any obligation to be forced to answer this question again at some late time, or to be very polite while you refuse to be slapped in the face. The correct answer is obviously "No, fuck off".

Sensible. Add in a 'Nee, flikker op met je kutcookies' button for cookie consent banners, and you're golden.

This 'maybe later' dark pattern seems to have gained so much traction that UX folk just use it because everyone uses it. There is probably some handwavy reason for it that amounts to not wanting to give the user the feeling they are doing something definitive, but it just ends up being another grain of sand on the micro-annoyance pile of today's tech.

Consent-O-Matic handles those kutcookies for me, but an interesting feature would be to use these fancy new "decision models" to determine the correct explitive to use in the No,-button text based on (the context of the element on) the current page.

> not wanting to give the user the feeling they are doing something definitive

In their refusal, while (accidental) acceptance is always definitive...

EDIT: In another thread this is called the ratchet of consent. Apt.

(lit. "No, get the tuberculosis".)

Dutch is fairly unique in how it uses diseases as expletives, whereas most other languages use body parts or excrement. TB even has the honour of having two expletives named after it (tering and pleuris).

Whenever "shit hits the fan" we say "Tuberculosis broke out" ("de pleuris brak uit/is uitgebroken").

I don’t speak Dutch but I agree. The Dutch version sounds way better.

I’ve noticed that most companies do that, not just Apple.

Apple claims to be the privacy king. They deserve scrutiny.

Other companies claim to care about the consumer, they deserve scrutiny too.

What does privacy have to do with nudges?

The principle of respecting user autonomy.

Tangential IMO. Apple isn't surreptitiously pilfering your data via persistent nudges.

Well, if that's the bar we're arbitrarily setting, then I guess so.

Arbitrary indeed – I noted above that privacy and nudges are unrelated.

Privacy requires immense trust. Ignoring user preferences the minute there’s some money to be made erodes that trust.

One of primary reasons people value online privacy is because advertisers are incessantly “nudging” them to do things that aren’t in their interest.

It’s exhausting.

People don’t want to be nudged. They want to be respected.

Those are 2 different and often conflicting things.

Most companies did that before Apple, yes. I hate that trend.

Microsoft pioneer it with "ask again in 30 minutes". Or maybe someone else, can't tell for sure who was the original bastard.

Apples sets the example.

a bad example from apple becomes the status quo for other companies.

Or the EU with their online chat control. First round they couldn’t get a majority. Then, they sneakily turned it around so people had to vote to NOT want it. The day they did the second vote, many were on holiday and thus it passed.

I have this one notification asking me if I want to enable the Personal focus when I’m at home. I don’t want my iPhone to care if I’m at home or not, so the past two years whenever it pops up I click Later.

It will probably never stop asking.

It will. Once you accidentally mis-click once and then suddeny there is no way to back out of it.

I think this should be called the ratchet theory of consent because it only tightens.

I beat you to it by a couple of years :)

https://jacquesmattheij.com/dark-patterns-the-ratchet/

Haha! Great minds think alike. (Although they do also say that fools seldom differ...)

I've got bad news for you then :)

Google Play Store has a notification to enable notifications. You didn't read that wrong. It shows a badge and everything. I said no for years except that last time. Now I can't find how to turn it off again.

Can’t you just disable notifications for the Google Play Store app? Maybe it’s because I’m on GrapheneOS, but I can just enable/disable notifications like any other app.

This is like an in app Envelope icon thing.

Not sure about the focus pop up but most/all of Apple’s other nags (like set up Siri, try Apple Music and the like) go away permanently if you go to the settings app and click “later” from there (as opposed to the button in the pop up which has the exact same label).

You can delete the Personal focus.

> It's always "maybe later" and never "no seriously, I don't want this, go away"

No? When I'm asked about Apple Pay on an iPhone, it says "Maybe later". In the Settings it has reminder, and if I go in and say "No" it never pops up ever again (maybe on a iOS major version upgrade?).

Generally with Apple it's one "Maybe later" with a reminder flag set someplace, and then that's it.

It's slowly getting worse. For instance, the update nag for Pages and Numbers Applications towards their newer subscription-capable equivalents can't be disabled in the MacOS UI. Selecting "Not Now" still results in the nag appearing every. single. day.

The frog is being slowly boiled.

My favorite one on iPhone is the Apple Health app. Marginally useful to track some trends, so I was using it occasionally. Every 2 weeks it will nag you to "Make sure the Health features on your iPhone and Apple Watch are set up the way you want them" with a banner that takes up 1/3 of the screen. There's not even a "maybe later". No matter what you do, it comes back every 2 weeks. Sure, I can "just" close it. After 5 years, I've closed this stupid nag close to 150 times.

This hostile behavior has unfortunately grown over the years. Notice how often you cannot really unsubscribe from newsletters, because clicking the small link in the email will only unsubscribe you from 1 of 25 "topics" or whatever and they will gladly re-define the "topics" every 6 months and re-enable them all.

If you are using a big tech mail service like Gmail then just mark them all as spam. If you run your own, block the whole domain.

i see this virtually everywhere, and worked at several places where PMs proactively changed text banners to not equate to "no"

severe industry brainrot

Feature: Apple does not phone home. Enable this feature?

Would you like to enable the feature where you opt out of disabling telemetry?

I want this on the macOS Settings badge.

Have no intention to upgrade my Intel Mac Pro to Tahoe, so Settings is going to permanently have the "something needs attention" badge I guess.

Many people have a hard time understanding consent.

Jesus Herbert Christo. Literally, not figuratively, literally, as I was reading your comment I got the "iCloud Storage is Full" upsell nag that I have tried to disable a hundred times. I stopped to asked my Lord and Savior Claude to help this time around:

> What I found on your Mac

> Apple Intelligence is ON. com.apple.CloudSubscriptionFeatures.optIn → [REDACTED] = 1 — that number is your Apple Account DSID. ~2.5 GB of models in /System/Library/AssetsV2/com_apple_MobileAsset_UAF_*, with generativeexperiencesd, intelligenceplatformd, modelmanagerd, TGOnDeviceInferenceProviderService and a Messages Assistant Extension all resident.

> The nag is pure upsell. Every iCloud service that notification names is already off on this Mac — your account has only KEYCHAIN_SYNC and FIND_MY_MAC enabled. Photos, Mail, Backup, Drive: all off. It's nagging you about your other devices' storage. Source is the com.apple.appleaccount.notifications bundle, fed by followupd and com.apple.CloudSubscriptionFeatures.followup.engagement.

> "I said no and Apple said yes" is literally happening. Siri shows Assistant Enabled = 0, yet ten Siri daemons are running. Share Mac Analytics is off (AutoSubmit = 0) — and SubmitDiagInfo still logged LastFullSubmissionSuccess today at 12:36 UTC.

This is absolutely bananas.

Apple has an allergy to fragmentation that can be both admirable and annoying at the same time. As a developer it can be really nice to know that your audience all has access to the same feature set. As a user it can be annoying to be subjected to Apples feature upgrade treadmill.

They have a "rapist mentality" like all the other large tech companies.

And Sync Immediately's only affirmative option is "For Today", so I get to set a daily reminder to remind the setting that I do in fact want it to be ON.

Techbros just can't grasp that "No" doesn't mean "Later." It's not exclusive to Apple by any means. Android update incoming? Your choices are "yes" or "later."

Techbros are just the ones happy to implement it. Which is of course a black mark all on it's own, but the ones explicitly rejecting the very concept of consent are sales, marketing, management, project leaders, etc. IE the people who are actually legally in charge of making these decisions.

Frankly, most of these people at high levels in these companies seem pretty apathetic to the concept of "Consent" at all, because I don't think they think we have a right to it.

Remember, LG owns the glass. Not you. Not the person who purchased it and has the legally respected rights under the first sale doctrine, but instead the company who bought some code that runs on it.

Linux people aren't techbros? What are they called?

If you can't disable it, it's not a feature.

Microsoft and Google are the same.

whataboutism

I get the annoyance at "ask me again later", but "maybe later" or "not now" is helpful - there's no way to trigger dialogs by yourself, so this is a promise that even if you say "no" in the dialog, you can still go into settings to change your mind. Gives me less anxiety about the choice.

How about a choice: both "no, maybe later" and "no, never"

And "no, never" would irreversibly remove the option from settings?

It would never prompt again.

That's is the same as what "Not now" and "Maybe later" would (should) do.

Only "ask me again later" is the one that prompts you again. That's why I do mind that one, and appreciate the other ones.

“Maybe later” doesn’t explicitly say that you’ll never get the prompts again, so even if it did work that way, PMs would be able to weasel out and change it back to nagging you with the next update. (In reality, the wording like that is used precisely for this reason already, and that’s why we hate it.)

And it doesn’t really help the user. If I click “Not now” and later decide that I do want the feature, how do I find it? If you want to reassure the user, just say that:

  Enable cool new feature X?

  (You can always change this in System Settings → Y.)

  [ Sure ] [ No, thanks ]

I agree that telling me exactly where I can change it can be helpful, although I'm also sure I won't remember that.

But we're comparing to the case where it just says "No", in which case "Not now" at least tells me I can look up how to change it later now - or more importantly, that I don't need to give this further thought now.

Yes, PMs (or anyone) making software doing dumb shit is dumb anyway, but that also holds true if it were labelled "No".

"No, thanks" is also insulting and unacceptable. I want "No, fuck off", so let's compromise on a plain "No" like we used to get in the era when computers were made for the users.

Have you ever seen an app where upon responding to a dialog, an option is irrevocably removed from settings? The conversation is about “no” meaning “don’t bother me again with this question unprompted” (which used to be the norm), not “rewrite your own binary to remove the choice”.

Of course not, that's why I was surprised with the suggestion - if that's not what it should do, then it's no different from what I was proposing.

I was agreeing with you that indeed, I don't want software to bother me again with the question unprompted. Additionally, I appreciate the reassurance that the dialog isn't my last opportunity to set the setting (because sometimes that is the case).

So tl;dr: label the button "Not now", and don't prompt me again.

A much better way would be “Yes” and “No” with a small message of “you can change this later in the Settings”.

Or have three buttons: “Yes”, “No”, “Remind me Later”. Apple does stuff like that in other parts of the OS, like when asking for app permissions, so they clearly know how to do it.

"Remind me later" means "bug me again with a dialog in the future", which is not what I want. I don't need to be reminded, but if I change my mind in the future, I want to be able to proactively go and change it.

Yes, more text can be another way to provide the message, but if you've ever done any user testing, you'll know that people at best scan through your UI. I know I wouldn't read that, or at least would prefer not to have to read that.

I guess I don't see why "No" combined with "You can change this later in settings" is so much less offensive than "Not now".

> "Remind me later" means "bug me again with a dialog in the future", which is not what I want.

But it is what Apple and others do, and what the conversation is about. Sounds like you want what everyone else does (a “no”) but are just arguing over the specific wording of the message.

Yes! Somehow people seem to assume I'm arguing for different behaviour, which I'm explicitly not. I'm saying "Not now", and the ability to manually go into settings or wherever to change the setting later, is better than "No", while doing the same thing as "No".

And as I said in my first post, "Ask me again later" and the associated behaviour is annoying.

Then build better interfaces. Don't ask stupid or nefarious questions.

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