YSK : Dark patterns among large companies are becoming more mainstream

SoonaPaana@lemmy.world to You Should Know@lemmy.world – 502 points – The Internet is starting to Break - Here's Why.
youtu.be

While it is no secret that exploitative practices are interlaced with capitalistic tendencies, the practices are becoming intolerable. Signing up to pay usually takes only two clicks that are prominently visible whereas cancelation options are hidden away in deep settings requiring multiple clicks. Pricing often feel arbitrary with no reference points. Every large company grows with the intention of exhibiting monopolistic behavior. This is not sustainable and should not be tolerated.

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That's not even what pisses me off the most about the whole situation. I'm upset that my friends and family don't care.

gestures to everything else I mean... we are fucking drowning in situations to care about.

.....fuckkkk. that's fair.

...and then your friend and family don't care about those either 🙃

I do think some of this is just fatigue. The usual way to deal with this is to either pick one or a few things to try to actively address, or just buckle down and wait for things to improve. Both lead naturally to a situation where it's hard to get a critical mass of people to respond on any one subject.

But at a certain point, it's still a cop out. And part of the trick. If you drown anyone in enough bullshit, you can't expect it to all get called out -- but that doesn't mean it's not all bullshit. It is divide and conquer in another form.

How so? You can't work on everything at the same time. And the more immediate and direct an issue is, the more it needs your direct focus.

Meaning that issues such as dark patterns in cookie signups are automatically lowest-tier-ever-for-once-I-got-fuck-all-left-to-worry-about.

There is no war other then class war. It all ties back into our way of life. People don't like to think about it because it's such a huge cultural and political shift to fix it, that they can more easily imagine a post apocalyptic future. Rather then a future where you and your children aren't exploited from cradle to grave.

Covid has shown the world that we can drown the world in bullshit. Before that, people used to care more and companies had a name to lose, now there's just apathy and greed left.

And I've stopped caring about nearly all of them.

Not really much I can do about it, so why worry?

I short of have a theory with this. There's this belief that "netflix killed piracy" because they provided an actual service with a fair price and the commodity that people wanted to watch shows. And that later on, it got enshittified. But I kinda think that, collaterally, a very important factor that explains people not even knowing how to download a torrent or having 0 critical mind when it comes to the other companies abusing their power has been the surge of smartphones

They were designed to have idiot-proof protection, but more and more they distanced newer generations from having a minimal technical background on how to use computers, which then leads to a more ignorant society incapable of saying no to such companies

I'm not saying this has been the main factor but I have my suspicions to believe it might be related

I would have to agree. Dumb shit like "brand loyalty" probably comes into play as well.

That's because your perspective is quite skewed if you think about it.

To many many people, being at a level where issues such as "dark patterns in muh apps" is a big thing that might annoy them in their life would be absolute heaven. That means all their big issues are long solved and they got the mental and physical capability spare to worry about such, comparatively menial, issues.

If your health is struggling, whether to accept cookies or not (at least digital ones) is really the least of your worries. Especially given that the vast vast majority wouldn't know what it means either way, or even why it is a thing that anybody would ever care about. It's like how you don't care, until reading this sentence now, which parts of the print of a grocery product packaging inks are biodegradable and which are not and hence whether you should throw that empty cardboard box on your compost heap or actually shouldn't do that.

should not be tolerated.

Neither should posting YT videos that should've been articles

A paragraph's worth of information stretched into ten minutes? I've got way better things to do with my time

Edit - twenty four minutes, fuckin hell

Synopsis by Gemini -

This video by Mrwhosetheboss argues that big tech companies are prioritizing profits over users. The video uses the term "in ification" to describe a three-stage pattern that many tech companies follow. In the first stage, the company offers a superior service at a lower price to gain users. Once they have a large user base, the company focuses on increasing profits from those users by employing tactics like tiering and subscriptions. Finally, the company may reduce the quality of the service while still charging more.

The video uses Uber as an example. Initially, Uber was significantly cheaper and more convenient than taxis. Uber was able to attract a large user base by offering low prices and a better user experience. Once Uber had a dominant market share, they introduced surge pricing and began to take a larger cut of each fare.

The video also criticizes the proliferation of subscription services. The video argues that many companies are offering subscription services for features that were previously free or included in a lower-priced subscription. The video says that this can be a bad deal for consumers, especially when they have to subscribe to multiple services to access all the content they want.

Overall, the video argues that big tech companies are becoming less user-friendly and more focused on extracting money from their users. The video concludes with a call to action, urging viewers to be more critical of subscription services and to cancel them when they are not being used.

Thanks Gemini, I hope they take a while before enshittefying you...

It's already shit. They got rid of the ability to generate images with people in them over a month ago and still haven't brought it back.

I wouldn't be surprised if they insert advertising into it within the next year

Exploitative patterns like those idiotic youtube thumbnails the creators are using to draw extra attention to emotions not actually present in the video?

Or making half hour videos for all of 14 sentences of actual content, to stretch the ad-income as much as they can.

Yeah, that. Wish I could give a video -1 view instead of +1 after clicking onto it. Fuck youtubers such as this one, they're part of the problem and don't get to have a say in what we should or should not try to care about.

100% agree. I've found mrwhostheboss channel to be the worst when it comes to clickbait.

If it isn't a text file which I can read in 1/10th of the time it would take me to watch a stupid video (if not less), I'm just not bothering.

Plus it's always a video, but never actually uses the medium. It's just shots of the host talking to the camera. Very very rarely showing clips or screenshots that could even better be embedded in an article.

Can you do a lot with a video, if done well and for the right subject? Of course, and for those it'd absolutely be the correct choice. But people like the guy linked in the OP are neither capable of nor interested in doing that, as it's just a business to them. It increases income, so long youtube videos it is. That's one big takeaway anyways: Content creators talk about this shit not because they care, but because it gives them money. It's a business, not a passion.

Making a proper video takes a lot of time. Just recording yourself reading a text while taking cool poses, not so much.

Install Blocktube or another extension that stops videos from starting when you open the link, and read the transcript. It used to be at the top, just under the video itself, but now they've moved it to the bottom of the video description so you have to go through all the affiliate links just to get to the fucking transcript button.

But once you've found it, transcriptions are your best friend: skim it to see if there's any real reason to watch (usually not) and enjoy that portion of your life that you just saved for things that YOU want and not what Google and that content creator want. The transcript will also tell you what portion of the video you need to watch, if actually watching it suits your needs.

I also regularly speed up videos; 1.25 is great under most circumstances, 1.5 if they're really trying to draaaag shit out. You can always slow it down again, but it's great for getting through the fluff if you need to hear it all (like repair videos for something you've never done yourself).

The "best" you could do in this case is use ad blockers, don't use an account and never interact. Even a negative interaction counts. It's all "engagement," even if negative.

I installed a Channel Blocker and got into the practice of opening unknown videos in Private Windows. For some fucking reason, YT seems to think I want to hear about people complaining about being suppressed by the algorithm. I would leave nasty comments for those videos if not for the fact that, like you said, any interaction counts as "engagement".

Youtube face.

People feel the need to monetize everything in their lives just to survive (not thrive). Consider directing your anger towards those who have purchased our government from us. Rather then being mad at the digital equivalent of a dude on a highway offramp holding a cardboard sign and begging for living expenses.

Who the fuck would rather repeatedly pause and in pause a fucking video, skim past bullshit, skip ads, or hell even USE YouTube over a block of text somewhere that c9ntains the info you were looking for.

People watch this dog.shit. is it because its.the only.place you can find info anymore? Or do people actually LIKE this format?

seriously. "I want to learn about resistors!" doesn't send me to a nice pretty static graphic I can reference, or a text explanation of the meaning, its some shit head (honestly probabpy a pretyy cool if somewhat anodyne engineering nerd) talking for 20 minutes with an seo title and like 2/10 of the pieces of information I needed in a totally unsearchable format.

and that last bit might be the important part; its not manually user searchable. this matters, and I think its what the companies want, why they love video. it gives them more control.

Windows 11 is rife with it

Why do I have to tell my computer several time per week that I do not wish to let the X box app make changes to my computer?? I've never had anything to do with an X box. Oh, now you're going to make my computer unusably slow unless I update and.. what's that.. ? I can't fucking update unless I ALLOW X BOX APP TO MAKE CHANGES TO MY COMPUTER??? Fuck you windows 11.

Sounds like it’s not your computer.

To be clear, I do believe it is your computer, but it sure sounds like it isn’t.

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Freaking Ironic using a VPN as a sponsorship for this video... VPN landscape is literary riddled with Dark Patterns. Surfshark are also guilty of applying these.

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I had one subscription where cancellation was not only buried in a bunker somewhere in the deepest pits of their website, but once you found the magical incantation to get through it the next step was to send them an email requesting a cancellation.

You can't cancel T-Mobile on their site, they require you to call. Even then I got no email verification nor letter about the cancellation. Cool...

What's the company?

I don't normally care about naming & shaming - like the other person said, they're all like this so the name shouldn't matter - but this one was surprising to be honest. It was Bellesa Plus. The thing is, they're like a progressive porn site, very much branded as one of those feminist porn sites that respects the autonomy of the performers and so on. They just don't seem to care very much about the consent of their customers.

one time i had to call a company during regular 9-5 business hours to cancel a subscription after starting a free trial.

that experience was so horrible ive since sworn off free trials altogether. nowadays, if i need a free trial to use an app or website for a couple days, then i will simply not use that app or website.

Skipping a month of Humble Choice is an exercise in gotchas. Sometimes the blue button, sometimes not, about 5 confirmation screens to skip through.

I don't know why I'm still subbed in all honestly.

It took me a long time to cancel but I finally did because I'd been skipping for every month over the course of maybe two years. I had found out that the classic plan doesn't even have an advantage anymore, so there was no point in me maintaining that.

I should do the same, tbh.

Most of the higher profile games either get given away on Epic a few months later, or are already included in PSPlus.

Barely have time to play them anyway.

Same here.

Luckily the payment method I had used has expired so every month they remind me to skip the month if I missed doing it. They call it something different but I know what they really mean ʘ‿ʘ

Sounds like you're just terrible at gotchas

We don't need a shitty youtuber to tell us what we've known for years?

It’s actually a really well made and comprehensive video that will undoubtedly be a wake up call to lots of people.

Are you complaining because the video was posted here or because it was made in the first place? Maybe this community doesn't need it, but there are a lot of people out there with not much awareness of what's happening in this realm.

It's for the majority of people that didn't woke up yet

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Free money has dried up, so competition is drying up a bit too. And without free money, the big guys are feeling some squeeze and now want to extract the rent they always planned to eventually extract.

Can we name, shame and review bomb companies that do this?

What companies don’t do this?

The gas companies. Don't want to buy gas anymore? Don't go to the gas station. No contract needed.

I mean, gas is the original surge pricing commodity, they have had dark patterns in their pricing long before other companies.

Considering the main oil companies LITERALLY engage in price fixing, openly.

Yes. This is pretty fucking apparent but again, cant do shit about it because corps have paid off our politicians and we can do fuck all about it because we have no way to properly revolt lest we all risk bankruptcy and lose everything.

The EU doesn't let big corps bully their citizen with monopolies, maybe you could try to implement some of their policies at home

Everyone complains about the cookie popups, but let's be honest, this is already a huge improvement.

To expand a little:

While it indeed is annoying, it did mostly go as expected, as in, law makers must always be ready for companies responding to new and more restrictive laws with malicious compliance.

The vast majority of websites don't actually follow the rules for cookie banners or implement them in as roundabout a way as possible, making them needlessly annoying as it should always be easier and at least as fast to decline than to accept.

While this all sounds like cookie banners ultimately are a failure because of the misimplementations that companies provided in response, it does function as an eye opener for the common man and stepping stone for the EU for further laws and fines in regard to citizens' rights to privacy.

Have you considered starting a electoral reform campaign in your state? We can change how we vote one state at a time so we don't need federal reform. Look up a video on First Past the Post voting for more information on the spoiler effect and how it makes two political parties a mathematical inevitability.

Has anyone here noticed how it's almost impossible to watch a TikTok on mobile if you don't have an account or the app? My friend sends me links and I click it but the website opens playing it muted and it only plays the TikTok one time, no repeating. Then it prompts me to install the app. If I say I don't want to the unmute button disappears and I'm unable to play the TikTok again with sound. The only way to do it is to refresh which just prompts me to download the app again after being played the TikTok one time with no sound. Aggravating as all hell.

Most of my friends know better than to send me TikTok links. But for the few who still do, I use this open source frontend called ProxiTok.

To get TikTok links to redirect automatically on click, use the LibRedirect extension.

How long until that sort of thing goes the way of Bibliogram/Barinsta?

Only time will tell.

I know this one also went down recently for Instagram: proxigram.privacyfrontends.repl.co

But I'm not sure if it was an Instagram change that did it, or Replit took it down or what.

This all seems a little advanced for me. Is there a way to do this on phones?

Don't worry, it's not complicated at all. A little inconvenient maybe, but that's always the trade-off when it comes to privacy and security.

Here are the two most convenient ways that I can think of on each OS.

iOS: Bookmark the frontend URL. When you get sent a link, pop open the page and paste the TikTok URL.

Android: Get Firefox and set it as your default browser. Install the LibRedirect add-on (browser extension). Whenever you get sent a URL, just tap it and it'll automatically get redirected to the privacy-friendly frontend.

I've been searching for a solution to this exact problem. My partner sends links occasionally and I always ignore because of how the web interface is blatantly hostile. Tried routing the links through MPV on android but no dice.

If anyone has a solution please share.

Not if you just ignore the link

I hate tik tok but I also have actual friends and I am not gonna be a dick to them about what link they sent me

Speaking of dark patterns, anyone use TurboTax lately?

I was pushed upselling offers no fewer than ten times over the two evenings I spent in their service prepping my taxes last week. It was infuriating. I'm going to try the IRS's pilot program next year assuming it's still available for the 2024 tax season.

I've used freetaxusa the last couple of years. If the IRS one isn't available, then I'd recommend them.

Same. It’s simple and straightforward and I think it only asked me if I wanted to pay for their extra service 1 time. I’m not sure if it’s income based but it didn’t cost us anything to do a federal return.

if you didn't steal it, you dont own it. fuck these companies.

until more people take that attitude; problem only gets worse.

You should know: if you haven’t noticed dark patterns becoming more prominent, it’s time to get your eyes checked.

Noticed it years ago. Different colours for buttons. Harder to read. All that garbage.

Jio Telecom here provides WiFi in my area which we can use to place call through our phones without data pack, but man the permissions that app asks are illogical.

To be fair proper integration of an aftermarket VoIP app requires almost every permission a phone has, especially if the app wants to mirror your caller ID, and supports SMS and attaching various media.

Corporations were allowed to incorporate in the public's best interest. If they are no longer operating as such they should be dissolved.

This should be the top comment. Corporations should not be allowed to play the game of 'let's see how long we can get away with this'.

The guy use to take 120 mile UBERs, between cities. Of course it will be very expensive.

What does the fact that it was expensive original have to do with it? He used to pay 120 and now it’s over 350. Those are two entirely different levels of expensive.

This is actually good. There’s finally more room for good services offered by smaller companies that care about users.

This would require the possibility of competition, which is generally forbidden widely due to lobbying, the consequential weakening of antitrust laws, and the follow-on massive consolidation on a scale that history has never seen before.

Maybe in theory but not in 2024. You’re only allowed to compete until you moon a giant, then you’re screwed.

this reminds me of what happened to the instagram cofounders when zuckerberg asked to buy their company:

Systrom [cofounder] said he feared turning down an acquisition offer from Facebook would send Zuckerberg into "destroy mode" — a concern that Cohler [early investor] affirmed.

(source)

this stuff came up in a court hearing, and then nothing happened about it

They have nothing to fear, no need to compete. They simply dominate and extract rent.

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I moved to a smaller company for certain services. Now that small company gets bought up by a big company and the services are discontinued. Back to big tech it is.

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