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Dark Patterns by the Boston Globe
- greendude29 11y agoWhile this is a shitty practice (and to be honest, I don't really expect better from most publishing companies), it does tell you on the second page that the price of 99 cents per week is for 4 weeks only. I do think it's pretty normal for the consumer to say "okay well, if that's the price for 4 weeks only, what happens after that?". The fact that that is not made clear immediately is shady, but I'm not sure it's a true deception.
- elsurudo 11y agoAnd then, after a year, the price goes up again!
- surrealvortex 11y agoThat's just sad. I guess I can understand the motivation, though that doesn't justify anything. It's becoming very difficult to monetize online newspapers, and they are forced to resort to such unethical practices to make ends meet. Newspapers really have missed a trick or two in the transition to the internet.
- sneak 11y agoThey are not forced. It is a choice.
- valvar 11y agoI, for one, won't be mourning their disappearance from the face of this planet. It's long overdue in my opinion.
- _Understated_ 11y agoIn the main, I agree: They got caught napping and didn't keep up so that's their own fault. That being said up until a few months ago, I didnt't read papers or watch the news on TV since it's all stage-managed nonsense but I decided to take out a FT weekend subscription after buying one on a whim one day. I must say it was very enjoyable reading a newspaper with quality stories and no fluff or click-bait titles and so on. I don't consider tabloids to be anything other than literary fast-food for the masses but I am thoroughly enjoying reading my FT on a Saturday and Sunday morning with a cup of tea. Oh, it's only about £10 a month too.
- trollingineeer 11y ago100% shit-post. Move along, hackers. There's better shit-posts to read on this site.
- malchow 11y agoTl;dr: The Boston Globe website tries to get people to subscribe. Also, the locution "dark patterns" in the headline is a weird term that is, frankly, more deceptive than anything the writer purports to reveal the Globe does.
- thaumasiotes 11y agoWell, like it or not, "dark pattern" is the standard term for this sort of thing. Some of the examples being called out are defensible; some aren't: > Before you can read the article, there is a pop-up ad asking you to subscribe. By itself, this is annoying, but not deceptive. The real dark pattern is hidden at the top – the ‘Close’ button (circled in red) uses a very low contrast font, making it hard to see. It’s also in the left corner, not the standard right corner. This makes it likely that users won’t see it, causing them to subscribe when they didn’t have to. > A Boston Globe reader can subscribe online. If they have a question, they can ask over email, or through a convenient live chat service. But if they want to stop paying, they have to call and ask on the phone
- mercer 11y agohonestly I think 'dark pattern' is too mild a way to put it and 'deception' is more accurate. If the whole point of this 'pattern' is to get someone to do something they don't actually want to do, how is that not deception?
- pluma 11y agoExcept "dark patterns" are a thing and what the Globe does is exactly that: http://darkpatterns.org/ http://darkpatterns.org/
- aok1425 11y agoWSJ only allows cancellation by phone as well
- progers7 11y agoThe New York Times also does this and it feels dirty. https://myaccount.nytimes.com/mem/cancel.html?id=10434447 https://myaccount.nytimes.com/mem/cancel.html?id=10434447 We're sorry to see you go. To cancel your subscription quickly and easily, please call Customer Care at 877-698-5635 Hours of Operation: Monday — Friday: 7:30 a.m. ET through 9:00 p.m. ET Saturday and Sunday: 7:30 a.m. ET through 5:00 p.m. ET
- sjs382 11y agoNot only does it feel dirty, sometimes it is dirty. I've posted my experience on HN before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10334291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10334291), but here it is again: I had a terrible experience with a NYT digital-only subscription, and I'll likely never subscribe again. I had a subscription for a while that I hadn't been using. I only used their site when linked to it from another (like HN). I tried to cancel online, but there's no way to—you need to cancel over the phone. So, I did, sitting on hold for close to a half hour. Bad experience, but I wish it had ended there. Fast-forward two months, and I started getting emails that my subscription was past-due. Then I come to realize that they had continued to bill me every 2 weeks, but the payments had just started failing because my card expired. I emailed CS, mentioning that I had cancelled my subscription and I was being billed by mistake, and to make sure my account got cancelled this time. They "couldn't do anything about it" because my account was in their "grace period", and that I would continue to get the past due emails until the grace period ended. I ended up filing chargebacks for each charge after I had originally cancelled. To my knowledge, they never replied to or contested the chargebacks (does the customer usually get this info, if they do? it's the first and only chargeback I'd ever filed).
- karmelapple 11y agoAudible, although I'm unsure about cancellation, only allows setting your account to "suspended" by phone. I do this because I'm unable to keep up with one audiobook per month, but still really enjoy their service. Also, Rackspace email (paid hosting by email address) requires you to contact customer service to delete email accounts you are not using. Not quite making a phone, but still requires going through a "wait and communicate with a human being" ten-minute process rather than a simple click to delete an account.
- on_ 11y agoI think the descriptor is fairly accurate these are Dark, but not really outright dishonest. They do a lot to funnel you in, which I think is understandable but it was tougher to get past the huge red price that did say billed today, but not what the increased price would be. That and the cancellation. When I was in my first year Econ 101 class I remember the professor telling a story which IIRC was about SF Bus Companies. We were talking about price elasticity and general market pricing mechanisms and doing price curves. The story was essentially that the bus company brought in consultants who evaluated why the company was losing money after it had raised rates. It was a no-brainer of course, that if you sell 5,000 rides a day (made up number) that if you raised prices from 1.00 to 1.10 you would make 10% more. It turned out, that the company was doing rather poorly after raising rates but critically, they were even priced too high at 1.00. 20,000 people would ride the bus for $0.75 and have less impact on the marginal price as the busses were heavily underused. The point is that it is possible, I would say likely but I have no data, that a subscription for the Boston Globe might attract 5,000 people at current price(made up number), but like above if they charged $0.99 a month, they could feasibly have 20000-200,000 customers in a biz with virtually 0 marginal cost, and profit tied directly to subscriber size(ads which I assume they show to even paying subscribers after reading the article). Newspapers are super elastic, and that price curve probably falls steeply after $1.00 a month.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- surrealvortex 11y agoNot entirely sure, but don't credit card companies charge a considerable minimum fee per transaction? I'm guessing the fee kicks in for each month. That'd be a significant marginal cost. Although a large organization like the Globe will be able to negotiate better rates.
- on_ 11y agoDefinitely true. I would suspect slightly less people would see it this way, but feasibly $12.00 a year would be solid, you could have access for a full-year and not think about it and at Stripes prices it would net 11.35
- mindslight 11y agoWhenever I get web overlay spam trying to get me to sign up for even more spam, I run whois and enter their domain contact address.
- elsurudo 11y agoWhat do you mean you "enter their domain contact address"?
- mirimir 11y agoNice, but doesn't work if they require confirmation. Me, I use Chaos Computer Club's https://anonbox.net/ https://anonbox.net/ :) Accounts are created on the fly, and last just 24hr.
- kornish 11y agoAnonbox's SSL cert isn't working in Google Chrome for me, so I'll plug a similar service that I use and like: http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html http://10minutemail.com/10MinuteMail/index.html No affiliation, just enjoy the utility.
- mirimir 11y agoThanks, it's always good to have alternatives :) CCC is using a self-signed cert, and I haven't vetted it. But then, I'm not using it for anything that requires security. It just allows me to get a confirmation link.
- marze 11y agoWow, how many people want to pay $350/year for the Boston Globe? YOu can get an cell phone data plan for that much that gives you the entire internet. I can see why they are focusing on finding subscribers who think they are only paying a fraction of that.
- marstall 11y agoroughly 60,000 people who want to know what's going on around them in terms of local government, arts, sports, ordinary people, etc. The Globe is about 50 times better at these things than any other source.
- DeusExMachina 11y agoThe people that were paying that money to buy the paper version of the newspaper, for example. There are people that might find enough value in the journalism of the Boston Globe to want to spend that kind of money on it, compared to the "entire internet" that can be, broadly, not the most reliable source of information (wether the Boston Globe is a good newspaper I have no idea, but it might be for some people). That is a completely different discussion than looking at the deceptive tactics they use to make people that don't want to pay that amount to actually subscribe.
- ghc 11y agoI do, happily. I subscribe to the Economist too. In the scheme of things $350/year isn't much when you can spend that much in a weekend on gardening supplies. But the globe has also never charged my that much. They've been charging me roughly $200/year for the last 3 years for a digital subscription.
- tjsnyder 11y agoI absolutely hate the dark pattern of fully controlling your subscription online, including changing it to a different service, but canceling requires a phone call during very specific business hours where you are very likely to forget. It's disgusting and way too many companies are utilizing these tactics rather than building a solid business model. More companies that are doing this should be called out. Ive seen naturebox, justfab and others just to name a few.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoIt should be, I think, a reasonable demand of reputable business that any subscription must be able to be cancelled via the same medium as it is signed up for.
- vanviegen 11y agoMany European countries have a law that makes this a requirement. I haven't encountered this pattern for quite some years (in The Netherlands).
- wildpeaks 11y agoeFax in Europe also does that.
- brandnewlow 11y agoLook ye, to http://Truebill.com http://Truebill.com for relief! (disclaimer, I am an investor)
- parennoob 11y agoI wish expiring credit card numbers existed to kill this sort of online quasi-scam (let's call it what it is). I'd like to say, "$0.99 a week for 4 weeks? Cool, here's a temporary number that expires in exactly one month. Please cut my subscription off after then." Of course, I suspect that the benefit of the entrenched system in the US for everyone but consumers will guarantee that this will be really difficult to accomplish in reality.
- nathancahill 11y agoCC companies would never go for that. But an independant like Apple might be able to with their temporary CC number system that they have already.
- TheLogothete 11y agoUuuh, this exists at A LOT of banks.
- kalleboo 11y ago> I wish expiring credit card numbers existed Many banks actually offer exactly this feature. You set a dollar limit and an expiry date. E.g. Bank of America ShopSafe: https://www.bankofamerica.com/privacy/accounts-cards/shopsafe.go https://www.bankofamerica.com/privacy/accounts-cards/shopsaf... My Swedish bank offers the same thing and even has an app to generate card #s
- GordonS 11y ago> My Swedish bank offers the same thing and even has an app to generate card That's a really great idea that I've never seen before - would love to see more banks have this feature
- zapt02 11y agoWhich Swedish bank is that? My bank used to offer expiring VISA cards but removem them claiming 3D Secure offers the same protection. (Obviously it does not...)
- LordHumungous 11y agoWe do this all the time. If you are paying us then enjoy your clean, nice experience. If you aren't paying us then fuck you.
- blowski 11y agoTrue, though by leaving a bad last impression I'm less likely to restart my subscription later and less likely to recommend your service to others. I guess if you work out the relative values, you can still decide this way is the most profitable for your business and that's fine. A good example from my own experience was freelancer.com. Their account closing procedure was so bad that now I won't open another one.
- alphapapa 11y ago> If you aren't paying us then fuck you. Every customer starts out not paying you. What a great way to attract new customers....
- pluma 11y agoBut if I do pay you, I expect to be honestly told up front how much you will be charging me. That's the one thing that makes the Boston Globe's behaviour unforgivable: they're not just tricking you into thinking the subscription cost is less than 1/4th of what they actually charge you -- they're ramping the price up twice and not telling you about the second jump anywhere throughout the subscription process.
- kempe 11y agoMaybe there is an addon or addition to adblocker that simply can stop us from reaching these sites? Would be nice with a global list of dark pattern sites and simply be warned about them.
- jobigoud 11y agoWOT (Web of Trust) would be a good candidate for this. It's crowdsourced rep for websites. Boston Globe is all green though. https://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/www.bostonglobe.com https://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/www.bostonglobe.com
- bartkappenburg 11y agoWe can fix the cancellation problem by forcing that a signup and cancellation must be symmetric by nature (ie. signing up online means that cancellation should also be possible online).
- chris_wot 11y agoUnsubscribing by phone is a dreadful practice.
- Nagyman 11y agoZipCar requires a phone call too. Despite being a subscription service, if your credit card expires, they will send it to debt collections until you call to officially cancel. Shady.
- mrleiter 11y agoThank you Austria (and Europe) for the tight Consumer Protection Act - makes all this illegal.
- GIFtheory 11y agoIntentional or not, I'm really annoyed by a similar thing in the NYT iPad app: the ads are exactly where you naturally put your fingers to scroll. Coincidence?
- mgalka 11y agoWould never have expected that from the Boston Globe. Can't imagine how the step up in year two is even legal.
- emmelaich 11y agoThe web consultants and senior (non-journalist) execs will make money. The Boston Globe itself will lose respectability. They're getting shafted too but don't realise it.
- TheLogothete 11y agoAh, the good folks at meclabs and their CEO, doctor Flint, phd, who lies that he has a phd.
- davnn 11y agoWhen I last had to book a rental car and they did not show me the final price on the order now page I cancelled and choose a different company. Completely unacceptable.
- fblp 11y agoThis kind of misleading pattern is illegal in Australia and from reading other comments, probably the Europe. In Australia the full price for a product has to be displayed equally or more prominently than any other price. So that $6.93 has to be just as visible other pricing claims (like $0.99 for 4 weeks). The same law also requires companies to include tax prominently in their pricing. More generally, a business cannot engage in misleading or deceptive conduct. The rationale behind this is it makes things fair for consumers, and helps businesses compete fairly. These laws probably don't exist in places like the US as businesses complain about compliance costs, and the governments have other priorities.
- jamescun 11y agoIn the UK at least, the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations of 2008 imply that it is an illegal sales technique. There has been some success in courts prosecuting this to a degree that most subscription services will also display the full price, less they become the example case.
- pluma 11y agoIn Germany the "fine print" price has to be clearly visible, too.
- runholm 11y agoI suspect there are EU rules on the top of the chain forcing all member countries to enforce such laws.
- Silhouette 11y agoThere are. In fact, they were strengthened significantly quite recently, particularly in the area of online sales, and now with potentially quite serious penalties for any business that doesn't comply. If you're interested, the main underlying EU rules are in Directive 2011/83/EU.
- 11y ago
- blizkreeg 11y agoI'm no fan of this sort of trickery. However, while I was watching the documentary 'Spotlight', which was The Globe's 2002 expose on the Roman Catholic church, it occurred to me - How are good newspapers to survive and turn a profit? Readers are unwilling to pay/subscribe and online ad revenue is falling. It's a genuine problem and I sure hope some of these newspapers survive and are still around a decade from now. The WSJ, NYT, and WaPos will, but what about some of the the others?
- mgo 11y agoThey need to find a business model that isn't based around outright deception to survive. I have zero sympathy for them.
- Cthulhu_ 11y agoThe problem with newspapers is that if they paywall all of their articles, they won't get any viewers because nobody knows what kind of articles they write without subscribing. A lot of them have an 'X free articles per month' thing, but since I'm on three different machines, I've never hit that limit unless it was like one or two a month.
- alphapapa 11y agoTwo solutions: 1. Make certain articles freely available. They're not stupid--they can figure out which ones will draw people in. 2. Do it LWN-style: the current week's edition requires a subscription, after that it's free. If it's well-written, people will pay to not be a week behind.
- Kesty 11y agoAs much as I understand the need for a subscription this practice should be illegal. And in some countries they actually are. There are laws in some European countries where you always have to disclose the full price and in case of reductions and offers you have to clearly show the original price.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
- chinathrow 11y ago"But if they want to stop paying, they have to call and ask on the phone, no doubt after a long hold time and mandatory sales pitches." That should be illegal - accept the same channel for sales also for cancellations.
- Roonerelli 11y agoI noticed one of these on the UK National Lottery site recently. It asks you how many weeks you want to play for and defaults the choice to "continuously via direct debit"
- anexprogrammer 11y agoDirect debits are remarkably easy to cancel though. No need to find the place you subscribe to, just call your bank, done. Bank required to refund in the event of an incorrect charge, with no time limit. Much, much safer for recurring payments than continuous charge authorisation on a credit card where you have to contact the charger to cancel (or wait for your card to expire).
- dredmorbius 11y agoReader Mode in browsers is increasingly useful for this kind of crap. I'll add that the flipside is that publushers need revenues. I'm aware micropayments are making another go of it (David Brin is publishing an article shortly which I reviewed in draft). My thought is that that's actually the weong way to go and that what we need is superbundling, including possibly at the government level (an income-indexed content tax). Some asskicking in browser and web space to too shake out the cruft.
- Cthulhu_ 11y agoMore and more websites block those though. I'm using some HN app on iphone a lot, and for articles from the New York Times and such, all you get is a summary and a 'read more' link, which gives you a page covered halfway with the (obligatory EU) cookie thing (every time) and with a 'subscribe now' banner.
- dredmorbius 11y agoFirefox/Android with Self-Destructing Cookies -- not a problem. I may have to manually add "about:reader?url=" to the head of the navigation line. I'm taking to doing that by default. A small number of sites revert to the default page, but few. NY Times isn't among them.
- Overtonwindow 11y agoThis is a new concept for me, thank you, I've learned something. Most media companies are going the way of shady advertisers, using BuzzFeed/deceptive tactics. It's something that has really harmed the browsing experience, and continues to give rise to ad blockers.
- boomlinde 11y agoWhy is this called "dark patterns"? It seems that it can be more accurately described by calling it deliberately misleading or deceptive design. Clicking the link I had no idea what it meant. Terminology like this makes sense when the concept can't already be described using two words. As for the content of the article, it has always seemed anti-user to me for a website to prompt for a subscription 30 seconds into browsing a page. I wonder if anyone has actually investigated the effect it has on traffic properly, because I always go back whenever I get prompted to subscribe. If someone had told me in 2005 that in the future, intrusive popups would work its way back into the domains of acceptable design to the point where people will gladly have them on their personal blogs I would have laughed in disbelief. Together with "You have an outdated browser" ("Please view this in Netscape 4.0"), "Rotate your device" ("Best viewed in 800x600") this is all a terrible setback in acceptable practices. Add to that some more recent design patterns like a "share on <social media>" button taking up 1/5 of the screen estate following you through the page only for the benefit of the publisher and the handful of users that also actively use twitter, weird overloading of scrolling behavior, "Continue reading" buttons... It's an awful mess and especially for websites that ideally would just present plain written text with some pictures it seems like designers are over-engineering their solutions for goals that in no way aligned with those of the users.
- madeofpalk 11y agoI agree. A dark pattern might be making the close button harder to see, but the pricing shenanigans are just downright deceptive and actually illegal in some parts of the world.
- forgottenpass 11y agoI disagree with cleanly splitting it into two categories, they're different points on the same scale. Acting as if there is a difference in kind gives implicit approval to the behavior that is lower on the scale, and solidifies a dividing line that should be continuously getting pushed downward to move more and more types of deception onto the unacceptable side.
- jccalhoun 11y ago
- brokentone 11y agoAs the engineer being forced to implement patterns like this that I felt were shady, I can almost promise you that some "growth hacker" or "subscriber acquisition consultant" or "optimization consultant" comes in with case study stats or runs an A/B tool to see various effects. They're likely able to show several percent increase for each of these dark patterns, then management has real dollars to have to turn down. Then I complain that we're violating trust which can't be easily or immediately quantified, and the response is "eh, I see the button, a user will find it if they want it." After raising the flag too many times without being heard, I finally quit. But is there a more scalable way to protest / stop this? What about a browser extension that warns when you try to sign up for a service that you can only cancel by phone?
- sdrinf 11y agoAsk the consultant to perform (or at least implement) LTV measurement across 3/6-months stage. Price sensitive bank-account-checking users will act as a canary, and at least in the Boston Globe case, I suspect tactics like these to increase churn by at least as much as they increase conversion (implying the business will only see benefit for the next N month after consultant). As for trust, the US case is simple: report it to BBB.
- jessriedel 11y agoThe BBB is a scam. It's a cartel / protection racket that collects rents from their historic reputation. Complaints to the BBB do nothing because BBB ratings are based a businesses engagement with the BBB, not consumer satisfaction! > Another of these little-known facts about the BBB: “We are not a consumer watchdog.” While the BBB offers consumers many services—lists of popular scams to watch out for and such—the organization’s mission isn’t to have your back. From top to bottom, the BBB is funded by the annual dues paid by businesses it anoints with “accreditation,” which allows the companies to put those iconic BBB stamps of approval on their storefronts and websites. This fact raises obvious questions about an inherent conflict of interest: The organization’s customers are businesses, not taxpayers or consumers. How can the BBB serve as an honest broker between businesses and consumers when it is fully funded by one of these parties? Many argue that it cannot — that there’s a natural incentive to paint its paying clients in the best possible light. > Whether or not a business is accredited, it can be graded by the BBB. The grading system, ranging from A+ to F, is confusing at best, useless at worst. Business grades are determined by 16 factors, including how many complaints have been filed with the BBB against the business, and if and how the business responded. Notably, however, a business’s grade won’t necessarily be hurt if nothing much comes of a complaint and the customer is left unsatisfied. Rather, all that matters, grading-wise, is that the business responded and made a “good faith effort to resolve complaints,” according to the BBB. This means that a business could have a good grade even if it is the subject of lots of complaints, as long as the business dutifully responds — even in a pro forma way. > On the flip side, a business that is committed to handling complaints directly with customers in a substantive way, but does so outside the purview of the BBB, will get a poor grade because the BBB is not involved. So a company can have a B or C rating, or even an F, simply because it doesn’t play by the BBB’s rules, which include looping in the organization with complaint responses and providing the BBB with background information about the company. http://business.time.com/2013/03/19/why-the-better-business-bureau-should-give-itself-a-bad-grade/ http://business.time.com/2013/03/19/why-the-better-business-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Business_Bureau#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Business_Bureau#Critici...
- baccredited 11y agoThe reason I switched from DirecTV to Dish is that programming upgrades on DirecTV can easily be done using the website, but if you want to DOWNGRADE you have to call them. Dish has its own faults but doesn't do that nonsense.
- AdamN 11y agoFor companies like this, do a chargeback through the credit card company. It will cost them with higher transaction fees over time.
- hashkb 11y agoWSJ does this too. Don't ask why I was a subscriber, but to cancel you have to call.
- Sk1pp 11y agoit feels like we eventually got rid of pop-ups in the late 90s, and now they just moved the pop-ups to in-page rather than creating a new window.
- k2enemy 11y agoIn the United States, practices like this fall under the Federal Trade Commission's authority. They offer guidance here: https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/plain-language/bus41-dot-com-disclosures-information-about-online-advertising.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/plain-language/bu... It looks like some of the Globe's practices are toeing the line. They probably have a bunch of lawyers making sure they aren't crossing the line and are obeying the letter of the law but not the spirit.
- avs733 11y agoThe immediate thought I had reading this was...if they canned the lawyers would that end up being a larger cost savings then the revenue gained from toeing the line?
- tlogan 11y agoIn the brave new world, it nearly impossible to sell any kind of digital good or services online to consumers (i.e., papers, email accounts, cloud storage, etc.). The only two things are selling relatively well online: - non-mobile games - subscription to porn site (friend of mine runs network and he claims that it is a gold mine) People do not want to pay for online service. People do not want to see ads. I'm not sure how this is sustainable. We already see that cloud storage providers stop offering ridiculous amount of storage for free.
- krisdol 11y agoCan someone explain clearly to me how an old publication like The New Yorker continues to succeed in both print and online form without resorting to these patterns, while an old publication like the Boston Globe may be resorting to these patterns because they're failing to achieve high success? Is it just because The New Yorker has been very careful not to water down their brand? Has it always just had innately more national reach? The Boston Globe publishes some really good long-form investigative journalism from time to time. Not always, but there are regularly some really good pieces coming out of it.
- acomjean 11y agoThe Boston Globe used to be at Boston.com. They still own both now, but they have different content. I guess bostonglobe is their more serious publication, while boston.com is lighter. The strategy differentiating the two was confusing and I think it really hurt the paper. They also weren't doing a lot of local stuff until recently. They had a decent local event listing calendar when the web was newer, but it fell by the wayside and I never went back. Even with the "Boston Pheonix's" closure I didn't go back. I'm a local radio news listener, and Globe journalists are on the radio talking about the articles they write. So they are getting the word out there. They seem to be trying to get back into the local game.
- superuser2 11y agoNew York Times would be a better comparison. It's relevant and widely read all around the country. A city paper like the Boston Globe has stories of national interest occasionally, but its addressable market is mostly the city it reports on.
- stordoff 11y ago> It isn’t visible, but this page is yet another dark pattern, because even right before the purchase it never shows the real price I don't agree with these practices, but the real price does appear to be on that page. At the right hand side (where I suspect many people would overlook it...), it says: > At the end of your introductory period, continue on the weekly rate of $3.99 for your first year.
- zwass 11y agoYou didn't continue reading to the point where they found the real price (after the first year): $6.93.
- strictnein 11y agoThat signup for looks like the Star Tribune's (the main paper in Minnesota). Similar pricing and everything. Saw the Star Tribune doing some fun pricing stuff a month or so ago. Just try and compare these prices: https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/943809_10154050270527700_1369581928546511673_n.jpg https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/943809_10154050270527... - Digital: First Month free, then $14.99 a month - Sunday+Digital: $13.90 for 10 weeks, then $4.54 per week, billed at $59.02 every 13 weeks - 7 Day+Digital: $39 for 13 weeks, then $7.05 per week, billed at $35.25 every 5 weeks
- Ontheflyflyfly 11y ago"In the short term, these dishonest tricks raise revenue for newspapers that use them. But in the longer term, they do even more damage, by giving the whole industry a reputation for bad business practices. Cable companies can get away with it because of government-granted monopolies; newspapers won’t be able to."
- marstall 11y agoformer globe employee here. i think "dark patterns" is a little strong. most of what the globe's doing here is just standard on-boarding marketing stuff IMHO. not stating on the article page itself that the 99c price is temporary hardly seems like a major sin when that fact is clearly communicated on the landing page. Looking carefully through all the things the blogger is claiming, I think the strongest point he makes is that the globe doesn't make it clear that the "real" price doubles after 1 year. I am already a subscriber so I couldn't make it through the flow to see exactly how it's communicated, but if that's not clear, obviously it should be and that's not a minor point. I emailed the globe's editor, brian mcgrory, who is definitely a no-BS kind of guy, telling him lots of boston people are checking this out this morning (since it's on the HP) and he should respond :)
- albedoa 11y ago> most of what the globe's doing here is just standard on-boarding marketing stuff IMHO. What you are acknowledging, perhaps without realizing it, is that standard on-boarding marketing stuff is deliberately misleading and malicious.
- makecheck 11y agoAh yes, another law with good intentions being exploited by loopholes. Companies that “communicate” with their customers in this way are so very obviously trying to screw you over but hey, they “obeyed” the law and “told you” the real price so it’s all good, right? Also, this crap isn’t limited to web pages. Happens in the mail too. Yet these remain “legal” because every one of them “tells you” exactly what they are: in tiniest print, in the grayest of colors, in the unlikeliest of places and in the most convoluted of words. These laws have to be cleaned up. In the meantime I am perfectly fine with publicly shaming companies that pull these tricks. We need a lot more articles like this one.
- knorker 11y agoThis is the one aspect in which Amazon absolutely sucks. Do you want Prime? No thanks. DO YOU WANT PRIME‽ NO! FUCK YOU DO YOU WANT PRIME‽‽‽‽ FUCK OFF! For EVERY purchase! Humongous button saying "yes", not even a button, just a discrete link that lets me sheepishly say "not right now". NO! I do not want prime! EVER! It's hugely expensive, I have patience with my shipping, and I'm completely disinterested in your streaming service. … and then they change the layout. Now the options are "yes", "yes", and "maybe later". Yes. After being an amazon customer for maybe 15 years I finally accidentally clicked one of the "yes" buttons. The new one. I just clicked "whatever is not the yes button", but they added a second one. To their credit, it was pretty easy to say "don't renew after free trial ends".
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoUltimately it may become a requirement. You have to have a membership for many stores now (Sam's Club, Costco and so on). Amazon is very similar to these; I'm betting they will go Prime-only in a year or two.
- knorker 11y agoI don't think they have enough power to dictate that kind of deal on the Internet. It's too easy for merchants to re-organize around another platform if needed. Amazon wouldn't lose all customers to that service, but they would no longer be the only place that one buys stuff, which is pretty close to what they are now. Going membership-only would simply leave too much money on the table for it to not be picked up by others. Ebay I think would be ready to pick up the slack, if nobody else.
- dsr_ 11y agoAnd I will bet a shiny nickel that shortly after that most of the shipping benefits will go away.
- vlunkr 11y agoIt's obnoxious how much they try to push their customers into Prime. I too have been using Amazon regularly for over a decade, they're already getting my money. I understand this kind of push it's some free-to-play app, but I already pay Amazon every time I order.
- 1_2__3 11y agoIt's funny (in a sad way) that posts like this show up and make it to the top every once in awhile, in between which we always forget that every company does this. It's super-shady and they all do it.
- ck2 11y agoWhat's weird is these techniques must bring them subscriptions, income, etc. since they keep using them and keep making them more aggressive. But who are these idiots who sign up when nagged this way? Are they the same idiots who buy products when spammed? Or is this all the same 0.1% return for effort that spammers also rely on, where it is zero cost for them to spam even if the return rate is tiny.
- youserious 11y agoThere are an awful lot of comments on this expressing disgust and outrage for the "dark patterns" employed by the Boston Globe to increase subscriptions and revenue and my guess is that a hefty portion of the people expressing said disgust and outrage are also using ad blockers. Publishing is in a very uncomfortable place right now - at the bottom of this comment I've attached a 2014 report from Adobe which, TL;DR, says that most people are unwilling to pay for content online and also unwilling to see ads online. This sort of behavior is forcing publishers to squeeze revenue of any stone they can find. I understand that this may not be a popular opinion here, but content doesn't create itself, people do, and people need to make a living. Maybe before we all start admonishing the Boston Globe (founded in 1872, btw) for making a close button on a modal perhaps a tick too light, we should consider why these practices are becoming more and more common place. http://downloads.pagefair.com/reports/adblocking_goes_mainstream_2014_report.pdf http://downloads.pagefair.com/reports/adblocking_goes_mainst...
- __jal 11y agoTraditional newspapers were losing money long before ad blockers became widely used. It is the switch to the net that is strangling them. Sure, ad blockers aren't helping, but are a response to highly annoying crap, malware, etc. being shoveled by the increasingly desperate. It is an arms race, but not one newspapers can win. Also, little hint: having your revenue threatened isn't an excuse for being unethical. Nobody (even corporations, slowly becoming more equal than others) has a right to a profit, or even staying in business.
- boie0025 11y agoI agree, and it seems clear that publishers are caught in a tough spot.. but I don't think that's a very good excuse to employ deception. To me it reads like "We're honest when we're making money, but when we're not... better hold on to your wallets" oh and "We'll decide when we're doing well."
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- samirm 11y agoNo one asked them to publish anything online, that was their choice. Most users don't want to pay for content because they're used to it being free on the internet - after all, most content is. BG needs to come to terms with the fact that some industries just die out and cannot always be profitable.