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U.S. senators introduce social media bill to ban 'dark patterns' tricks
- cptskippy 8y agoAssuming they do this right, I mean they won't, but assuming they did, I'd like to see something similar for Operating Systems. I left my work iPhone 6 on while on vacation and returned to a dead phone. When I charged it up and powered it back on to be met with the "we're throttling your phone because of a power event" message. So I went on the adventure to nope out of that. Holy crap, Apple does not want you to turn it off once they've enabled it. And they apparently they enable it anyway they can because the phone battery is 95% capacity and it runs like a top.
- maccio92 8y agoIt's about time. The amount of children already addicted to screens is terrifying
- shdh 8y agoThe addiction extends beyond age
- maccio92 8y agoNot arguing that, but it's arguably more damaging at such an early age when the brain is developing
- CamperBob2 8y agoHow about we conduct (and replicate!) the studies first, then make the laws?
- shdh 8y agoInsert "dark pattern expert"
- droithomme 8y agoGood!
- baron816 8y ago> The bill would bar companies from choosing groups of people for behavioral experiments unless the companies get informed consent. Wait, does this refer to A/B testing?
- syntheticcdo 8y agoI think it's more about this: http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/06/28/as_flies_to_wanton_boys http://laboratorium.net/archive/2014/06/28/as_flies_to_wanto...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- flukus 8y ago> Wait, does this refer to A/B testing? I hope so. Experimenting on your customers is about as user hostile as you can get.
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y agoAre you even serious? We're not talking about A/B testing prescription drugs with placebos. We're talking about testing different images. Different colors for buttons. Settle down.
- ixtli 8y agoSaying that A/B testing is just different colors for buttons is intentionally ignoring the past 10 years of facebooks development process. Every single aspect of the platform is AB tested and that platform has a big effect on peoples lives.
- hackinthebochs 8y agoI'm still confused about why I'm supposed to be upset that Facebook A/B tests their features on their users. It seems to me that if they're allowed to do either A or B, they're allowed to measure the influence of A vs B. I don't see where the outrage is.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y agoIt's as if millions of "Only 2 left!!" banners cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
- wybiral 8y agoIt's refreshing to see bipartisan efforts like this coming out of the current political landscape.
- RandomGuyDTB 8y agoI'm pessimistic on this bill passing- Silicon Valley has also reached its fingers into lobbying. See: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/03/silicon-valley-politics-lobbying-washington https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/03/silicon-v...
- daniel-cussen 8y agoSilicon Valley started going to congress back in the late 80's in response to East Asian (Japanese in particular I think) competition in semiconductors.
- francoisdevlin 8y agoThis seems fraught with first amendment issues. Could a lawyer explain how this could pass & hold up in court?
- hn_throwaway_99 8y agoCourts have held that you can put a lot more restrictions on commercial speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_speech
- darawk 8y agoThank god, finally we'll be able to regulate user interface design. Surely needing to get your designs approved by the department of web design standards will be good for innovation.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sbov 8y agoNot a single "news" article I can find links to the actual text of the bill. Here it is: https://www.scribd.com/document/405606873/Detour-Act-Final https://www.scribd.com/document/405606873/Detour-Act-Final
- jjcm 8y agoThank you, was the first thing I looked for. While the intention of the bill seems good, I worry that this will become the next cookie popup. From the text of the bill: "Any large online operator that engages in any form of behavioral or psychological research based on the activity or data of its users shall disclose to its users on a routine basis, but not less than once each 90 days, any experiments or studies that user was subjected to or enrolled in" Based on their definitions of behavioral research, simple analytics would fall under the purview. This means that every site that has over 100m MAU will have to have a popup disclosing that they're running analytics and A/B testing (because honestly this won't stop any of them from doing it - these things are industry standards). I don't need to be informed that Facebook tracks what links I click on their site. I don't need google to tell me that they have a history of every search I've made, and that they tailored those results based on my past searches. We're trying to create a safe space web at the detriment of UX. I support a lot of the stuff around younger kids, but I think the stuff for adults is just going to become a nuisance.
- awinder 8y agoGiven historical relevance it’s hard to imagine a time when someone would make a comment like “Regulations on human psychological experiments, what are we, a bunch of delicate flowers?!” But I have a hard time believing it would be seriously novel to conflate what goes on online with group psychological experiments. I’m not sure which side of the debate I would land on, but I do think it’s a reasonable enough thing for a deliberative body to consider, and certainly reasonable enough for a healthy debate without trying to sandbag it as “safe space”
- gradys 8y agoFraming it as "human psychological experiments" evokes famous psych experiments like the marshmallow test and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Tech companies run these kinds of experiments occasionally (I believe Facebook is known to have tried to manipulate mood with a Newsfeed change), but I feel like this way of describing it masks the fact that 99% of large scale A/B tests are things like - We slightly changed the color of the submit button - The forward button was removed from the context menu on chat bubbles - An infrastructure change reduces the load time of the comments on articles by 10ms - The weekly ad relevance model update is being certified, yielding a 0.000001 increase in CTR for small segments of the market. On average, much more mundane than "human psychological experiments".
- good_guy 8y agoYeah, specially fuck LinkedIn and Quora
- crsmithdev 8y agoZero confidence that any part of the US congress is even remotely capable of producing a bill for this that isn't a complete disaster. Unfortunately, they'll probably try anyway. One of those moments I'm glad that our government is so broken at this point that it can't really drive significant change.
- iscrewyou 8y agoCongress produces pretty decent bills when they are bipartisan. Most recent example is the criminal justice reform.
- bhelkey 8y agoThis bill is, or at least appears to be, bipartisan. > U.S. Sens. Mark R. Warner (D-VA) and Deb Fischer (R-NE) have introduced the Deceptive Experiences To Online Users Reduction (DETOUR) Act. https://www.scribd.com/document/405606873/Detour-Act-Final https://www.scribd.com/document/405606873/Detour-Act-Final
- iscrewyou 8y agoAnd I feel better knowing that these two representatives haven’t been in the news for their views or for scandals. I’ll have to read the bill to know better.
- m0zg 8y agoCriminal Justice Reform bill is the masterwork of Jared Kushner. Kushner is the reason why it exists at all, so it wasn't really "congress" that "produced" it. http://time.com/5486560/prison-reform-jared-kushner-kim-kardashian-west/ http://time.com/5486560/prison-reform-jared-kushner-kim-kard...
- iscrewyou 8y agoDid Kushner write it?
- JadeNB 8y agoWhy doesn't the article excerpt any language from the bill, or otherwise link to it? It's hard to imagine a bill that defines, to an enforceable legal standard, what is a dark pattern, and what is an addictive game (another thing that the article mentions is banned). EDIT: Thanks to sbov (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19620441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19620441) for doing the legwork the news isn't doing and digging up the text. It doesn't seem to mention addictive games at all; maybe that's another bill?
- bhelkey 8y ago> Why doesn't the article excerpt any language from the bill, or otherwise link to it? This seems to be a trend among recent articles.
- justinmk 8y agoGovernment (and its cheerleaders) has the same solution to every problem: ban it, or declare that it can't exist. Which is the same solution a child could come up with. Fixing a problem sounds good, so it's easy to market. Defining what the problem is and avoiding unintended consequences is hard.
- jdironman 8y agoI think what you say here carries a lot of meaning into how parents raise children. Kid is not doing something you like, or not doing something you want it to do? No! Don't do that, or Do this! Why? Because I said so. No TV tonight for you! But, why do we not think to negotiate, and to reason? When we apply for a job, we negotiate with our employer for a salary that benefits us both, right? Thats how it should be. What do companies want? What do users want? What is right, what is wrong. I am not sure that any situation can be found involving two or more parties that differs.
- kodz4 8y agoIts not that complicated to define. Lots of people have done it from Tim Wu, to Jaron Lanier to Clay Shirky to Tristan Harris. The problem definitions and solutions are almost 10 years old now. It's just that YouTube, Facebook and Twitter didn't give a shit. Plus all kinds of side show debates about free speech, privacy, anonymity and half a dozen other things have taken focus away from the fundamental change social media introduced into the way humans as a group communicate. That fundamental change is these systems attach a publicly visible number next to every thing anyone says. Whether it is a like/view/upvote/click/follower/retweet count it has an effect on how people think and behave. Whether it is the President, a Journalist or a 10 year old the numbers have an unasked for influence. There is no good psychological/sociological reason for these numbers to be publicly visible in real time. Engagement and Recommendation systems can still collect these numbers and continue to do their jobs without publicly displaying any of these numbers in real time or not at all. These changes can't be rolled out instantly because a large part of the population are hooked and need to be slowly weaned off.
- ken 8y agoSilicon Valley has the same solution to every problem: more technology, or market forces. Everybody plays the game they know how to play.
- dfischer 8y agoThis is just a hack and doesn't solve the real issues.
- ardy42 8y ago> This is just a hack and doesn't solve the real issues. The real issue is the incentives created by shareholder capitalism. While I would like that solved, that solution is so far away that I'll take whatever hacks I can in the meantime.
- dfischer 8y agoThe real issue is incentives created by advertising and people not paying for products because we've become disillusioned to being the product.
- OrgNet 8y agoIf they ban all dark patterns but also prevent the federal government from providing free digital filling of tax returns, I am ok with it...
- eyeareque 8y agoFunny that Facebook is for this, but it makes sense. It would stop any startups from having the same advantage as them in regards to sketchy growth practices.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y agoThe text of the bill specifies that it only applies to companies with at least 100 million monthly active users.
- mruts 8y agoInstead of actually thinking of how the system works or how to change it, we get this stupid law from stupid people. Classic government.
- thegayngler 8y agoThis legislation sounds so broad based on the article. Unless you know what youre doing legislation can be so broad that people wind up in court for years and no Cases are filed in civil court. I cant imagine it being effective in any way. With that said I havent read the details of the actual law so maybe it is solid.
- drivingmenuts 8y agoI would not limit it to “large” online operators. Just make it a rule governing all websites hosted or otherwise based in the United States. Little guys shouldn’t be given a pass on following the rules.
- sundbry 8y agoIt's called regulatory capture and forget that if Facebook, which grew to the size it is at because in part of A/B testing, gets to now lobby for rules to make it more difficult for newcomers to do it. We used to have anti-trust legislation in the United States (we still do, but hardly use it). Special regulations for the behemoth corporations is standard jurisprudence.
- Mirioron 8y agoI sure hope your job doesn't involve anything that is related to websites. Regulatory capture of this kind will utterly kill small website operators.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoWould love to see LinkedIn reigned in with their false notifications. They’ll show one of those red dots then when you click it nothing new has happened. There are a ton of other terrible dark patterns used by LinkedIn but I forget to take note when I encounter them. Slack needs a serious spanking for how they handle notification opt outs. As far as I know there is no global mute everything switch which should exist.
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoI wish a bill would also ban the cancer that is retargeting. I’m sure I’ll get downvoted for saying this as many entrepreneurs and SaaS companies browsing are making their conversions on retargeting, but something has to be said about the creepy nature of following people wherever they go without obtaining direct consent.
- sxates 8y agoThis would only apply to online services with > 100 million active users. And is it safe to assume that means 100 million Americans? Not sure how we'd apply to the law to users outside the US. How many online services have that many MAUs outside Facebook and Google? Even Twitter doesn't have that many in the US [1]. Seems laser targeted at Facebook, but the abuses come from many many more companies. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/274564/monthly-active-twitter-users-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/274564/monthly-active-tw...
- lostmsu 8y agoI don't know. Facebook already has everybody's data. Unless this bill will retroactively force them to delete it unless users explicitly consent to letting them keep it, it will restring new growing companies more.
- shmooth 8y agodark patterns like offering health insurance...
- lostmsu 8y agoThe bill is useless, unless it also requires to reacquire consent for all the data, that was already taken using these patterns. It should demand Facebook and the likes to get consent to keep the data, or remove it within some reasonable time. Without that, the bill is more like a stick in the wheels for Facebook's future competitors.