3 ms·
That, and they paid money to surreptitiously bundle it with other software. Chrome is notorious for suddenly being mysteriously installed on relatives' computer
by dTal 7y ago
That, and they paid money to surreptitiously bundle it with other software. Chrome is notorious for suddenly being mysteriously installed on relatives' computers: https://imgur.com/NIZk9Pd https://imgur.com/NIZk9Pd
And advertising something on your own property sure sounds reasonable, but I think it's a slightly different story when "your own property" is "the de facto homepage of the internet". That's what I meant by "abusing monopoly position".
- tenpaiyomi 7y agoThat's not a dark pattern though. Potentially poor behavior, sure, but dark pattern, no.
- afandian 7y ago"Complete your antivirus" has a pre-checked tickbox for a totally irrelevant product. And in the process agreeing to a license. That's pretty dark. Maybe as someone with above-average technical ability this looks obvious to you. To a lot of people, it isn't. And this pattern is aimed at fooling the less technically literate.
- xxs 7y agoAgreeing to a license in the EU requires an affirmative action (i.e. pre-ticked checkboxes are automatically a fail to comply) The requirements to have unticked checkboxes predates GDPR.
- propertymagnate 7y agoIt's example number two on the wikipedia page for dark patterns, Misdirection.
- legacynl 7y agoyes it is, dark patterns refer to user-design decissions that arguably exploit human-weaknesses. In this case human-attention span (not noticing that you have to disable this option), lazyness(it costs effor to opt-out) and human confidence in authority (I trust avast with my AV, so I trust avast not to exploit my trust (but they do)).