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I completely agree and, for the record, I am not interested in creating anything that I consider a scam. However, this article is not so much about scams and mo

by swombat 16y ago

I completely agree and, for the record, I am not interested in creating anything that I consider a scam. However, this article is not so much about scams and more about slightly shady tactics. Letting people pick up a $10 recurring charge without their knowledge (à la Zynga advertising) is very different from opting them into your mailing list by default. Zynga makes a perfect example of one of those businesses that really abuse dark patterns, btw. And they are surviving the reputational damage just fine, since most of their users don't seem to care about their reputation, or aren't savvy enough to figure it out.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
I think it's a slippery slope. I like to think of it this way: I want to do everything to make a "perfect" site. It loads quickly, it's easy to use, it's clear in its intent, it does one thing and does it well. As I put together the site, I try to keep it as clean and simple as possible. No surprises for the user. These are just good design principles, dark patterns aside. There's also this huge "don't be evil" new-age kind of feel-good philosophy that folks use, but to me it's much more practical than that: I want as good a site as possible. Once you start trying to engineer the user, even if it's in their best interests, to me the design suffers. And I'm not sure there is a natural stopping point once you start down this road. At least I can't find one. My personal feeling is that that there is going to be a huge backlash against sites manipulating users. Not sure what form it will take, but it's coming.
j2d2j2d2 16y ago
Different sectors of the startup world frequently behave like the casinos of Wall St. If we act like this is OK, we'll have to wait for the economy to really convince us otherwise before we agree that this behavior is not helpful to the economy.
jacquesm 16y ago
A lot of kids fall for the 'text this number to y' scam, which turns out to be a subscription to some $2 / tick text messaging service. I think that's way across the line but it actually is legal in plenty of places. How do you feel about such an operation ?

by swombat 16y ago

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

I think it's a slippery slope. I like to think of it this way: I want to do everything to make a "perfect" site. It loads quickly, it's easy to use, it's clear in its intent, it does one thing and does it well. As I put together the site, I try to keep it as clean and simple as possible. No surprises for the user. These are just good design principles, dark patterns aside. There's also this huge "don't be evil" new-age kind of feel-good philosophy that folks use, but to me it's much more practical than that: I want as good a site as possible. Once you start trying to engineer the user, even if it's in their best interests, to me the design suffers. And I'm not sure there is a natural stopping point once you start down this road. At least I can't find one. My personal feeling is that that there is going to be a huge backlash against sites manipulating users. Not sure what form it will take, but it's coming.

j2d2j2d2 16y ago

Different sectors of the startup world frequently behave like the casinos of Wall St. If we act like this is OK, we'll have to wait for the economy to really convince us otherwise before we agree that this behavior is not helpful to the economy.

jacquesm 16y ago

A lot of kids fall for the 'text this number to y' scam, which turns out to be a subscription to some $2 / tick text messaging service. I think that's way across the line but it actually is legal in plenty of places. How do you feel about such an operation ?