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How e-commerce sites manipulate people into buying things
- readbeard 7y agoNot just e-commerce sites—change.org shows "### have signed," where the number is programmed to tick upwards at a somewhat randomized rate. This is simply dishonest—a lie designed to make you feel like you'll be missing out unless you sign. Example: https://www.change.org/p/target-stop-filling-the-world-with-plastic-bags https://www.change.org/p/target-stop-filling-the-world-with-...
- tomphoolery 7y agoIt's also pretty common in event promotion. Sell tickets in tiers, but make the capacity of the first two tiers ridiculously small, like 10 or 15 in total. They'll sell out relatively quickly, and it feels like the ticket price is going to jump, so if you do it right, most people will buy their tickets at a slightly inflated rate, and you make more money. Then you promote online saying stuff like "ABOUT TO SELL OUT! ONLY 50 TICKETS LEFT!" the week before to drive more sales. :P
- sieabahlpark 7y agoCouldn't that just be attributed to a log that is compacted to a count? I would imagine a system like change.org needs to handle plenty of people all of a sudden signing that a append-only log would be sufficient for. As for the randomness I'd leave that up to the randomness of people signing up. Of course I could be entirely wrong but I can see if a technical reason why it wouldn't go up cleanly, similar to YouTube views, they're not realtime.
- sizzle 7y agoI've pondered this for a while, if this disingenuous design pattern is biasing people to sign their names, in addition to their shady user engagement email spam with click bait polarizing email subject lines and targeted spam "Sizzle, the discussion keeps evolving..." How they promote petitions after you sign one by showing you 'trending' high shock value petitions is pretty scummy way to grab your attention and stay on the site signing more petitions. There has to be a better way to drive engagement than shoving polarizing clickbait petitions in my face. Don't believe me? Sign up for the site and sign a petition, enjoy the flood of petition spam in your inbox.
- rgovostes 7y agoHere's ThredUP's Julia Boyle posting a number of open engineering positions in a recent "Who is hiring?" thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18358221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18358221
- vmurthy 7y agoThe link is 7 months old. I am geniunely curious how this is relevant to the discussion. Can you clarify please?
- albertgoeswoof 7y agoWow thredup has a dress discounted from $60 available for only $7.39 if I sign up now! I better hurry as there’s only 3 left and Sarah from New Jersey just got one!
- throwaway13337 7y agoNot all these notifications are fake but they can still be misleading. I've investigated a few of these sorts of apps on Shopify. They do use actual customer names but how long ago those orders came in seems a little dubious. I believe it's not so much to promote fear of missing out - other apps do that better - e.g. ones that copy booking.com's pattern of 'only x left!'. Instead, they're a very good way to signal to potential buyers that the (usually small) shop is being used by other shoppers to increase trust. Few people go in to empty restaurants. It would be interesting to know if there are legal implications to lying about your visitors using services like these, though.
- 3xblah 7y ago"The report coincides with discussions among lawmakers about regulating technology companies, including through a bill proposed in April by Senators Deb Fischer, Republican of Nebraska, and Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, that is meant to limit the use of dark patterns by making some of the techniques illegal and giving the Federal Trade Commission more authority to police the practice. "We are focused in on a problem that I think everyone recognizes," said Ms. Fischer, adding that she became interested in the problem after becoming annoyed in her personal experience with the techniques." If we used programmer vernacular we might say she was "scratching her own itch".
- digitalengineer 7y agoToo bad lawmakers must first experience the problem themselves, before they spring to action. I believe support for healthcare problems and modern-day solutions (such as s embryonic stem cell research) would benefit from showing more passion towards others.
- Juliate 7y agoWell, it happens everywhere this way: * developers need to feel production/operations pain to improve on the software they deliver; * sysops need to feel the constraints and pressures of developers to improve the tools and foundations they provide to developers; * car drivers need to be a back-seat passenger/pedestrian/bicyclist from time to time to understand how to adapt their own driving habits; * etc. First hand experience trumps everything.
- dangerface 7y agoThe pointless popups became acceptable again because of the pointless cookie law forcing developers to implement dark ui. By the way did you know browsers use a thing called cookies? Scary i know.
- jjulius 7y ago>By the way did you know browsers use a thing called cookies? Scary i know. Not sure why you're being snarky - how entities utilize cookies can be unsettling/'scary' to some.
- vmurthy 7y agoAn age old tactic I have encountered: Deep discounts (after raising the prices of course). For e.g. (Harvard research paper - WIP) https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/18-113_16977967-84c0-488d-96e5-ffba637617d9.pdf https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/18-113_16977... https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/how-retailers-trick-you-their-amazing-black-friday-discounts/355525/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/how-ret... https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2018/09/24/what-retailers-dont-want-you-to-know-about-sale-prices/#4997add96878 https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2018/09/24/what...
- draugadrotten 7y agoUdemy business model, fake 90% discounts https://www.google.com/search?q=udemy+discount https://www.google.com/search?q=udemy+discount
- mrhappyunhappy 7y agoI was just thinking about this. Also their deals “end” within x hours. The number of sites doing dark patterns is disturbing and the way marketing professionals openly brag about manipulating people is disgusting. People are so wrapped up around the masters finger that they convince themselves their work is meaningful. Sorry, but we are all just cogs in the misery machine.
- lotsofpulp 7y agoI don’t understand the issue with this sales tactic. There is complete price transparency, and it takes minimal mental capacity to understand that “discounts” are just to fulfill people’s desire to “get” something that others might not be able to. If they want that dopamine hit, then let them have it. If something is worth X at time Y at place Z to the buyer, then it doesn’t matter what the discount is or isn’t.
- vmurthy 7y agoAssume that the price of an item is $100 today ($200 original price - so a 50% discount). A week from now is Black Friday. The retailer has said 70% off on all goods. Now if the retailer increases the price to $333.33 (100/(1-0.7)) and then discounts it by 70% to give a final selling price of $100, wouldn't you feel cheated? I know I would.
- jumpinalake 7y agoNYTimes + incognito = rejection.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoDisable javascript on their site. The next question would be "why is the browser advertising that it's in incognito mode?", but that's not a question for the NYT.
- SaturateDK 7y agoThis "feature" is being removed: https://twitter.com/paul_irish/status/1138471166115368960 https://twitter.com/paul_irish/status/1138471166115368960
- 2T1Qka0rEiPr 7y ago> About 30 sites made it easy to sign up for services but particularly hard to cancel, requiring phone calls or other procedures. The Times requires people to talk with a representative online or by phone to cancel subscriptions, but the researchers did not study it or other publishing sites. Nice that the editor was at least allowed to point out that their own employer employs many of these "dark patterns".
- exergy 7y agoAlso, I'd actually been considering a Times subscription for a while. That's going to be a hell no from me now.
- astura 7y agoI've heard that if you use privacy.com with a California mailing address they let you cancel online due to California law.
- SippinLean 7y agoNot true, the law applies to making it easy to opt-out of automatic renewal https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB313 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
- mikojan 7y agoThey offer a discount, you just say no. It's a nuisance, but I wouldn't reconsider a subscription to what is maybe the best newspaper in the world because of it.
- nicudad 7y agoThe hack I use for subscriptions is to pay with a money order, mailed to their location. This makes it impossible for them to autorenew. I started doing this after discovering to my dismay that one subscription used my checking account routing number to auto debit a subscription renewal the following year, at a significantly increased rate, direct from my checking account! I don't see how this isn't larceny or bank robbery. I also track who is selling my name to marketers by using initials. So my subscriber name instead of Bob Jones is Ned Y. Jones for the NYT sub, Will S. Jones for the WSJ sub, and Roger D. Jones for the Readers Digest. Then when I get mailed an ad for sex toys advertised to Ned Jones, I know the NYT sold my name to them.
- djflutt3rshy 7y agoWhy would the ThredUp example not fall under current regulations against false advertising? If I say "This dress was bought 4 minutes ago!" or "Hurry now! Only one left!", those statements are obviously either true or false.
- RandomInteger4 7y agoThose statements say nothing about the product they're selling to you.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- eswat 7y agoI recall in another FB thread that shaming employees was not totally frowned-upon if it planted the seed in the engineer that they should maybe reflect on what they're contributing to and consider alternative work. Would shaming designers that are complicit in these dark patterns be a similar, favourable way of movement towards a better direction? I actually finished a book that tries to do that[1]. But I don't believe enough designers are told from their peers that maybe the way they’re exercising their knowledge of design theory and psychology is being shitty towards people. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44432844-ruined-by-design https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44432844-ruined-by-desig...
- DaveWalk 7y agoThank you for this point (and book recommendation). It has clarified my thinking on dark patterns, something I've long suspected. We need to (re)educate designers about the mistakes they're making, in service of what I assume are data- hungry marketing employees. I also enjoyed and support the phrase from the article: "confirmshaming."
- RandomInteger4 7y agoThere goes that nasty evil capitalism, "It wasn't my lack of will power and cognitive short falls that caused me to buy these things ... it was capitalism's fault. I'm completely innocent and would never make bad decisions of my own accord ..."
- i_am_nomad 7y agoThat is somewhat unfair. Most of the time, it’s a naive consumer on one side, and an army of UI experts and behavioral scientists on the other. That consumer is hopelessly outmatched, and the company will absolutely find a way to hack his or her psychology.
- mrhappyunhappy 7y agoYep. I read behavioral studies by scientists so I can use this info to manipulate others. This is my job and I am good at it or I wouldn’t be doing it. There are hundreds of behavioral tricks to make people buy. Even when one is aware of them. It’s funny when people say sales don’t work on them. Those are EXACTLY the people sales work best on.
- RandomInteger4 7y agoCiting human psychology is a sad excuse to excuse one's self from personal responsibility. You are the final arbiter of all decisions that you make. Nobody else. You are the one that is ultimately responsible. If this were loot boxes, then maybe we'd be having a different discussion, but unless they're tricking you into something other than what is advertised, then the onus ultimately falls upon you to control your desire to purchase something.
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- yifanl 7y agoUm, what makes one form of dishonesty acceptable and loot box dishonesty unacceptable? Personally I lean on the "I am the final arbiter of my purchasing decisions" side, but surely this principle would have to be applied consistently (and what this looks like is I have bought almost nothing online ever)
- wazoox 7y agoI think most of these tactics are explicitly forbidden in the EU. Opt-in (to newsletters and spam) is mandatory, for instance.
- mrhappyunhappy 7y agoAs much as I don’t like PayPal I will never sign up for any subscription that does not go through PayPal. Reason being, I can log into PayPal and stop my subscriptions any time without jumping through hoops.
- cabaalis 7y agoThe FTC regulates advertisements. [1] At what point is a statement like "[x] just saved $[y]!" on your own site being shown to a visitor constitute an advertisement for your service? Or is it just advertisements involving a paid third party? From 1: "Advertisements with specific claims can be substantiated with evidence" [1] https://bondstreet.com/truth-in-advertising-laws/ https://bondstreet.com/truth-in-advertising-laws/
- Proven 7y agoWhat is the point of that article? Don't most EC sites make it possible to return the item no questions asked? Will they one day write about how people manipulate e-commerce sites into selling things? Or how guys manipulate girls (or vice versa) into falling in love with them?
- jimhi 7y agoI run an international e-commerce site in several countries. We have been recommended all these dark patterns. Sometimes I see sites that apply all of them at once and a new user gets no less than 3 pop-ups within 10 seconds engaging them in different ways. Many of these don't work long-term. These sites won't last long when they get one-time users who are deal seekers. This reminds me of back when all video sites had 10 ads and pop-ups or blogging sites. They all learned eventually. I predict two dark patterns will stay with us. Making it hard to unsubscribe and designing the "YES" button to be more attractive to click than the "NO" button. They don't involve lying and they work surprisingly well.