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>I hate dark patterns and wish they didn't exist. But I'm not sure that putting the government in charge of policing them is a good idea. I think after about 3

>I hate dark patterns and wish they didn't exist. But I'm not sure that putting the government in charge of policing them is a good idea. I think after about 30 years of deregulation and "I'm not sure that putting the government in charge of policing them is a good idea", it's time for the pendulum to swing the other way. Yes that means there may be bad regulations and/or enforcement, but nothing is written in stone. Those things can be fixed as they come up. Relevant: https://twitter.com/camerondare/status/1143538064402157568 https://twitter.com/camerondare/status/1143538064402157568

dvtrn 7y ago
I’m always incredulous about legislation ala carte because lived experience has shown me that the “fix later” part of “legislate first fix later” so rarely happens because of all sorts of forces from political to social mixed with the passage of time. But maybe I’m a bit bias in my incredulity residing in a state where legislative sessions happen every two years resulting in sometimes two year waits to come back and address a bit of policy that probably could have been deliberated on more in committee.
- Despegar 7y ago
  If Congress legislates they aren't going to be prescribing UI design in the text of the bill. They will give the FTC rulemaking authority and they'll be the cop on the beat that digs into the weeds.
  - dvtrn 7y ago
    To be fair that isn’t much better in my view, given the FCC’s own behavior recently with dark patterns and public commentary on policy changes that the agency itself promulgated and “requested” public input on Furthermore I’m not even sure if I agree that regulating UI patterns of web application even falls or should fall to the delegated powers of the FCC; this agency primarily concerns itself with interconnected communications systems like the Public Telephone Switching Network, not social networking sites. We have a consumer financial protection bureau, if a solution should exist at the Federal level, I’d be far less dubious of a bureau that follows a similar framework as the CFPB to establish guidelines and frameworks for handling user data and disseminating data to the user respectively.
    - Despegar 7y ago
      The DETOUR Act empowers the FTC to do this, not the FCC. The FTC already has the responsibility of policing "unfair or deceptive acts or practices" and this is an extension of that. The bill is 13 pages long. There are affordances for small businesses, this bill would only apply to "large online services" with 100 million users or more within a 30 day period. It seems to be a very thoughtfully written piece of legislation. https://www.scribd.com/document/405606873/Detour-Act-Final https://www.scribd.com/document/405606873/Detour-Act-Final
      - dvtrn 7y ago
        Ope I misread your agency there. Sorry about that. Taking a gander at your link before responding further. Edit: Alright I’ve read the first half, because I’m at lunch and would like to take the time this evening to really sit and pour over it: I concur with your assessment. This does seem to be well designed and thought out policy, and I could see myself actively supporting it versus my previous position of “no Federal involvement”. Point, humbly conceded. Thank you for the point of view change.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  >But maybe I’m a bit bias everyone is biased this or that way, what irks me about the "I don't like legislation" comments is that I rarely see a proposed equivalent alternative. Because just praying that the dark patterns are going away is probably not going to work.
  - dvtrn 7y ago
    Well then for what it’s worth, I’ve proposed one below that suggests following the framework of the CFPB if Federal government is to be involved at all (I personally think it should not be). I’m open to your response to that suggestion.
  - buildzr 7y ago
    Not everything has an ideal solution. We can't just magically apply regulation, technology or markets and fix every problem. Sometimes solutions create direct tradeoffs between freedom and security and we need to understand the valuing security can mean a loss of freedom - the PATRIOT act is a prime example. The best solution is occasionally to just accept that there is no solution, that the tradeoffs aren't worth it and that we should just educate as best we can but accept these things as problems we can't avoid without significant costs.
    - autoexec 7y ago
      > Not everything has an ideal solution. We can't just magically apply regulation, technology or markets and fix every problem. Doing nothing takes us from having "a less than ideal solution" to having "no solution at all". I think we can try for sensible regulation that strikes a good balance between freedom and security while also acknowledging it might not be a perfect solution in every situation. The patriot act is a terrible example to use because even before it passed it was clearly going too far in the wrong direction and people concerned with privacy and civil liberties were very vocal in opposing it. The flaws were obvious but included by design and so objections were simply ignored. It simply wasn't an example of government making a good faith effort at sound regulation. It was a blatant power grab which they manipulated frightened people into accepting while ignoring all other objections. Some of these dark patters are essentially fraud and there absolutely should be a process for reporting them to a governing body for review.
- marssaxman 7y ago
  Yeah, lawmaking has a way of sticking around whether anybody likes it or not. Look how long it's taking to clean up the messes left by the PATRIOT act, or the DMCA... it'll be literally decades, if ever, before all that damage can be undone. It takes so long that people just get used to it as the way things are, and adapt, and then it's even harder to change.
  - dvtrn 7y ago
    We’re also 40 some odd years from the enacting of FISA, which should be an acronym fresh on the minds of anyone who watches the intersection of technology and regulation as an example of the long tail of legislative scope-creep w/rt NSA programs and activities.
ksdale 7y ago
Move fast and break things is bad policy for companies, I don't think it would be any better for the government.
- moorhosj 7y ago
  I’m not sure anyone is suggesting that policy, but “do nothing” seems equally bad, if not worse.
  - ksdale 7y ago
    The parent was suggesting to regulate first and fix broken regulations later. That's almost literally moving fast and breaking things.
    - moorhosj 7y ago
      ==The parent was suggesting to regulate first== The assumption is that introducing a bill to regulate dark patterns is the same as "moving fast". This bill hasn't even made it to committee [1] and darkpatterns.org was started in 2010 [2]. I think an argument could be made that the US government is actually moving pretty slowly on this topic. GDPR has been in place for over a year, so there is significant data to understand the implications of this type of regulation. ==and fix broken regulations later.== How is this different from a software product releasing an updated version? Microsoft Excel is on v16 and I don't think anyone is accusing that product of moving fast and breaking things. I wish we spent more time adding features and fixing bugs from past legislation. [1] https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s1084 https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s1084 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern
      - ksdale 7y ago
        To clarify, I wasn't really commenting on the validity on any particular regulation so much as on the idea that "it's time for the pendulum to swing the other way." which seemed to imply (to me, anyway) that it's better to do something, anything, rather than doing what we're doing. I agree that doing effective things is better than nothing, but I think doing ineffective things is worse than nothing. As to your second point, I also wish we spent more time adding features and fixing bugs from past legislation. I don't think that happens nearly enough, which is a major reason I don't trust our ability to just fix shoddy regulation after the fact.
pmarreck 7y ago
> but nothing is written in stone. Those things can be fixed as they come up. Unfortunately, this is not true. For example, a right that is taken away will be EXTREMELY difficult to restore again. It's not like a switch that you can flip back and forth until enough evidence is gathered from both states that you know the "correct" way forward... Software has A/B tests for this, law most definitely does not.
d1zzy 7y ago
Unfortunately regulation does seem to be mostly written in stone. Sure, things can drastically change in events like revolutions but I'm not holding my breath for that (nor do I think that kind of instability is something good to have, it's essentially a huge regression with the opportunity to "redo" things, but as humans we ALWAYS do the same mistakes again sooner or later). How many laws are we re-evaluating every few years and updating/changing them as necessary? I think if we had almost all laws passed with expiration time it would hopefully result in better/more up to date legislation although the only "temporary" legislation I remember (Patriot Act?) was just passed every time it expired...
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
la_barba 7y ago
30 years of deregulation is a vague, almost meaningless phrase. I'm in pharma and I haven't seen this "deregulation" so to speak. We're seeing more and more regulation surrounding safety of our products (and obviously I agree with that kind of regulation). >Those things can be fixed as they come up. I assume "as they come up" means decades later? The government is like a supertanker, changing course is a sloooow process.

dvtrn 7y ago

I’m always incredulous about legislation ala carte because lived experience has shown me that the “fix later” part of “legislate first fix later” so rarely happens because of all sorts of forces from political to social mixed with the passage of time. But maybe I’m a bit bias in my incredulity residing in a state where legislative sessions happen every two years resulting in sometimes two year waits to come back and address a bit of policy that probably could have been deliberated on more in committee.

Despegar 7y ago
If Congress legislates they aren't going to be prescribing UI design in the text of the bill. They will give the FTC rulemaking authority and they'll be the cop on the beat that digs into the weeds.
- dvtrn 7y ago
  To be fair that isn’t much better in my view, given the FCC’s own behavior recently with dark patterns and public commentary on policy changes that the agency itself promulgated and “requested” public input on Furthermore I’m not even sure if I agree that regulating UI patterns of web application even falls or should fall to the delegated powers of the FCC; this agency primarily concerns itself with interconnected communications systems like the Public Telephone Switching Network, not social networking sites. We have a consumer financial protection bureau, if a solution should exist at the Federal level, I’d be far less dubious of a bureau that follows a similar framework as the CFPB to establish guidelines and frameworks for handling user data and disseminating data to the user respectively.
  - Despegar 7y ago
    The DETOUR Act empowers the FTC to do this, not the FCC. The FTC already has the responsibility of policing "unfair or deceptive acts or practices" and this is an extension of that. The bill is 13 pages long. There are affordances for small businesses, this bill would only apply to "large online services" with 100 million users or more within a 30 day period. It seems to be a very thoughtfully written piece of legislation. https://www.scribd.com/document/405606873/Detour-Act-Final https://www.scribd.com/document/405606873/Detour-Act-Final
    - dvtrn 7y ago
      Ope I misread your agency there. Sorry about that. Taking a gander at your link before responding further. Edit: Alright I’ve read the first half, because I’m at lunch and would like to take the time this evening to really sit and pour over it: I concur with your assessment. This does seem to be well designed and thought out policy, and I could see myself actively supporting it versus my previous position of “no Federal involvement”. Point, humbly conceded. Thank you for the point of view change.
Barrin92 7y ago
>But maybe I’m a bit bias everyone is biased this or that way, what irks me about the "I don't like legislation" comments is that I rarely see a proposed equivalent alternative. Because just praying that the dark patterns are going away is probably not going to work.
- dvtrn 7y ago
  Well then for what it’s worth, I’ve proposed one below that suggests following the framework of the CFPB if Federal government is to be involved at all (I personally think it should not be). I’m open to your response to that suggestion.
- buildzr 7y ago
  Not everything has an ideal solution. We can't just magically apply regulation, technology or markets and fix every problem. Sometimes solutions create direct tradeoffs between freedom and security and we need to understand the valuing security can mean a loss of freedom - the PATRIOT act is a prime example. The best solution is occasionally to just accept that there is no solution, that the tradeoffs aren't worth it and that we should just educate as best we can but accept these things as problems we can't avoid without significant costs.
  - autoexec 7y ago
    > Not everything has an ideal solution. We can't just magically apply regulation, technology or markets and fix every problem. Doing nothing takes us from having "a less than ideal solution" to having "no solution at all". I think we can try for sensible regulation that strikes a good balance between freedom and security while also acknowledging it might not be a perfect solution in every situation. The patriot act is a terrible example to use because even before it passed it was clearly going too far in the wrong direction and people concerned with privacy and civil liberties were very vocal in opposing it. The flaws were obvious but included by design and so objections were simply ignored. It simply wasn't an example of government making a good faith effort at sound regulation. It was a blatant power grab which they manipulated frightened people into accepting while ignoring all other objections. Some of these dark patters are essentially fraud and there absolutely should be a process for reporting them to a governing body for review.
marssaxman 7y ago
Yeah, lawmaking has a way of sticking around whether anybody likes it or not. Look how long it's taking to clean up the messes left by the PATRIOT act, or the DMCA... it'll be literally decades, if ever, before all that damage can be undone. It takes so long that people just get used to it as the way things are, and adapt, and then it's even harder to change.
- dvtrn 7y ago
  We’re also 40 some odd years from the enacting of FISA, which should be an acronym fresh on the minds of anyone who watches the intersection of technology and regulation as an example of the long tail of legislative scope-creep w/rt NSA programs and activities.

ksdale 7y ago

Move fast and break things is bad policy for companies, I don't think it would be any better for the government.

moorhosj 7y ago
I’m not sure anyone is suggesting that policy, but “do nothing” seems equally bad, if not worse.
- ksdale 7y ago
  The parent was suggesting to regulate first and fix broken regulations later. That's almost literally moving fast and breaking things.
  - moorhosj 7y ago
    ==The parent was suggesting to regulate first== The assumption is that introducing a bill to regulate dark patterns is the same as "moving fast". This bill hasn't even made it to committee [1] and darkpatterns.org was started in 2010 [2]. I think an argument could be made that the US government is actually moving pretty slowly on this topic. GDPR has been in place for over a year, so there is significant data to understand the implications of this type of regulation. ==and fix broken regulations later.== How is this different from a software product releasing an updated version? Microsoft Excel is on v16 and I don't think anyone is accusing that product of moving fast and breaking things. I wish we spent more time adding features and fixing bugs from past legislation. [1] https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s1084 https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s1084 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern
    - ksdale 7y ago
      To clarify, I wasn't really commenting on the validity on any particular regulation so much as on the idea that "it's time for the pendulum to swing the other way." which seemed to imply (to me, anyway) that it's better to do something, anything, rather than doing what we're doing. I agree that doing effective things is better than nothing, but I think doing ineffective things is worse than nothing. As to your second point, I also wish we spent more time adding features and fixing bugs from past legislation. I don't think that happens nearly enough, which is a major reason I don't trust our ability to just fix shoddy regulation after the fact.

pmarreck 7y ago

> but nothing is written in stone. Those things can be fixed as they come up. Unfortunately, this is not true. For example, a right that is taken away will be EXTREMELY difficult to restore again. It's not like a switch that you can flip back and forth until enough evidence is gathered from both states that you know the "correct" way forward... Software has A/B tests for this, law most definitely does not.

d1zzy 7y ago

Unfortunately regulation does seem to be mostly written in stone. Sure, things can drastically change in events like revolutions but I'm not holding my breath for that (nor do I think that kind of instability is something good to have, it's essentially a huge regression with the opportunity to "redo" things, but as humans we ALWAYS do the same mistakes again sooner or later). How many laws are we re-evaluating every few years and updating/changing them as necessary? I think if we had almost all laws passed with expiration time it would hopefully result in better/more up to date legislation although the only "temporary" legislation I remember (Patriot Act?) was just passed every time it expired...

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

la_barba 7y ago

30 years of deregulation is a vague, almost meaningless phrase. I'm in pharma and I haven't seen this "deregulation" so to speak. We're seeing more and more regulation surrounding safety of our products (and obviously I agree with that kind of regulation). >Those things can be fixed as they come up. I assume "as they come up" means decades later? The government is like a supertanker, changing course is a sloooow process.