24 ms·

Consumers Are Becoming Wise to Your Nudge

246 points by hirundo 7y ago

jnty 7y ago
Maybe it's time to go retro. I don't see any 'ONE MILLIONTH VISITOR!' banner ads any more, time to bring those back..?
b_tterc_p 7y ago
And yet, the majority of Americans (narrowly, even young americans) don't use adblockers.
- ceejayoz 7y ago
  That's kinda blaming the victim, isn't it? I, as a technical person, can generally tell when a website's failing because of an adblocker false positive, and know how to fix it. I know what the reputable extensions are, and I keep track of which ones get captured by the industry (like Adblock Plus). My webdev experience lets me know how important they are from a security standpoint. A random non-technical person likely doesn't know any of this.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    > I, as a technical person, can generally tell when a website's failing because of an adblocker false positive, and know how to fix it. How often does that happen? I believe that most people will be fine if the occasional website breaks because the benefit of ad-free/ad-reduced surfing is so large.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      I find it's fairly common, especially with things like uBlock Origin that block privacy impacting stuff as well as advertisements. Doubly so if you tend to use stuff like "Login with Facebook".
      - PuercoPop 7y ago
        You must visit different sites than me then. It doesn't happen even on a yearly basis for me. The last time it happened was two years ago on my bank's website. And that was due to poor coding practices on their part
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        "And that was due to poor coding practices on their part" Sure, you know that, but that's the point. The average user goes "that stupid extension broke my bank website and I had to hire someone for $150 to fix it". I had a family member get soaked for thousands of dollars worth of Geek Squad "fixes" over stuff like this. We got her an iPad and she's been happy ever since.
        mindslight 7y ago
        IMO the obvious outcome is multiple devices for different functions. A stock device for banking etc. And then a weird thing you get from your nephew, who says it will track you less for general usage. If the latter doesn't work for something (or stops working altogether), you can always do it on the full-take device. This will grow in popularity as ever more hardware becomes manufacturer EOL, but can be kept current with Ubuntu/Lineage/pmOS (etc).
      - gpm 7y ago
        I've used unlock origin (with the default settings) for years, I literally can't think of a time when I turned it off to fix something. Maybe it helps that I don't use "sign in with Facebook", but still, I use the internet a lot more heavily than most people.
        ceejayoz 7y ago
        I just had to turn it off about 5 minutes ago to pay my health insurance bill, as an example.
  - b_tterc_p 7y ago
    > That's kinda blaming the victim, isn't it? Maybe my intentions weren’t clear. The article appears to be suggesting that people are growing savvy to the ways of online businesses, citing some marketing tricks that laypeople recognize now. I am merely claiming that if you don’t know about adblockers, you are most certainly not “wise.” That May feel like an attack but it’s kind of just the truth. Saying it’s not fair because they don’t have the technical competence to know better is just circular reasoning. It might not be fair, but we have significant low hanging fruit to pick before we start considering the general populace wise to the ways of e commerce. As an aside, I don’t think I have ever encountered a website which both did not work due to ad blockers and didn’t give me explicit instructions on how to fix it, even if that solution is turning adblocker off for just that site.
- chatmasta 7y ago
  Not the majority, no. But around 25% of people use adblockers, which might be higher than many expect. Also, very few people will stop using adblockers once they have started, so the number will only increase. https://www.statista.com/statistics/804008/ad-blocking-reach-usage-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/804008/ad-blocking-reach...
  - b_tterc_p 7y ago
    Not necessarily. If younger people grow up with environments where ad blocking is not allowed, they may never learn to do it, and so rates will decline.
geggam 7y ago
Spent several months in the EU, come back to the US and the marketing here is like a "transiberian orchestra sensory overload show" in comparison
- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  I'm from and in Europe sick and tired of ads being everywhere, public transport, giant posters, and so on. That it's even worse elsewhere doesn't make the shit I'm wading through daily any more palatable.
  - rchaud 7y ago
    Are physical ads like the ones you describe really so burdensome? As long as it's a poster, and not a bright, distracting video ad on a giant screen (I see these at bus stops), I don't mind them. Sometimes the design of the ads are interesting, even if the product they're selling is not.
    - ceejayoz 7y ago
      I spent a couple weeks in Hobart, Tasmania last year which has strict regulations on signage and outdoor advertisements. It was really refreshing, and returning to the States really made our ads stand out.
    - geggam 7y ago
      As the other guy said, when you go to an area that doesnt have so many the marketing is visually jarring and it takes a few weeks to get your marketing immunity built up
    - kartan 7y ago
      > Are physical ads like the ones you describe really so burdensome? Yes. They are everywhere. I cannot look at a building, a road, or go to the subway without seeing a hundred advertisements. My brain will try to read automatically any text in my field of vision. It is exhausting. My job is complex enough to overload my brain with things I do not need or care about. It's a war on human attention. And we need de-escalation. I guess that it is different for each individual. And, your experience is not like mine. But for the ones like me it needs to stop.
dalbasal 7y ago
It's marketing, this Hegelian ping pong is continuous. At one point in time €XX.99 was new, miney-back guarantees were new, introductory rates... The most interesting part to me here is: "a world saturated with behavioral interventions might no longer resemble the one in which those interventions were first studied." This is where the intentional pseudo-science of consumer behaviour^ kind of of meets the world of (at least aspirationally) sciences, psychology, behavioural economics, etc.. Does the invisible hand Adam Smith described still work the same way once we are all hyper aware of it. Is it still invisible? Do any human behaviour discoveries mean anything outside of their narrow time and place contexts. Can we tell the difference between ones that do or don't? Can we really learn about human behaviour? ^it's intentional pseudo science because it isn't looking for truth, just useful tactics using some scientific (or pseudo-scientific) methodology.
sp332 7y ago
I understand playing up the strengths of a product and minimizing the weaknesses, but I don't know how baldfaced lies like "2 rooms left!" were ever acceptable. That's just the business jumping up and waving a flag that they can't be trusted. Sometimes I'll still buy something but only if I can tell myself that the person who made the website is probably not the person I'm actually doing business with.
- jerkstate 7y ago
  as a counterpoint "going out of business" sales are common in the brick and mortar world, especially in sectors like furniture.
  - siphon22 7y ago
    I know such a furniture store thats been going out of business for like 3 years. Pretty amusing.
    - superhuzza 7y ago
      Well they probably are going out of business, they just don't know when. Maybe this year, maybe in 10 years :)
    - stronglikedan 7y ago
      > for like 3 years They've probably only been open for 3 years then. ;-)
    - bluGill 7y ago
      Are you sure it is the same store? 20 years ago (and probably only applies to my state) you could only order 3x (I don't recall exact numbers or details) your current inventory once you announce the going out of business sale, and you had to be in business for a year an a half. People would open a furniture store, give good deals for 18 months - just to eat. Then they will sell out for a lot of money to a going out of business company who would cram the store with inventory, raise prices and then do the sale. When the doors closed (because they were out of inventory) the old owner would start a new store in the same location under a slightly difference name and repeat the cycle.
jnordwick 7y ago
"scarcity and social proof messages so overused in travel websites that the average person does not believe them" The example given, hotel bookings, it wasn't the use of these behavioral interventions, it was that the consumer realized the website repeatedly lies about it. There aren't really only 2 rooms left and 17 people have viewed it, it is purely the website being dishonest so often that it is assumed to always be dishonest There is such a going as honest advertising, but these companies chose to misrepresent information. That the authors take away seems to be it is the overuse of the lie means he'll probably come across the solution that they need to lie better or find a different lie. Them consumers will get used to that lie and companies will come pay him for a third lie...
- jcutrell 7y ago
  Or create a genuinely scarce product. For these interventions to work, they have to have validity. You can’t fabricate scarcity - it needs to be a real thing or else of course eventually it will be ignored.
  - corecoder 7y ago
    > Or create a genuinely scarce product. But can you mass product it?
    - vajrabum 7y ago
      Ask Nike or Magic the Gathering!
jcutrell 7y ago
I wonder if the hole left by failing interventions is actually an opportunity for a different type of intervention. The whole point of BE-based intervention is that humans have a limited amount of reasoning power to put towards a given decision and can’t always choose rationally, so the nudge is amplifying a heuristic to make it easier to choose something. The restrictions of human cognition don’t go away - a failing tactic might simply mean opportunity for a new tactic. We’ve seen this example with things like “fair pricing model” - this is a heuristic shortcut for trustworthiness. You aren’t trying to nudge me? Great! Certainly new interventions will surface in response.
- mindslight 7y ago
  > humans have a limited amount of reasoning power to put towards a given decision and can’t always choose rationally, so the nudge is amplifying a heuristic to make it easier to choose something That's a pretty disingenuous way of describing a multi-party interaction with divergent interests. It's not "easier" for the user because the "nudger" [manipulator] is trying to further exhaust the user's decision making capabilities to the manipulator's benefit. In fact, it's much harder if the user does not want to be taken advantage of.
Tepix 7y ago
I started to book two one way plane tickets the other day (with both Eurowings and Ryanair). During both booking processes I saw a messages claiming "seats are going fast, book now" or something like that. However in the next step of the booking process I was allowed to pick my seat. In both cases, the plane wasn't even 50% full. It's stupid if you make it so transparent to your customers that you are lying to them. PS: I ended up not booking the flight that day, the next day one of the flights was 15% cheaper. :-) PPS: I have my browser configured to delete all cookies when I close it.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  That's fraud. Was this in the UK? I wonder if it was 15% cheaper for you based on a server cookie (eg browser ID and/or IP), like the email offers that come through if you abandon your cart. [Yes I see you delete browser cookies, but fingerprinting works].
  - londons_explore 7y ago
    In Europe, it's very rare for flight prices to go down. There is a certain number of seats available at each price point, so they only way price can go down is if cancellations happen. I don't know why airlines don't use a fancier pricing algorithm, but I think the protocol for flight aggregators and travel agents is very primitive, so doesn't allow it.
    - sho 7y ago
      > There is a certain number of seats available at each price point, so they only way price can go down is if cancellations happen. Airline price algorithms (industyy name is Yield Management) can be very complicated and counterintuitive, and differ greatly from airline from airline - your summary is way too simplistic. I have personally observed prices dropping many times - to the extent where I don't think there is all that much value in booking weeks or months in advance, especially on short, high density routes. A huge number of factors go into pricing regimes, and they evolve over time. Getting paid earlier is always better, so prices start low, and based on historical demand. But if the algorithm notices a bump in sales to some specific city on some specific dates - maybe a concert or convention - it will experiment with raising all price buckets, lowering it again if it notices too rapid a falloff. "Common sense" means that a great deal of people try to book their flights maybe 4-6 in advance, so the algorithm will try to ensure a healthy profit during that period, but if demand is unaccountably low for some reason it will often ease off and lower them. I've seen prices drop just in the last few days when evidently they've decided all prudent people have already bought their tickets and are trying to fill the last seats with impulse purchases or bargain hunters. I once had to rebook a flight at the airport after missing it by a few minutes - and the price I paid was less than for the one I missed! Anyway, it's nowhere near as simple as a series of buckets with price tags on them, and hasn't been for 20 years. Hotels, by the way, use comparable systems.
JulianMorrison 7y ago
Any Bene Gesserit could have told you not to overuse the Voice.
dvtrn 7y ago
"Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed". Anybody ever find themselves wondering "have they?" or even worse "no they haven't" when it's a hotline you're familiar with
- bluGill 7y ago
  They have changed - 5 years ago.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- EamonnMR 7y ago
  I've had to call into a number of phone trees, and as far as I can tell, the entire phone tree process is designed to frustrate people away from support as much as possible. "Listen carefully as our options have changed" is something they can throw in to annoy you, waste more of your time, and discourage you from hitting the button you know will skip the dialogue.
- maest 7y ago
  I've had instances where I get told that "our lines are unfortunately very busy at the moment. If you do not wish to wait, you can find more information at our website or you can send an email at bla@bla.com. We expect the average waiting time to be 20 minutes." If you wait past that discouraging message, you get transfered to their support centre, and your call gets picked up in ~2-3 minutes. That message is a blatant attempt to reduce the load on their customer support by discouraging callers and making it a painful to use channel.
  - dvtrn 7y ago
    That message is a blatant attempt to reduce the load on their customer support by discouraging callers and making it a painful to use channel This was my precise experience implementing analysis software, interactive telephony ("Your call may be recorded for quality and training purposes") and going through the business case with senior management at an east coast call center ten years ago for a major consumer electronics and home appliance manufacturer, you probably have one of their smartphones in your pocket right now--call takers were saddled with what I thought were obscenely short call windows to resolve a call and be ready to take the next; three minutes to troubleshoot, diagnose and help a customer fix a washing machine, for example. One second over and the agents score went down, and they would face penalties. What got implemented was a maze of menu options that (and I can say this authoritatively and quite honestly) were not captured beyond the second level to filter and properly triage calls into hunt-groups or queues, or even do any sort of business analysis to determine where the most of our calls were going, but were deliberately designed to give agents more time on their existing calls and keep the hold queue artificially small. This is what exists at the root of my suspicion that this "menu options have changed" maneuver is all about numbers and stats that are ultimately meaningless in every practical definition that could be applied here. --- parting note: Ten years and a different telecom company later, I find myself staring at an email last week with the call center company's name on it, we've just signed a strategic partnership with them. Is it irony? Who knows. Am I chuckling morbidly? God yes.
turadg 7y ago
One thing confuses me in this discussion: are businesses free to lie? It sounds like businesses might lie, and the consumer is responsible for detecting that, and the only consequence for the business is that enough people “kick back”. But that would still mean it’s rational to lie when it causes a net increase in profits. Not good for society. Isn’t this something the Federal Trade Commission is supposed to help with?
- nradov 7y ago
  Lying in general is legal, but fraud and deceptive trade practices aren't. So it depends on the facts of a particular case.
  - stubish 7y ago
    It depends on the jurisdiction. There are a number of locales with 'truth in advertising' type laws. Around here I see signs for 'probably the best steak in town' etc., which I find amusing every time I see the weasel wording.
    - rhino369 7y ago
      Even most truth in advertising laws allow for some sales puffery. Typically you can "the best steak in town!" But you can't say "Rated the best steak in town" if it wasn't.
      - Frondo 7y ago
        It also feels like, at this point in history, "Best steak in town!" is, even if pretty widely untrue (e.g. the steak is leathery, very few people would consider it edible let alone the best, etc etc), that's a benign kind of puffery. People aren't basing large decisions or spending large amounts of money on the veracity of that being the best steak in town. I think that's another reason why that stuff gets a pass. It's small-time, it's local, restaurants already run on razor-thin margins, etc. You can't systematically defraud ten thousand hotel-bookers a day with a "best steak in town" sign in your window. And to some extent, we expect everyone to have that kind of pride in their restaurant, so who cares if they say that stuff?
_bxg1 7y ago
Honest question: how do blatant lies in ecommerce not fall under false advertising law? https://www.classlawgroup.com/consumer-protection/false-advertising/laws/ https://www.classlawgroup.com/consumer-protection/false-adve...
- wcfields 7y ago
  Let's just say I'm still waiting on my 7,000,000 Pepsi Points Harrier Jet to be fulfilled. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc.
  - mrob 7y ago
    That they managed to work the concept of "puffery" (their propaganda term for lies) into the law tells you everything you need to know about advertising industry ethics.
    - CPLX 7y ago
      That's not a fair argument. It's pretty clear that there's a universally understandable difference between these two advertising statements: "Bill Davis is the greatest real estate agent in the history of world civilization." "Bill Davis has sold more real estate than any other agent in Des Moines this year."
      - ghaff 7y ago
        In all fairness though, a typical conservative legal department is going to take one look at that first statement and ask for documentation that it's true. Which, of course, you won't be able to provide. Not everything said by a company spokesperson or written on a web page is fully vetted by legal but ads specifically often are.
    - drstewart 7y ago
      I mean I don't believe Trix are only suitable for consumption by kids, does that count as an advertising industry lie too?
Dotnaught 7y ago
It's stunning to me that anyone would use a euphemism like "behavioral interventions" to describe deceit and attempted manipulation – dark patterns. Marketers show no concern for ethical behavior and yet they complain when people reject their "nudge" as an assault by blocking ads.
- supergauntlet 7y ago
  I mean this is the core of adtech right? It's built on using psychology to sell things. That's basically always going to mean some sort of deceit or asymmetrical information. When your whole industry, your day-in-day-out work is based on the assumption that this is normal, of course it all just becomes second nature.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    Adtech could be, in a different world, the industry of finding out who needed a certain product so that they could be connected to companies selling that product.
    - adverbly 7y ago
      Spoiler alert: most things people buy they don't actually need.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        That's because of advertising. They wouldn't buy things they don't need if they weren't being manipulated to do so.
        whatshisface 7y ago
        People are fully capable of making unnecessary purchases off store shelves, even at antique shops where the goods don't have box art. People like buying stuff they don't need. I think our corporate overlords are terrified of what would happen without the mind control, but I think it would just be a more subdued and happier version of what we have now.
seieste 7y ago
Yesterday I went to book a hotel and Priceline had a room for $129, which was $20 cheaper than Expedia or any other site. Curious, I clicked on it and went to the Priceline site, and watched as a JavaScript animation “rolled” the price from $129 to $149 and alerted me that someone just got the last room. Obviously the whole thing was fake. (Why would they implement such an animation, and how likely is it that someone got the room in those two seconds?) At this point, it’s not even nudging or dark patterns but just straight out fraud.
- jbverschoor 7y ago
  Booking.com has been fined for this.
- WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
  > a JavaScript animation “rolled” the price disable javascript.
  - Analemma_ 7y ago
    That would be an interesting court case: if you browse with Javascript off, and only see the fake price, could you bring a case of false advertising if (as I'm assuming is the case) they never intended to sell at that price?
    - cameronbrown 7y ago
      In all likelihood you'd just see nothing.
    - blhack 7y ago
      The judge would probably look at it as hacking.
      - nofunsir 7y ago
        A "glitch"
  - 7y ago
boromi 7y ago
Even broader I believe. For example recently I purchased a Vizio TV and based on their advertising of the TV on their website, it said it included a Android tablet remote (and they showed pictures of it on the page). Apparently that was for last years model not the newer model I purchased. Needless to say, customer service was adamant at telling me they would not send me the android remote control because that is not included in this years model. Completely false advertising. I didn't bother further than this complaint.
Finnucane 7y ago
It's almost as if people were organisms capable of learning about stimuli in their environment and adapting their behavior accordingly.
asdfman123 7y ago
"Are customers as dumb as we thought? Survey says: no."
carapace 7y ago
When you hook a computer up to a brain, which end of the connection has the more sophisticated information processing system? When you hook a network of computers up to a network of brains, where is the more sophisticated information processing happening? I pity the fool who suffers under the illusion of control.
PaulHoule 7y ago
I think spam/scam is reaching a crisis level and it is impacting everyone who tries to communicate with the public. When Hillary Clinton kicked off her 2016 campaign she wrote an article on LinkedIn proposing that we cut the interest rate for student loans. At the time I was getting two or three calls a day from "card services" which offered to "cut my interest rate"; these calls often had spoofed caller id. (I think everybody else was getting these calls.) Clinton didn't answer her own phone, so she didn't know this, and didn't realize that her message sounded spammy and scammy because people were being saturated with similar messages. (Lately Ithaca phone numbers, but not surrounding rural areas, have been saturated with calls in Mandarin Chinese. My aspie-linguist friend tells me that the calls claim to be from the Chinese Embassy -- it seems to be some kind of effort to shake down Chinese students.) For a long time the people I did marketing work with insisted that every web page end with a "call to action" but I think now that is a sure way to come across as inauthentic because I get pushback from readers.
crazygringo 7y ago
If "2 rooms left" isn't true, it's not a nudge -- it's fraud. (The author is misusing the industry term "nudge" in UX, which is about which default option is selected, or which option you're guided towards most easily.) Honestly I always assumed that on large booking websites, "2 rooms left" would be at least "legally" accurate somehow (like there are 12 rooms left, but only 2 of that exact arbitrary configuration of precisely 198 square feet). Because if not, wouldn't they be opening themselves to a class-action suit some smart lawyers would be taking advantage of? Isn't that why we have class-action suits in the first place? (Whereas an individual property site, I'm less likely to trust because who's going to bother suing.) If it's a lie, how are Expedia, Priceline etc. not being sued?
- jcranmer 7y ago
  The formulation I'm used to is "2 seats left (at this price)", the parenthesized text generally being a smaller font. I'm assuming that's how the "legal" accuracy is coming into play here.
- fitzroy 7y ago
  I don't think, it's "2 rooms left at the hotel" or even "2 rooms in the hotel left (at this price)". I believe it can be "2 rooms left on [whatever booking site]" — perhaps because there is additional room inventory withheld from the web site. Or that additional rooms are currently "unpriced" in the database, and that price is generated at display time. So after you book the room, another room can be added to the available inventory, and now there are "two rooms left at this price" again. I did a bit of traveling last summer (mostly using Hotels.com ). There were times when I booked the "last room" and then checked again after booking and there was magically another "last room" available at the same price.
  - frei 7y ago
    I've had the experience of needing to book 4 airplane tickets through a reseller, and having a hunch it would be cheaper to book in 2 goes since there were only "2 tickets left at this price". Since they had 24hr cancellation, I took the chance, booked 2 tickets, and was right, after a few minutes, 2 more tickets were available at the original price.
ptah 7y ago
"Nudge" should be "dark pattern"
dgzl 7y ago
NPR this morning was essentially praising this tactic.
- i_am_nomad 7y ago
  I’m curious - I looked but couldn’t find this on their website.
  - dgzl 7y ago
    It was on Morning Edition on OPB radio at around 7:45-8:10PT (Oregon Public Broadcasting, essentially a glove for NPR's hand). I wish I remembered more about the context.
amelius 7y ago
I think common sales strategies are just as bad as unsolicited flirtatious behavior that annoys many women around the world. Perhaps we can make them illegal on similar grounds. Whether you're going after my money or after my body does not seem like a fundamental difference, really.
twirlock 7y ago
Like three decades later, it's no longer considered a conspiracy theory to think marketing exists. We consumers really wised up.
MayeulC 7y ago
While I am really against these practices, this sounds like a nice use case for the multi-armed bandit that was mentioned the other day on HN. Show 10% of the people the version that works less well. Let the system adjust itself based on user feedback.
- MayeulC 7y ago
  As I cannot edit to provide a link to the story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20022485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20022485
i_am_nomad 7y ago
I’d love to build some kind of front end, “plain” website that allows to purchase from a number of established online vendors, but uses their APIs or affiliate interfaces and strips away all the dark pattern evil. At one point that more or less described Amazon, but they’ve been using some amount of that too.
- Liquix 7y ago
  Some amount? Amazon is rife with dark patterns! Amazon's choice, default "featured" search order, inability to filter certain categories by price, childish refusal to sell Google/Apple/<any competitor big enough to actually compete> devices, Prime walled gardens, etc...
  - i_am_nomad 7y ago
    You’re right, though Amazon’s dark patterns are more back-end, operations-level practices - I really meant the web interface. Even still, that has dark patterns embedded in it, like the refusal to sort by price you mentioned.
- ativzzz 7y ago
  Craigslist is the one site that comes to mind that matches your description. Looking at their jobs page I see this: > a tech nirvana, no VCs, MBAs, sales, marketing, biz dev, or pivoting Looks like the trick is to ignore capitalism and avoid hiring businessmen that focus exclusively on growth. But would a company like CL survive being created today? Is it only effective because it's been around so long and has the network effect compounded over many years? Your idea about the plain version of Amazon sounds neat on paper. But of course the question is, how is it going to compete against Amazon?
dalore 7y ago
What about us poor sites that actually tell the truth in how many rooms are left, how many people are viewing etc?
- julianlam 7y ago
  I think if you're honest about it, then it is easier to have the end user trust you. It's the "in your face" nudge that's inappropriate. For example, if you had a nondescript button that said "check room availabilities" and actually did it, I'd trust that over a toaster that said "two rooms left!"
julianlam 7y ago
A lot of Shopify (or other similar) sites use a nudge where a little toaster pops up and says "so and so from Canmore, Ontario just purchased widget xyz" I never really thought much about it until someone (I think on here or Reddit) pointed out how it was annoying and a blatant sales tactic. I suppose I never really assumed the worst, it's really a matter of how you define "just purchased". If you're talking to a flesh and blood salesman, he or she will also say things like "I just sold a pair of knives to your neighbour". Maybe it was 10 minutes ago, maybe it was last week, but the statement itself is true, I suppose? In my neck of the woods, I get lots of driveway sealant salespeople saying they're "doing a house down the street". Are they lying? I never really thought so, but maybe they are. If they had done zero sales and were saying otherwise, then that'd be lying.
- adtechblah 7y ago
  This happened to my wife once for something she was thinking of purchasing. While she was deciding, I went to my own computer and opened the web site and watched it. After like 3 minutes, it started repeating names, which led me to believe that they had only sold a couple dozen units! Also, it's pretty awful if you have a fairly unique first name. "Adolph from Palm Springs just bought our hemorrhoid cream!" Great, now the only guy named Adolph in Palm Springs is outed.
jellicle 7y ago
When I see a website lying to me in our interactions (two rooms left, going fast, yeah sure), I just assume that if you're starting out our business trying to defraud me, it's not going to get any better and immediately nope out of there. I don't care if they have rooms $10 cheaper. If you've already proved you will lie to me, I'd just be foolish to engage in any business with you at all. I might not detect your next attempt to cheat me, or I might be more vulnerable having already given you my money, or something like that. Much better in the long run just to decline to do business at all.
Animats 7y ago
"Two thirds of the British public (65 percent) interpreted examples of scarcity and social proof claims used by hotel booking websites as sales pressure. Half said they were likely to distrust the company as a result of seeing them (49 percent). Just one in six (16 percent) said they believed the claims." "(34 percent) expressed a negative emotional reaction to these messages, choosing words like contempt and disgust from a precoded list." There goes your reputation. Amazon has become really bad. I have to decline "Amazon Prime" three times to get to checkout. Remember when they boasted of "one-click ordering?" And they lie, claiming that "Amazon Prime" is free.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  Well, I'm beginning to think that some retailers have exposed patterns that consumers can exploit. I noticed that even without Amazon Prime I get a free shipping option, which is supposed to be slow, but almost always comes about as quickly as Prime. I just got an order from another business, which gave me several choices - I could have spent $20 on shipping, but I took the free one that was supposed to take a few weeks, and it got to me in two days.
kevin_b_er 7y ago
What the website calls "nudges" I call "lies".
andrewla 7y ago
This is a classic example of a study in the social sciences that confirms my prejudices, but whose actual methodology is almost entirely meaningless. The participants are not asked to make any consequential decision based on the information, but just to fill out a survey saying whether they believed the claims. A nudge-conomist would say that even though people have stated preferences, their acted-upon preferences can diverge, so this study proves nothing. Even though I'm disposed to believe that nudges like this do create "nudge fatigue" and that people rapidly become immune to it (like the $*.99 pricing model), this study does nothing to confirm or dispute that notion.
- mobjack 7y ago
  This is the type of thing that you can run a controlled experiment on by running a simple AB test. People often say that these type of tactics turn them off, evidence usually shows that they are still effective. Maybe it does turn off some but not enough to stop a sale while increasing conversion from others.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    Or, everyone does it so people end up choosing from what's available.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
sonnyblarney 7y ago
There's a wide gap between fake information and real information. On Via rail (Canada's Amtrack) you can see that 'there's only 3 seats left' in that category, but in my experience I think it's legit information. Frankly - it's kind of useful as I sometimes delay booking, but I know the cheap tickets will be sold at some point. Maybe there are some question marks about the 'darkness' of that pattern, but it's different than those sites that categorically lie or misrepresent. I suggest if airlines/hotels are outright lying about some kinds of information, they should face fines, legislation, regulation.
oicu812 7y ago
The "nudge" in the title of this article is drawing from the book "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness" [1] which cites one of the best nudges ever introduced - automatic enrollment in retirement savings plans. You can also learn more about true nudges from the Freakonomics Radio recordings. [2] [1] https://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/014311526X https://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happ... [2] http://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/nudge/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/nudge/
bogomipz 7y ago
Booking.com seems to take this a step further by including unavailable hotel rooms in search results with a "sold out, just missed it" label superimposed over them. That's pretty much the height of absurdity. It's the online equivalent of a used car salesman. It's really a gross experience. Booking.com unfortunately seems to have a lock on booking in Europe. I would be interested in hearing if and how folks are booking rooms in Europe without them.
WalterBright 7y ago
This has always been happening. Go back in time a decade at a time and watch a few TV commercials. The sales tactics used become more and more transparent and laughable the older they are. It's a lot like stock picking. Strategies that work become more and more sophisticated over time because the results of the simpler schemes are already factored into the price as they became known.
anfilt 7y ago
shocker. people quit beliving you if lied to repeatedly.

246 points by hirundo 7y ago

jnty 7y ago

Maybe it's time to go retro. I don't see any 'ONE MILLIONTH VISITOR!' banner ads any more, time to bring those back..?

b_tterc_p 7y ago

And yet, the majority of Americans (narrowly, even young americans) don't use adblockers.

ceejayoz 7y ago
That's kinda blaming the victim, isn't it? I, as a technical person, can generally tell when a website's failing because of an adblocker false positive, and know how to fix it. I know what the reputable extensions are, and I keep track of which ones get captured by the industry (like Adblock Plus). My webdev experience lets me know how important they are from a security standpoint. A random non-technical person likely doesn't know any of this.
- luckylion 7y ago
  > I, as a technical person, can generally tell when a website's failing because of an adblocker false positive, and know how to fix it. How often does that happen? I believe that most people will be fine if the occasional website breaks because the benefit of ad-free/ad-reduced surfing is so large.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    I find it's fairly common, especially with things like uBlock Origin that block privacy impacting stuff as well as advertisements. Doubly so if you tend to use stuff like "Login with Facebook".
    - PuercoPop 7y ago
      You must visit different sites than me then. It doesn't happen even on a yearly basis for me. The last time it happened was two years ago on my bank's website. And that was due to poor coding practices on their part
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        "And that was due to poor coding practices on their part" Sure, you know that, but that's the point. The average user goes "that stupid extension broke my bank website and I had to hire someone for $150 to fix it". I had a family member get soaked for thousands of dollars worth of Geek Squad "fixes" over stuff like this. We got her an iPad and she's been happy ever since.
        mindslight 7y ago
        IMO the obvious outcome is multiple devices for different functions. A stock device for banking etc. And then a weird thing you get from your nephew, who says it will track you less for general usage. If the latter doesn't work for something (or stops working altogether), you can always do it on the full-take device. This will grow in popularity as ever more hardware becomes manufacturer EOL, but can be kept current with Ubuntu/Lineage/pmOS (etc).
    - gpm 7y ago
      I've used unlock origin (with the default settings) for years, I literally can't think of a time when I turned it off to fix something. Maybe it helps that I don't use "sign in with Facebook", but still, I use the internet a lot more heavily than most people.
      - ceejayoz 7y ago
        I just had to turn it off about 5 minutes ago to pay my health insurance bill, as an example.
- b_tterc_p 7y ago
  > That's kinda blaming the victim, isn't it? Maybe my intentions weren’t clear. The article appears to be suggesting that people are growing savvy to the ways of online businesses, citing some marketing tricks that laypeople recognize now. I am merely claiming that if you don’t know about adblockers, you are most certainly not “wise.” That May feel like an attack but it’s kind of just the truth. Saying it’s not fair because they don’t have the technical competence to know better is just circular reasoning. It might not be fair, but we have significant low hanging fruit to pick before we start considering the general populace wise to the ways of e commerce. As an aside, I don’t think I have ever encountered a website which both did not work due to ad blockers and didn’t give me explicit instructions on how to fix it, even if that solution is turning adblocker off for just that site.
chatmasta 7y ago
Not the majority, no. But around 25% of people use adblockers, which might be higher than many expect. Also, very few people will stop using adblockers once they have started, so the number will only increase. https://www.statista.com/statistics/804008/ad-blocking-reach-usage-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/804008/ad-blocking-reach...
- b_tterc_p 7y ago
  Not necessarily. If younger people grow up with environments where ad blocking is not allowed, they may never learn to do it, and so rates will decline.

geggam 7y ago

Spent several months in the EU, come back to the US and the marketing here is like a "transiberian orchestra sensory overload show" in comparison

PavlovsCat 7y ago
I'm from and in Europe sick and tired of ads being everywhere, public transport, giant posters, and so on. That it's even worse elsewhere doesn't make the shit I'm wading through daily any more palatable.
- rchaud 7y ago
  Are physical ads like the ones you describe really so burdensome? As long as it's a poster, and not a bright, distracting video ad on a giant screen (I see these at bus stops), I don't mind them. Sometimes the design of the ads are interesting, even if the product they're selling is not.
  - ceejayoz 7y ago
    I spent a couple weeks in Hobart, Tasmania last year which has strict regulations on signage and outdoor advertisements. It was really refreshing, and returning to the States really made our ads stand out.
  - geggam 7y ago
    As the other guy said, when you go to an area that doesnt have so many the marketing is visually jarring and it takes a few weeks to get your marketing immunity built up
  - kartan 7y ago
    > Are physical ads like the ones you describe really so burdensome? Yes. They are everywhere. I cannot look at a building, a road, or go to the subway without seeing a hundred advertisements. My brain will try to read automatically any text in my field of vision. It is exhausting. My job is complex enough to overload my brain with things I do not need or care about. It's a war on human attention. And we need de-escalation. I guess that it is different for each individual. And, your experience is not like mine. But for the ones like me it needs to stop.

dalbasal 7y ago

It's marketing, this Hegelian ping pong is continuous. At one point in time €XX.99 was new, miney-back guarantees were new, introductory rates... The most interesting part to me here is: "a world saturated with behavioral interventions might no longer resemble the one in which those interventions were first studied." This is where the intentional pseudo-science of consumer behaviour^ kind of of meets the world of (at least aspirationally) sciences, psychology, behavioural economics, etc.. Does the invisible hand Adam Smith described still work the same way once we are all hyper aware of it. Is it still invisible? Do any human behaviour discoveries mean anything outside of their narrow time and place contexts. Can we tell the difference between ones that do or don't? Can we really learn about human behaviour? ^it's intentional pseudo science because it isn't looking for truth, just useful tactics using some scientific (or pseudo-scientific) methodology.

sp332 7y ago

I understand playing up the strengths of a product and minimizing the weaknesses, but I don't know how baldfaced lies like "2 rooms left!" were ever acceptable. That's just the business jumping up and waving a flag that they can't be trusted. Sometimes I'll still buy something but only if I can tell myself that the person who made the website is probably not the person I'm actually doing business with.

jerkstate 7y ago
as a counterpoint "going out of business" sales are common in the brick and mortar world, especially in sectors like furniture.
- siphon22 7y ago
  I know such a furniture store thats been going out of business for like 3 years. Pretty amusing.
  - superhuzza 7y ago
    Well they probably are going out of business, they just don't know when. Maybe this year, maybe in 10 years :)
  - stronglikedan 7y ago
    > for like 3 years They've probably only been open for 3 years then. ;-)
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Are you sure it is the same store? 20 years ago (and probably only applies to my state) you could only order 3x (I don't recall exact numbers or details) your current inventory once you announce the going out of business sale, and you had to be in business for a year an a half. People would open a furniture store, give good deals for 18 months - just to eat. Then they will sell out for a lot of money to a going out of business company who would cram the store with inventory, raise prices and then do the sale. When the doors closed (because they were out of inventory) the old owner would start a new store in the same location under a slightly difference name and repeat the cycle.

jnordwick 7y ago

"scarcity and social proof messages so overused in travel websites that the average person does not believe them" The example given, hotel bookings, it wasn't the use of these behavioral interventions, it was that the consumer realized the website repeatedly lies about it. There aren't really only 2 rooms left and 17 people have viewed it, it is purely the website being dishonest so often that it is assumed to always be dishonest There is such a going as honest advertising, but these companies chose to misrepresent information. That the authors take away seems to be it is the overuse of the lie means he'll probably come across the solution that they need to lie better or find a different lie. Them consumers will get used to that lie and companies will come pay him for a third lie...

jcutrell 7y ago
Or create a genuinely scarce product. For these interventions to work, they have to have validity. You can’t fabricate scarcity - it needs to be a real thing or else of course eventually it will be ignored.
- corecoder 7y ago
  > Or create a genuinely scarce product. But can you mass product it?
  - vajrabum 7y ago
    Ask Nike or Magic the Gathering!

jcutrell 7y ago

I wonder if the hole left by failing interventions is actually an opportunity for a different type of intervention. The whole point of BE-based intervention is that humans have a limited amount of reasoning power to put towards a given decision and can’t always choose rationally, so the nudge is amplifying a heuristic to make it easier to choose something. The restrictions of human cognition don’t go away - a failing tactic might simply mean opportunity for a new tactic. We’ve seen this example with things like “fair pricing model” - this is a heuristic shortcut for trustworthiness. You aren’t trying to nudge me? Great! Certainly new interventions will surface in response.

mindslight 7y ago
> humans have a limited amount of reasoning power to put towards a given decision and can’t always choose rationally, so the nudge is amplifying a heuristic to make it easier to choose something That's a pretty disingenuous way of describing a multi-party interaction with divergent interests. It's not "easier" for the user because the "nudger" [manipulator] is trying to further exhaust the user's decision making capabilities to the manipulator's benefit. In fact, it's much harder if the user does not want to be taken advantage of.

Tepix 7y ago

I started to book two one way plane tickets the other day (with both Eurowings and Ryanair). During both booking processes I saw a messages claiming "seats are going fast, book now" or something like that. However in the next step of the booking process I was allowed to pick my seat. In both cases, the plane wasn't even 50% full. It's stupid if you make it so transparent to your customers that you are lying to them. PS: I ended up not booking the flight that day, the next day one of the flights was 15% cheaper. :-) PPS: I have my browser configured to delete all cookies when I close it.

pbhjpbhj 7y ago
That's fraud. Was this in the UK? I wonder if it was 15% cheaper for you based on a server cookie (eg browser ID and/or IP), like the email offers that come through if you abandon your cart. [Yes I see you delete browser cookies, but fingerprinting works].
- londons_explore 7y ago
  In Europe, it's very rare for flight prices to go down. There is a certain number of seats available at each price point, so they only way price can go down is if cancellations happen. I don't know why airlines don't use a fancier pricing algorithm, but I think the protocol for flight aggregators and travel agents is very primitive, so doesn't allow it.
  - sho 7y ago
    > There is a certain number of seats available at each price point, so they only way price can go down is if cancellations happen. Airline price algorithms (industyy name is Yield Management) can be very complicated and counterintuitive, and differ greatly from airline from airline - your summary is way too simplistic. I have personally observed prices dropping many times - to the extent where I don't think there is all that much value in booking weeks or months in advance, especially on short, high density routes. A huge number of factors go into pricing regimes, and they evolve over time. Getting paid earlier is always better, so prices start low, and based on historical demand. But if the algorithm notices a bump in sales to some specific city on some specific dates - maybe a concert or convention - it will experiment with raising all price buckets, lowering it again if it notices too rapid a falloff. "Common sense" means that a great deal of people try to book their flights maybe 4-6 in advance, so the algorithm will try to ensure a healthy profit during that period, but if demand is unaccountably low for some reason it will often ease off and lower them. I've seen prices drop just in the last few days when evidently they've decided all prudent people have already bought their tickets and are trying to fill the last seats with impulse purchases or bargain hunters. I once had to rebook a flight at the airport after missing it by a few minutes - and the price I paid was less than for the one I missed! Anyway, it's nowhere near as simple as a series of buckets with price tags on them, and hasn't been for 20 years. Hotels, by the way, use comparable systems.

JulianMorrison 7y ago

Any Bene Gesserit could have told you not to overuse the Voice.

dvtrn 7y ago

"Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed". Anybody ever find themselves wondering "have they?" or even worse "no they haven't" when it's a hotline you're familiar with

bluGill 7y ago
They have changed - 5 years ago.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
EamonnMR 7y ago
I've had to call into a number of phone trees, and as far as I can tell, the entire phone tree process is designed to frustrate people away from support as much as possible. "Listen carefully as our options have changed" is something they can throw in to annoy you, waste more of your time, and discourage you from hitting the button you know will skip the dialogue.
maest 7y ago
I've had instances where I get told that "our lines are unfortunately very busy at the moment. If you do not wish to wait, you can find more information at our website or you can send an email at bla@bla.com. We expect the average waiting time to be 20 minutes." If you wait past that discouraging message, you get transfered to their support centre, and your call gets picked up in ~2-3 minutes. That message is a blatant attempt to reduce the load on their customer support by discouraging callers and making it a painful to use channel.
- dvtrn 7y ago
  That message is a blatant attempt to reduce the load on their customer support by discouraging callers and making it a painful to use channel This was my precise experience implementing analysis software, interactive telephony ("Your call may be recorded for quality and training purposes") and going through the business case with senior management at an east coast call center ten years ago for a major consumer electronics and home appliance manufacturer, you probably have one of their smartphones in your pocket right now--call takers were saddled with what I thought were obscenely short call windows to resolve a call and be ready to take the next; three minutes to troubleshoot, diagnose and help a customer fix a washing machine, for example. One second over and the agents score went down, and they would face penalties. What got implemented was a maze of menu options that (and I can say this authoritatively and quite honestly) were not captured beyond the second level to filter and properly triage calls into hunt-groups or queues, or even do any sort of business analysis to determine where the most of our calls were going, but were deliberately designed to give agents more time on their existing calls and keep the hold queue artificially small. This is what exists at the root of my suspicion that this "menu options have changed" maneuver is all about numbers and stats that are ultimately meaningless in every practical definition that could be applied here. --- parting note: Ten years and a different telecom company later, I find myself staring at an email last week with the call center company's name on it, we've just signed a strategic partnership with them. Is it irony? Who knows. Am I chuckling morbidly? God yes.

turadg 7y ago

One thing confuses me in this discussion: are businesses free to lie? It sounds like businesses might lie, and the consumer is responsible for detecting that, and the only consequence for the business is that enough people “kick back”. But that would still mean it’s rational to lie when it causes a net increase in profits. Not good for society. Isn’t this something the Federal Trade Commission is supposed to help with?

nradov 7y ago
Lying in general is legal, but fraud and deceptive trade practices aren't. So it depends on the facts of a particular case.
- stubish 7y ago
  It depends on the jurisdiction. There are a number of locales with 'truth in advertising' type laws. Around here I see signs for 'probably the best steak in town' etc., which I find amusing every time I see the weasel wording.
  - rhino369 7y ago
    Even most truth in advertising laws allow for some sales puffery. Typically you can "the best steak in town!" But you can't say "Rated the best steak in town" if it wasn't.
    - Frondo 7y ago
      It also feels like, at this point in history, "Best steak in town!" is, even if pretty widely untrue (e.g. the steak is leathery, very few people would consider it edible let alone the best, etc etc), that's a benign kind of puffery. People aren't basing large decisions or spending large amounts of money on the veracity of that being the best steak in town. I think that's another reason why that stuff gets a pass. It's small-time, it's local, restaurants already run on razor-thin margins, etc. You can't systematically defraud ten thousand hotel-bookers a day with a "best steak in town" sign in your window. And to some extent, we expect everyone to have that kind of pride in their restaurant, so who cares if they say that stuff?

_bxg1 7y ago

Honest question: how do blatant lies in ecommerce not fall under false advertising law? https://www.classlawgroup.com/consumer-protection/false-advertising/laws/ https://www.classlawgroup.com/consumer-protection/false-adve...

wcfields 7y ago
Let's just say I'm still waiting on my 7,000,000 Pepsi Points Harrier Jet to be fulfilled. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc.
- mrob 7y ago
  That they managed to work the concept of "puffery" (their propaganda term for lies) into the law tells you everything you need to know about advertising industry ethics.
  - CPLX 7y ago
    That's not a fair argument. It's pretty clear that there's a universally understandable difference between these two advertising statements: "Bill Davis is the greatest real estate agent in the history of world civilization." "Bill Davis has sold more real estate than any other agent in Des Moines this year."
    - ghaff 7y ago
      In all fairness though, a typical conservative legal department is going to take one look at that first statement and ask for documentation that it's true. Which, of course, you won't be able to provide. Not everything said by a company spokesperson or written on a web page is fully vetted by legal but ads specifically often are.
  - drstewart 7y ago
    I mean I don't believe Trix are only suitable for consumption by kids, does that count as an advertising industry lie too?

Dotnaught 7y ago

It's stunning to me that anyone would use a euphemism like "behavioral interventions" to describe deceit and attempted manipulation – dark patterns. Marketers show no concern for ethical behavior and yet they complain when people reject their "nudge" as an assault by blocking ads.

supergauntlet 7y ago
I mean this is the core of adtech right? It's built on using psychology to sell things. That's basically always going to mean some sort of deceit or asymmetrical information. When your whole industry, your day-in-day-out work is based on the assumption that this is normal, of course it all just becomes second nature.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  Adtech could be, in a different world, the industry of finding out who needed a certain product so that they could be connected to companies selling that product.
  - adverbly 7y ago
    Spoiler alert: most things people buy they don't actually need.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      That's because of advertising. They wouldn't buy things they don't need if they weren't being manipulated to do so.
      - whatshisface 7y ago
        People are fully capable of making unnecessary purchases off store shelves, even at antique shops where the goods don't have box art. People like buying stuff they don't need. I think our corporate overlords are terrified of what would happen without the mind control, but I think it would just be a more subdued and happier version of what we have now.

seieste 7y ago

Yesterday I went to book a hotel and Priceline had a room for $129, which was $20 cheaper than Expedia or any other site. Curious, I clicked on it and went to the Priceline site, and watched as a JavaScript animation “rolled” the price from $129 to $149 and alerted me that someone just got the last room. Obviously the whole thing was fake. (Why would they implement such an animation, and how likely is it that someone got the room in those two seconds?) At this point, it’s not even nudging or dark patterns but just straight out fraud.

jbverschoor 7y ago
Booking.com has been fined for this.
WrtCdEvrydy 7y ago
> a JavaScript animation “rolled” the price disable javascript.
- Analemma_ 7y ago
  That would be an interesting court case: if you browse with Javascript off, and only see the fake price, could you bring a case of false advertising if (as I'm assuming is the case) they never intended to sell at that price?
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    In all likelihood you'd just see nothing.
  - blhack 7y ago
    The judge would probably look at it as hacking.
    - nofunsir 7y ago
      A "glitch"
- 7y ago

boromi 7y ago

Even broader I believe. For example recently I purchased a Vizio TV and based on their advertising of the TV on their website, it said it included a Android tablet remote (and they showed pictures of it on the page). Apparently that was for last years model not the newer model I purchased. Needless to say, customer service was adamant at telling me they would not send me the android remote control because that is not included in this years model. Completely false advertising. I didn't bother further than this complaint.

Finnucane 7y ago

It's almost as if people were organisms capable of learning about stimuli in their environment and adapting their behavior accordingly.

asdfman123 7y ago

"Are customers as dumb as we thought? Survey says: no."

carapace 7y ago

When you hook a computer up to a brain, which end of the connection has the more sophisticated information processing system? When you hook a network of computers up to a network of brains, where is the more sophisticated information processing happening? I pity the fool who suffers under the illusion of control.

PaulHoule 7y ago

I think spam/scam is reaching a crisis level and it is impacting everyone who tries to communicate with the public. When Hillary Clinton kicked off her 2016 campaign she wrote an article on LinkedIn proposing that we cut the interest rate for student loans. At the time I was getting two or three calls a day from "card services" which offered to "cut my interest rate"; these calls often had spoofed caller id. (I think everybody else was getting these calls.) Clinton didn't answer her own phone, so she didn't know this, and didn't realize that her message sounded spammy and scammy because people were being saturated with similar messages. (Lately Ithaca phone numbers, but not surrounding rural areas, have been saturated with calls in Mandarin Chinese. My aspie-linguist friend tells me that the calls claim to be from the Chinese Embassy -- it seems to be some kind of effort to shake down Chinese students.) For a long time the people I did marketing work with insisted that every web page end with a "call to action" but I think now that is a sure way to come across as inauthentic because I get pushback from readers.

crazygringo 7y ago

If "2 rooms left" isn't true, it's not a nudge -- it's fraud. (The author is misusing the industry term "nudge" in UX, which is about which default option is selected, or which option you're guided towards most easily.) Honestly I always assumed that on large booking websites, "2 rooms left" would be at least "legally" accurate somehow (like there are 12 rooms left, but only 2 of that exact arbitrary configuration of precisely 198 square feet). Because if not, wouldn't they be opening themselves to a class-action suit some smart lawyers would be taking advantage of? Isn't that why we have class-action suits in the first place? (Whereas an individual property site, I'm less likely to trust because who's going to bother suing.) If it's a lie, how are Expedia, Priceline etc. not being sued?

jcranmer 7y ago
The formulation I'm used to is "2 seats left (at this price)", the parenthesized text generally being a smaller font. I'm assuming that's how the "legal" accuracy is coming into play here.
fitzroy 7y ago
I don't think, it's "2 rooms left at the hotel" or even "2 rooms in the hotel left (at this price)". I believe it can be "2 rooms left on [whatever booking site]" — perhaps because there is additional room inventory withheld from the web site. Or that additional rooms are currently "unpriced" in the database, and that price is generated at display time. So after you book the room, another room can be added to the available inventory, and now there are "two rooms left at this price" again. I did a bit of traveling last summer (mostly using Hotels.com ). There were times when I booked the "last room" and then checked again after booking and there was magically another "last room" available at the same price.
- frei 7y ago
  I've had the experience of needing to book 4 airplane tickets through a reseller, and having a hunch it would be cheaper to book in 2 goes since there were only "2 tickets left at this price". Since they had 24hr cancellation, I took the chance, booked 2 tickets, and was right, after a few minutes, 2 more tickets were available at the original price.

ptah 7y ago

"Nudge" should be "dark pattern"

dgzl 7y ago

NPR this morning was essentially praising this tactic.

i_am_nomad 7y ago
I’m curious - I looked but couldn’t find this on their website.
- dgzl 7y ago
  It was on Morning Edition on OPB radio at around 7:45-8:10PT (Oregon Public Broadcasting, essentially a glove for NPR's hand). I wish I remembered more about the context.

amelius 7y ago

I think common sales strategies are just as bad as unsolicited flirtatious behavior that annoys many women around the world. Perhaps we can make them illegal on similar grounds. Whether you're going after my money or after my body does not seem like a fundamental difference, really.

twirlock 7y ago

Like three decades later, it's no longer considered a conspiracy theory to think marketing exists. We consumers really wised up.

MayeulC 7y ago

While I am really against these practices, this sounds like a nice use case for the multi-armed bandit that was mentioned the other day on HN. Show 10% of the people the version that works less well. Let the system adjust itself based on user feedback.

MayeulC 7y ago
As I cannot edit to provide a link to the story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20022485 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20022485

i_am_nomad 7y ago

I’d love to build some kind of front end, “plain” website that allows to purchase from a number of established online vendors, but uses their APIs or affiliate interfaces and strips away all the dark pattern evil. At one point that more or less described Amazon, but they’ve been using some amount of that too.

Liquix 7y ago
Some amount? Amazon is rife with dark patterns! Amazon's choice, default "featured" search order, inability to filter certain categories by price, childish refusal to sell Google/Apple/<any competitor big enough to actually compete> devices, Prime walled gardens, etc...
- i_am_nomad 7y ago
  You’re right, though Amazon’s dark patterns are more back-end, operations-level practices - I really meant the web interface. Even still, that has dark patterns embedded in it, like the refusal to sort by price you mentioned.
ativzzz 7y ago
Craigslist is the one site that comes to mind that matches your description. Looking at their jobs page I see this: > a tech nirvana, no VCs, MBAs, sales, marketing, biz dev, or pivoting Looks like the trick is to ignore capitalism and avoid hiring businessmen that focus exclusively on growth. But would a company like CL survive being created today? Is it only effective because it's been around so long and has the network effect compounded over many years? Your idea about the plain version of Amazon sounds neat on paper. But of course the question is, how is it going to compete against Amazon?

dalore 7y ago

What about us poor sites that actually tell the truth in how many rooms are left, how many people are viewing etc?

julianlam 7y ago
I think if you're honest about it, then it is easier to have the end user trust you. It's the "in your face" nudge that's inappropriate. For example, if you had a nondescript button that said "check room availabilities" and actually did it, I'd trust that over a toaster that said "two rooms left!"

julianlam 7y ago

A lot of Shopify (or other similar) sites use a nudge where a little toaster pops up and says "so and so from Canmore, Ontario just purchased widget xyz" I never really thought much about it until someone (I think on here or Reddit) pointed out how it was annoying and a blatant sales tactic. I suppose I never really assumed the worst, it's really a matter of how you define "just purchased". If you're talking to a flesh and blood salesman, he or she will also say things like "I just sold a pair of knives to your neighbour". Maybe it was 10 minutes ago, maybe it was last week, but the statement itself is true, I suppose? In my neck of the woods, I get lots of driveway sealant salespeople saying they're "doing a house down the street". Are they lying? I never really thought so, but maybe they are. If they had done zero sales and were saying otherwise, then that'd be lying.

adtechblah 7y ago
This happened to my wife once for something she was thinking of purchasing. While she was deciding, I went to my own computer and opened the web site and watched it. After like 3 minutes, it started repeating names, which led me to believe that they had only sold a couple dozen units! Also, it's pretty awful if you have a fairly unique first name. "Adolph from Palm Springs just bought our hemorrhoid cream!" Great, now the only guy named Adolph in Palm Springs is outed.

jellicle 7y ago

When I see a website lying to me in our interactions (two rooms left, going fast, yeah sure), I just assume that if you're starting out our business trying to defraud me, it's not going to get any better and immediately nope out of there. I don't care if they have rooms $10 cheaper. If you've already proved you will lie to me, I'd just be foolish to engage in any business with you at all. I might not detect your next attempt to cheat me, or I might be more vulnerable having already given you my money, or something like that. Much better in the long run just to decline to do business at all.

Animats 7y ago

"Two thirds of the British public (65 percent) interpreted examples of scarcity and social proof claims used by hotel booking websites as sales pressure. Half said they were likely to distrust the company as a result of seeing them (49 percent). Just one in six (16 percent) said they believed the claims." "(34 percent) expressed a negative emotional reaction to these messages, choosing words like contempt and disgust from a precoded list." There goes your reputation. Amazon has become really bad. I have to decline "Amazon Prime" three times to get to checkout. Remember when they boasted of "one-click ordering?" And they lie, claiming that "Amazon Prime" is free.

perl4ever 7y ago
Well, I'm beginning to think that some retailers have exposed patterns that consumers can exploit. I noticed that even without Amazon Prime I get a free shipping option, which is supposed to be slow, but almost always comes about as quickly as Prime. I just got an order from another business, which gave me several choices - I could have spent $20 on shipping, but I took the free one that was supposed to take a few weeks, and it got to me in two days.

kevin_b_er 7y ago

What the website calls "nudges" I call "lies".

andrewla 7y ago

This is a classic example of a study in the social sciences that confirms my prejudices, but whose actual methodology is almost entirely meaningless. The participants are not asked to make any consequential decision based on the information, but just to fill out a survey saying whether they believed the claims. A nudge-conomist would say that even though people have stated preferences, their acted-upon preferences can diverge, so this study proves nothing. Even though I'm disposed to believe that nudges like this do create "nudge fatigue" and that people rapidly become immune to it (like the $*.99 pricing model), this study does nothing to confirm or dispute that notion.

mobjack 7y ago
This is the type of thing that you can run a controlled experiment on by running a simple AB test. People often say that these type of tactics turn them off, evidence usually shows that they are still effective. Maybe it does turn off some but not enough to stop a sale while increasing conversion from others.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  Or, everyone does it so people end up choosing from what's available.

deleted 7y ago

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sonnyblarney 7y ago

There's a wide gap between fake information and real information. On Via rail (Canada's Amtrack) you can see that 'there's only 3 seats left' in that category, but in my experience I think it's legit information. Frankly - it's kind of useful as I sometimes delay booking, but I know the cheap tickets will be sold at some point. Maybe there are some question marks about the 'darkness' of that pattern, but it's different than those sites that categorically lie or misrepresent. I suggest if airlines/hotels are outright lying about some kinds of information, they should face fines, legislation, regulation.

oicu812 7y ago

The "nudge" in the title of this article is drawing from the book "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness" [1] which cites one of the best nudges ever introduced - automatic enrollment in retirement savings plans. You can also learn more about true nudges from the Freakonomics Radio recordings. [2] [1] https://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/014311526X https://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happ... [2] http://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/nudge/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/nudge/

bogomipz 7y ago

Booking.com seems to take this a step further by including unavailable hotel rooms in search results with a "sold out, just missed it" label superimposed over them. That's pretty much the height of absurdity. It's the online equivalent of a used car salesman. It's really a gross experience. Booking.com unfortunately seems to have a lock on booking in Europe. I would be interested in hearing if and how folks are booking rooms in Europe without them.

WalterBright 7y ago

This has always been happening. Go back in time a decade at a time and watch a few TV commercials. The sales tactics used become more and more transparent and laughable the older they are. It's a lot like stock picking. Strategies that work become more and more sophisticated over time because the results of the simpler schemes are already factored into the price as they became known.

anfilt 7y ago

shocker. people quit beliving you if lied to repeatedly.