4 ms·

This is top-tier HN material right here folks.

by sergiotapia 6y ago

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
If you use dark patterns on your front page, why would I ever trust your app?
- fastball 6y ago
  How do you see this as a "dark pattern"? I see it as more of a reasonable compromise. If you visit my site, I think it's reasonable for me to understand how you're using it. If you don't want to participate in that, you are given a choice. That choice is between being tracked and having a mildly distracting banner at the bottom of a landing page. This doesn't seem like a betrayal of trust in any way. The implicit trust here is that you will not be tracked unless you agree to be tracked. This is in fact the case. Of course, on the one hand we do want you to opt in to tracking. This is a marketing site, after all. If you're actually interested in the product, tracking helps us understand who is interested and why, which in turn allows us to improve the product and reach more potential users. If you're not interested in the product, you don't need to click yes and there is no problem – because presumably you won't be spending very much time on the landing page for a product you're not interested in. I think a landing page like this one is slightly different from, say, a big cookie banner on a news website, as the intent is not really for you to be spending a lot of time reading content on this site.
  - rockostrich 6y ago
    It's a UX dark pattern because (besides deleting the html element) there's no way to dismiss a call to action, you can only ignore it.
    - anchpop 6y ago
      Just because it's annoying doesn't mean it's a dark pattern in the typical sense of the word. Here's darkpatterns.org's definition: > Dark Patterns are tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn't mean to, like buying or signing up for something. And here is the one used by the verge [0]: > A dark pattern is a user interface carefully crafted to trick users into doing things they might not otherwise do, such as buying insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills Here there's no trickery and no chance that a user would unintentionally agree to cookies when they didn't mean to. It's just a little annoying thing that bugs you until you do what they want. It's not unethical, but if you don't like it you shouldn't use their site. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/29/4640308/dark-patterns-inside-the-interfaces-designed-to-trick-you https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/29/4640308/dark-patterns-ins...
      - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
        > Just because it's annoying doesn't mean it's a dark pattern in the typical sense of the word. I'm happy to include multiple forms of coercion; the pattern here is the ratchet: https://jacquesmattheij.com/dark-patterns-the-ratchet/ https://jacquesmattheij.com/dark-patterns-the-ratchet/ > It's just a little annoying thing that bugs you until you do what they want. That's a nice summary of a class of dark patterns, yes. > It's not unethical, but if you don't like it you shouldn't use their site. It absolutely is unethical, and yes as I said above I will consider this a good reason to avoid the app.
        fastball 6y ago
        What exactly is your definition of ethical? Because a little box at the bottom of a webpage that just sits there does not really cross the unethical line for me. For me, this is only a dark pattern if the cookie banner makes the site unusable (as many sites do) until you click "Yes". Ours clearly does not. Regardless, the initial accusation was: > If you're not giving people a choice, why even pretend? Which is clearly not true. There is a very real choice – we are not pretending. Your choice matters.
        dyarosla 6y ago
        So why not allow disabling of the box?
        fastball 6y ago
        Because we do actually want you to click "yes", so that we can understand how you're using the site. Annoying? Absolutely. Unethical? I don't think so. However, since a lot of people are not a fan of our banner, we've decided to add an explicit "no" option. I still disagree that our original implementation is a "dark pattern", as we very explicitly[1] will not sell your data, and tracking for the sake of improving the product seems like a square deal to me. But I understand that people are finding it annoying, so it's been changed. Sorry about that. [1] https://supernotes.app/terms/ https://supernotes.app/terms/

This is top-tier HN material right here folks.

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago

If you use dark patterns on your front page, why would I ever trust your app?

fastball 6y ago
How do you see this as a "dark pattern"? I see it as more of a reasonable compromise. If you visit my site, I think it's reasonable for me to understand how you're using it. If you don't want to participate in that, you are given a choice. That choice is between being tracked and having a mildly distracting banner at the bottom of a landing page. This doesn't seem like a betrayal of trust in any way. The implicit trust here is that you will not be tracked unless you agree to be tracked. This is in fact the case. Of course, on the one hand we do want you to opt in to tracking. This is a marketing site, after all. If you're actually interested in the product, tracking helps us understand who is interested and why, which in turn allows us to improve the product and reach more potential users. If you're not interested in the product, you don't need to click yes and there is no problem – because presumably you won't be spending very much time on the landing page for a product you're not interested in. I think a landing page like this one is slightly different from, say, a big cookie banner on a news website, as the intent is not really for you to be spending a lot of time reading content on this site.
- rockostrich 6y ago
  It's a UX dark pattern because (besides deleting the html element) there's no way to dismiss a call to action, you can only ignore it.
  - anchpop 6y ago
    Just because it's annoying doesn't mean it's a dark pattern in the typical sense of the word. Here's darkpatterns.org's definition: > Dark Patterns are tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn't mean to, like buying or signing up for something. And here is the one used by the verge [0]: > A dark pattern is a user interface carefully crafted to trick users into doing things they might not otherwise do, such as buying insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills Here there's no trickery and no chance that a user would unintentionally agree to cookies when they didn't mean to. It's just a little annoying thing that bugs you until you do what they want. It's not unethical, but if you don't like it you shouldn't use their site. [0]: https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/29/4640308/dark-patterns-inside-the-interfaces-designed-to-trick-you https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/29/4640308/dark-patterns-ins...
    - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      > Just because it's annoying doesn't mean it's a dark pattern in the typical sense of the word. I'm happy to include multiple forms of coercion; the pattern here is the ratchet: https://jacquesmattheij.com/dark-patterns-the-ratchet/ https://jacquesmattheij.com/dark-patterns-the-ratchet/ > It's just a little annoying thing that bugs you until you do what they want. That's a nice summary of a class of dark patterns, yes. > It's not unethical, but if you don't like it you shouldn't use their site. It absolutely is unethical, and yes as I said above I will consider this a good reason to avoid the app.
      - fastball 6y ago
        What exactly is your definition of ethical? Because a little box at the bottom of a webpage that just sits there does not really cross the unethical line for me. For me, this is only a dark pattern if the cookie banner makes the site unusable (as many sites do) until you click "Yes". Ours clearly does not. Regardless, the initial accusation was: > If you're not giving people a choice, why even pretend? Which is clearly not true. There is a very real choice – we are not pretending. Your choice matters.
        dyarosla 6y ago
        So why not allow disabling of the box?
        fastball 6y ago
        Because we do actually want you to click "yes", so that we can understand how you're using the site. Annoying? Absolutely. Unethical? I don't think so. However, since a lot of people are not a fan of our banner, we've decided to add an explicit "no" option. I still disagree that our original implementation is a "dark pattern", as we very explicitly[1] will not sell your data, and tracking for the sake of improving the product seems like a square deal to me. But I understand that people are finding it annoying, so it's been changed. Sorry about that. [1] https://supernotes.app/terms/ https://supernotes.app/terms/