4 ms·

You can't legislate morals. Don't depend on the government to solve your problems, vote with your wallet.

• toxik 6y ago
  You can absolutely legislate morals, and a lot of laws are exactly that: codified morals.
• tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
  You can't legislate morals, but you can successfully legislate many consumer-hostile practices out of existence. Germany was pretty successful when it came to many dark patterns trying to trick consumers into "agreeing" to "contracts".
  • distances 6y ago
    Dark patterns were successful, or the preventing legislation was successful?
    • tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
      The preventing legislation was successful. All those "* by using this free trial you agree to pay 19.99/month for at least 24 months" scams went away basically overnight. The key to this is not to be afraid to aggressively add new dark patterns to the list of banned practices. An alternative would be aggressively hitting scammers who clearly rely on people missing the fine print with criminal charges for fraud/extortion (when they try to collect on the non-contracts). No idea why that wasn't done - the legal system is usually a lot more resistant to the "well, TECHNICALLY" thing than engineers think. Germany is really good about these rules. For example, a long list of practices, including mandatory arbitration, is explicitly forbidden (or forbidden in standard contracts) in § 308-309 BGB. § 312j BGB mandates clear disclosure that and what you're about to spend money on. The whole set of § 312-someletter is basically "we found another shitty practice and we're ending it now".
  • m463 6y ago
    I find europe more enlightened than the US when it comes to privacy, but I can't help but think things like the GDPR wouldn't have gone through if the companies doing it were domestic. The US doesn't care at all, until it's huawei.
• duxup 6y ago
  Just a law, not morality.