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Where are the companies that don't pull this shit? It's more like a pickaxe and railcar than a canary. Most companies use dark patterns because they're profitab
by robbedpeter 5y ago
Where are the companies that don't pull this shit? It's more like a pickaxe and railcar than a canary. Most companies use dark patterns because they're profitable and not illegal. People doing profitable work get bonuses - this is what sales teams are for. People won't do ethically ugly shit unless you pay them enough commission to hide the stink, or if you're good enough at bullshitting the bullshitters.
Half the shit being done in crypto would count as fraud if the assets weren't digital. NFT is literally pump and dump, and people are being blatant about it.
Customer retention - harassing and cajoling and exhausting people into paying more - is not standard global business practice. It won't go away unless it's made illegal.
Appealing to the people doing the dirty work is silly. They're not in it to be good nice citizens of humanity. They're peddling shinola to the great unwashed, getting their nut.
Before we fix the ones that only whine insistently when you cancel, let's get a handle on the Hotel a California, every human has an account, "you can never leave" companies.
Legislate strict privacy rights requiring ephemeral storage, continuous consent, and fast, lethal penalties. If your company can't protect customer data like its fucking Fort Knox your company has no business handling private information.
There are sufficient existing enforcement and watchdog groups, they simply need legislation and executive direction.
Refine nuanced interactions, setting limits on "retention" activities, and establish a framework of legally prohibited dark patterns by setting clear boundaries around what constitutes acceptable sales, data, and account management behavior.
Nuke offenders from orbit, as frequently and fast as possible.
Anything less and the circus will continue. Shitty little clowns will keep getting out of the car, mugging audience members, and it's just a matter of time before the lion tamer takes center ring.
It's way past time for laws that account for the fact that the world is digital. Analog metaphors don't cut it.
- sidr 5y ago> Where are the companies that don't pull this shit? Netflix? Amazon?
- sk0g 5y agoAmazon makes you jump through something like 5-10 app pages to cancel Prime. Almost felt like breaking up with a particularly desperate partner.
- ajdude 5y agoAnd then they try to sign you back up with every new purchase
- nyjah 5y agoI'll add ESPN plus and Fubo to the list of easy to cancel. Fubo is my favorite because when you cancel they send an email to notify you of a "better option" - Pause the membership so that they can continue to bill in 3 months.
- ywain 5y agoI recently cancelled my Netflix account. Cancelling was easy enough. However about one week later, I got a churn email in the style of "Hey Ywain, here are 3 good reasons for you to ~~give us your money~~ subscribe again". I was pretty sure my account was set to not receive any kind of promotional emails, so I clicked the "Unsubscribe" link. The link asks you to login, and immediately after login it redirects you to the one-click page to resume your subscription rather than the communications settings page. Even after manually navigating to the communications settings page, I was able to verify that my account was, in fact, set to not receive any kind of emails at all from Netflix, so there's nothing more I can unsubscribe from. Very disappointed in Netflix, and won't be resubscribing any time soon. Re. Amazon, the process to unsubscribe from Prime is a textbook dark pattern which requires 3 or 4 clicks on pages with 3 buttons where 2 out of the 3 will stop the unsubscribe flow and the third button being of course the less obvious one.
- eloisius 5y agoMark it spam. This is becoming a mantra for me. Companies don’t respect marketing consent preferences, or just don’t provide an option. If you didn’t ask for an email about a specific transaction, it’s spam.
- black-tusk 5y agoWhen you mark an email spam you should not get another non transactional communication from them, ever
- Aeolun 5y agoI recently found out that at some point after I started paying for it, Terrastruct became free for personal use. Surprised, I went to check my subscription, and it turns out they had just stopped charging me somewhere spring of 2021… I’m still baffled by the fact that any company I was voluntarily paying would just freely stop charging me.
- FireBeyond 5y agoShout out to Code&Quill. I had a notebook subscription. Canceled it the other day. Manage subscription > Cancel. No confirmation[1]. No incentive. No survey. No guilt. No ultra light grey buttons. Just click. "Your subscription has been canceled". [1] Which isn't a huge issue, I feel, it takes about 30 seconds to re-establish.
- rchaud 5y agoApple Arcade and Google Stadia didn't do this. Subscribed and then unsubbed from both over the holiday period.