27 ms·
Outlook just asked me if I want to upgrade to bigger ads
- boplicity 5y agoPeople want free stuff. How do they expect it to get funded? Out of the kindness of a corporate heart? Seriously, though, I do wish there was a non-profit (similar to signal) that focused on providing free first class email.
- endisneigh 5y agoCan’t you literally just use a POP client with any free email provider and get your free first class email, with no ads?
- leodriesch 5y agoYes, for example GMail with Thunderbird or iCloud with the native mail app, probably some people just don’t know that they can connect their Outlook mail to another mail client.
- passivate 5y agoI think Google requires that you perform a web login every now and then to keep the account active. IIRC They don't count POP/IMAP auths as logins.
- gbear605 5y agoUnfortunately Google is increasingly making it harder to use gmail with a native mail client. They don’t use normal means of authentication so your client has to have built-in Google support. They’re introducing new types of emails that can only be opened from a web browser or Google’s proprietary email client. I won’t be surprised if I wake up one morning to see that gmail simply doesn’t work with normal mail clients anymore.
- Tijdreiziger 5y agoI think Microsoft does it with MS365 too. Admins can turn on SMTP/IMAP if they want, but MS makes sure to warn you that it’s less secure.
- namdnay 5y agoif everyone did that they'd have to start injecting ads into your email feed
- blackearl 5y agoOf course but Nana gets mail through the mail slot and keeps pop in the fridge. I'm assuming most people have no idea about the "advanced" options when it comes to email. Most non-tech people use a browser based gmail/yahoo/etc. account or (ugh) their ISP email
- coryfklein 5y ago> People want free stuff. I'll also point out that it takes two to tango and most every internet content company is actively offering free stuff. I suspect one reason that ad-based revenue models are so hard to remove are because eliminating it would require coordinated effort on two separate axes: 1) Consumers would have to coordinate on, "From now on, let's pay for all our services" AND 2) Companies would have to all agree, "Let's stop providing free product subsidized by ads" Without some sort of drastic fundamental shift in technology or radical technological invention, I just don't see it happening. Maybe someone makes a killer OS or product that has ad-blocking built-in from the ground up and is also so amazing that everyone switches to it, and so suddenly ad revenue drops to near zero? I guess we can dream.
- gundmc 5y ago> Maybe someone makes a killer OS or product that has ad-blocking built-in from the ground up and is also so amazing that everyone switches to it, and so suddenly ad revenue drops to near zero? I guess we can dream. I'm not even sure that's the dream I want. There has to be a middle ground with free services paid for by privacy-respecting ads, right?
- tzs 5y agoThere's also taxes to consider. If your site makes its money by showing ads from some third party ad network, that is just going to be ordinary corporate income which you will deal with when dealing with the corporate income tax in your country and/or state. If your site makes its money by selling products or services to end users it will still be ordinary corporate income in your country and/or state but it will also be sales income and so may also be subject to sales taxes or VAT where your customers reside. That can easily result in you having to deal with taxes in several dozen or more jurisdictions. If you can make enough money from ads it will almost always be a lot less hassle than making your money by charging customers.
- hnaccount_rng 5y agoSo... lobby for a more unified tax code?
- npteljes 5y agoI don't believe that it's healthy for society to rely on free stuff from a private entity. Free stuff should come from the government, which we keep up with our tax money, and private entities should be paid for their services directly, so that they can build a healthy business, and not rely on bullshit like burning investor money for a couple of years or surveilling everyone for some ad money.
- account42 5y agoHm, I think free stuff could/should also come from individuals and non-profit organizations, not just the government directly. Free stuff from for-profit corporations is always free() with a big () though, even if the cost is not directly paid by the user.
- smoyer 5y agoWhere's the "I don't want ads" button?
- ineedasername 5y agoAt the bottom of the modal, "Upgrade to Microsoft 365 for an ad free experience" Pay with your wallet or pay with your eyeballs & personal information.
- inetknght 5y agoSolution: don't use Outlook. Use a better email client.
- speedgoose 5y agoWhich email client would you recommend?
- Nicksil 5y ago> Which email client would you recommend? Thunderbird https://www.thunderbird.net https://www.thunderbird.net
- selectodude 5y agoIs Thunderbird accessible through a browser?
- inetknght 5y agoThe wonderful answer is that it isn't! Browsers can't, and absolutely shouldn't, do everything.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoBut there are basically doing everything now? And it works for the vast majority of people
- endisneigh 5y agoI agree with your point, but disagree in that it should be easy to check your email. The web is the natural solution to this.
- hyperhopper 5y agoEverything? Of course not. Display some images and text from a server? That seems like a perfect use case for a browser.
- jsnell 5y agoWhy is this confusing? The trade-off is between small ads mixed in with messages in the same area, or bigger ads in a separate area, not taking up vertical space. Like, it is surprising they decided to make that an option. Nobody adds options these days. But it should not be surprising that some people would prefer different options. If I had to guess, I'd assume the big ads version is the old behavior and the small one is what they are migrating to for consistency between mobile and web (or higher revenue).
- jonny_eh 5y agoThe surprising thing is how it's communicated. It's not actually "big ads" vs "small ads", it's "banner ads" vs "inline ads".
- gundmc 5y agoThe differentiator seems to be the "ads within the mailbox". It looks like a leading question of sorts designed to make the user more accepting of ads being injected into and intermixed with their list of emails.
- blowski 5y ago“Would you like stale bread or rat poison? Oh good, I’ll get the bread.”
- srtjstjsj 5y ago
- stavros 5y ago"Would you like this fresh bread or this pile of shit?" Except every fifth grain in the bread is rocks.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoin the decision between stale bread and rat poison would you not like stale bread and not like rat poison if and in some way not liking stale bread led to the receiving of the otherwise unliked rat poison, this said, would you prefer to have stale bread, click here if you do not agree.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pmontra 5y agoIf you ask that to a million people at least one will answer rat poison without understanding the consequences.
- falcolas 5y agoOne of the replies has the most plausible reason for this really weird prompt: They want to appear to be giving you the choice to not have inline ads, but the inline ads are more profitable.
- wolpoli 5y agoThis is it. I also find myself accidentially interacting with inline ads more than banner ads.
- ezekg 5y agoAdd this to the list of dark patterns big tech employs to make you a more profitable product.
- wutbrodo 5y agoIs this a dark pattern? "see inline ads, or see bigger ads" seems like a pretty straightforwardly-presented choice. Its like other ad servers' "use your data for targeted ads or see more ads, which will be untargeted". How else would you present the tradeoff to the user? How is the presence of the tradeoff any more of a "dark pattern" than if they had simply turned on inline ads with no option to avoid it?
- inopinatus 5y agoIt is most definitely a dark pattern. It's a choice, that is not a choice: the swindler's "pick a card, any card" trick. Presented in the most cynical, self-serving, and manipulative, fashion. As UX goes, it's nothing but execrable.
- wutbrodo 5y ago> It's a choice, that is not a choice How? I laid out precisely what the choice is in my comment, but I'll lay it out here again: smaller, inline ads vs larger, out-of-mailbox ads. There are positives and negatives to both. The only sense in which this is "not a choice" is that you will be served ads regardless, but "free service has ads" is not "a new dark pattern", in any way.
- wvenable 5y agoWhich is easier to block with an ad blocker?
- stjohnswarts 5y agoI suspect the side panel version
- Xophmeister 5y agoIf all else fails: Electrical tape along the sides of your screen.
- npteljes 5y agoSeriously, if all else fails, I'll write software to blur or put a black bar above the relevant portion of the screen.
- unfocussed_mike 5y agoFinally some progress in the endless debate between client polling and server push notifications. We now have push-polling notifications.
- tempnow987 5y agoGood lord, both sounds terrible. Ads in your email that skip the spam filters or big ads on the side that may slow down your browsing!
- causi 5y agoYou know at the time I never realized I was living in a golden era between the time anti-malware and anti-adware became very good and the time the ads were built right into the damn operating system and first-party software.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoThe only difference between proprietary software and malware is whether they're exploiting users with or without the corporation's permission. Adware, data exfiltration and remote access are all bad but when they do the exact same thing it's "totally legitimate business interests". Just like when it's "national security" when the governments do worse than what black hats do.
- birdyrooster 5y agoNations must maintain monopolies on certain powers like war and monetary policy to maintain order, so it’s not that hypocritical.
- toxik 5y agoTerrorism is to war as cryptocurrency is to economics?
- joebob42 5y agoIt's a little facetious, but it did put a smile on my face. It has a certain ring of truishness
- birdyrooster 5y agoCrypto is a coup
- dsr_ 5y agoMaybe you should take this as a sign that it's time to switch operating systems? There are many out there. Most of them treat you better than Microsoft does.
- grishka 5y agoCan someone explain to me why so many people insist on using webmail instead of a proper mail client and act as if webmail is the only way of doing email? Every single email service I know of, except hey.com, offers IMAP and SMTP.
- Dave_TRS 5y agoMail clients have issues like emails getting "stuck in outbox", it not being clear when new emails have loaded, etc. Also if I use a mail client then my setup is tied to a particular machine so if I'm away from it, or lose it, or it dies, then I have to go and reconfigure it all again, remember how I set it up, etc. Plus I see no benefit, webmail is great. I'm on my last year of 10+ years of free Google Workspace email. There's one perspective.
- jedberg 5y agoFor me personally it's because I can't manage priority emails or use the search through a 3rd party mail client. Most of my time in Gmail when I'm not just reading messages is using gmail specific functionality that isn't supported in 3rd party clients.
- kiwijamo 5y agoHonestly email clients have not really improved a lot in recent years. I personally use Fastmail which has a fantastic web interface which is honestly so much better than e.g. Thunderbird, Evolution, etc. I do use Outlook/Mac for my work which is pretty decent but I'd still prefer Fastmail Web over it.
- akshayshah 5y agoI used to feel the same way: I used mutt for ~10 years, Thunderbird and Sylpheed Claws for about a year each, and then gave up.* Despite webmail's many flaws, I haven't found an MUA that's as good for me as the Gmail web UI. - Most MUAs choke on my archive. Simple searches take seconds. - Every modern email service has a tag-like construct. Representing tags in IMAP duplicates messages. - Decades later, IMAP sync is still slow, unreliable, and annoying to debug. - A surprising number of MUAs ignore account boundaries when integrating with my contacts. - Depending on my job, I go through years-long periods with lots of calendar-related mail. Tight integration between Google Calendar and my mail client is very convenient. - I use snoozes and (especially) delayed sends often. - I use all these features on my phone, too. I haven't found an email client that solves all these problems, on both my laptop and my phone, that's better than Gmail web UI + Gmail iOS app. With two exceptions, all the clients I've tried are slower and less reliable, and they often have fewer features important to me. These days, they're often a less-polished, poorly-tested website in an Electron container. I'm happy to pay for GSuite (or whatever they're calling it these days), because I get ad-free clients that work for me and excellent uptime/deliverability. * The only genuinely good clients I've found are Mailbox (never shipped a stable desktop client, but had useful innovations) and Superhuman. Mailbox was discontinued post-acquisition, and Gmail has implemented their best features. Superhuman is fine, but not worth paying for (though I'd perhaps feel differently if I spent hours each day in email).
- flipbrad 5y agoI'm pretty confident this is to comply with a recent EU ruling that held that EU antispam laws apply to display ads that look like an email in your inbox. In essence the left prompt is a marketing email opt-in, even if it doesn't look like one (nastier people than I would say it's disguising its true nature - not I, of course). Here's the CJEU case in question: https://www.insideprivacy.com/european-union-2/court-of-justice-of-the-eu-finds-that-advertising-shown-in-email-inbox-is-subject-to-rules-on-direct-marketing/ https://www.insideprivacy.com/european-union-2/court-of-just...
- MonaroVXR 5y ago>display ads that look like an email in your inbox. Like the ones in my Gmail.
- lopis 5y agoThere are ads in Gmail??
- drexlspivey 5y agoThere are ads on the internet?
- Mogzol 5y agoIf you have the tabbed inbox enabled (i.e. Social, Promotions, Updates, Forums), then Gmail will insert ads into the non-primary tab that look almost like regular emails. If you have the tabs disabled so that all your messages show up in the Primary inbox, you don't get ads.
- CamelCaseName 5y agoI think the copy is fine. It would be nice if they presented the second option more fairly (E.g. "Larger ads but outside of your typical workflow") but it's understandable that they push you towards inline which must be more profitable. Nonetheless, I appreciate that they give you three options (inline, sidebar, paid no ads). Imagine having that option on Google Search?
- Sophira 5y agoThe copy is extremely manipulative. They're playing on the idea that users will think "Bigger ads? Why the hell would I want bigger ads? This is obviously a trick to try to get me to click that.", when in actual fact, Microsoft don't want that. The choice is actually between having ads show up as faux-emails (making them difficult to avoid) and having them show up on the side (making them easier to ignore, despite the "Bigger ads" copy). They want you to pick the option where you don't have banner blindness.
- mannerheim 5y agoThere's a third option here. And arguably a fourth.
- johndfsgdgdfg 5y agoThe reality is developing and maintaining a web service at MS scale is expensive and certainly not free. I am glad that MS has taken a very ethical rouate and is providing users a choice. I hope other big tech follow MS lead here.
- abcc8 5y agoOutlook is part of office or windows, both paid products. I don't really see how putting ads in a paid product is ethical.
- artinmg 5y agoBut this looks like the free Outlook email service, not the client. In other words, an ad-supported service.
- vel0city 5y ago> Outlook is part of office or windows This is yet another option, Outlook the email service. Neither Outlook the Office application nor Outlook the bundled free Windows mail client have ads (currently). This is only the free Outlook mail service web interface.
- Scharkenberg 5y agoIt's the outlook.com website and the user has a free account. Paying does get rid of the ads.
- sdoering 5y agoBut is it a fair choice? In the thread on Twitter Adam Waltham stated (imho quite correctly): 'This is the point, they want to make “show the ads separately from your mail” sound like a bad option, because they make more money when the ads are disguised as emails in your inbox.' So this very dark pattern is designed to make you not click to see bigger ads. They want you to have ads disguised as emails in your inbox. And because you choose the are legally in the clear in the EU because there new regulation (as stated other places in this thread already) requires them to.
- 5y ago
- thesuperbigfrog 5y agoMicrosoft is showing that they are really the ones who are in control. "Either the user controls the software, or the software controls the users": https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM?t=57 https://youtu.be/Ag1AKIl_2GM?t=57
- dredmorbius 5y agohttps://nitter.kavin.rocks/louisnicholls_/status/1487179285177815047 https://nitter.kavin.rocks/louisnicholls_/status/14871792851...
- wutbrodo 5y agoWhat's confusing about this? It's asking whether you want bigger ads or in-mailbox ads, which have their own negatives.
- krsdcbl 5y agoHe is mistaken. Outlook just asked him if he is okay with having Ads look like mail, just made the alternative look worse
- quattrofan 5y ago
- hendersoon 5y agoI suggest choosing the option on the right, because the separate advertising column would be easier to block via a cosmetic filter in uBlock Origin.
- zmmmmm 5y agoDark patterns like this should be beneath any company that wants to be respected in the enterprise space like Microsoft does.
- omegalulw 5y agoI'm confused, enterprise users probably won't get ads either way,
- globular-toast 5y agoWhy on earth would you use this when Thunderbird is available?
- stereoradonc 5y agoWhy not shift to Fastmail? There have been numerous discussions around here. I don't think that its justified to criticise a company providing services and charging advertisers to give it for free, and people complaining on yet another social media platform about this design choice. It's perfidious! I stumble on numerous Twitter threads about this. Leave the platform if it's so insidious.
- chris_wot 5y agoWe use Exchange (still). All our students got moved to the “new Outlook” that still doesn’t support Exchange. Genius move by Microsoft, very helpful.
- inopinatus 5y agoI curse whoever designed and authorised this cynical, abusive, manipulative abomination, and wish them a shorter life, one filled with misery, suffering, and humiliation.
- npteljes 5y agoPeople really do need feedback for their actions, because if there's none, they're not inclined to change behavior and learn. Even then it's not guaranteed, but if there's no feedback at all, how would they even begin to weigh the consequences of their actions?
- mrtweetyhack 5y ago
- Tagbert 5y agoWhile the choice between the options is a little confusing at first the idea of ads in a free email service is not that unique. It is clear that they setup the harder to ignore ads as the more appealing (and default) option. They do offer a paid email service as an alternative. I think I’m OK with this. They seem to be using those ads to fund the free service.
- jokethrowaway 5y agoSelect the big banner and ad block it?
- nobrains 5y agoThis is the right answer: https://twitter.com/edgalligan/status/1494746064318091267?s=20&t=T7Qj8H3X80jHohGhEqfVgw https://twitter.com/edgalligan/status/1494746064318091267?s=...
- xanaxagoras 5y agoThe right answer: https://roundcube.net/ https://roundcube.net/
- npteljes 5y agoIf you want it hosted, Posteo is quite nice, and it's 1 EUR per month.
- richardfey 5y agoRelevant: https://www.darkpatterns.org/ https://www.darkpatterns.org/