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> “Dark patterns” — confusing or deceptive user interfaces designed to steer users into making certain choices — will be prohibited. The EU says that, as a rule
by tjbiddle 4y ago
> “Dark patterns” — confusing or deceptive user interfaces designed to steer users into making certain choices — will be prohibited. The EU says that, as a rule, cancelling subscriptions should be as easy as signing up for them.
This is an excellent addition.
- eli 4y agoIt’s a great idea but my understanding is that they have not yet defined the term. And that sounds very hard to define.
- aaaaaaaaaaab 4y ago"I know it when I see it."
- eli 4y agoI’m just not a big fan of laws where just about everyone could arguably be breaking them in some small way. That’s a lot of faith to put in regulators to always act honorably. Vaguely worded laws can also lead conservative corporate counsels to make decisions like geoblocking all of the EU
- bryanrasmussen 4y agoin common law systems I know it when I see it is good enough, but I believe most of EU is under a Napoleonic system where you should define what you mean.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- XorNot 4y agoThe requirement of "subscribe is as easy as unsubscribe" is a metric which you could argue about in court, but would be very hard to game. i.e. if signup is "email and credit card number" then you're going to be hard pressed to explain why a similar option to cancel does not exist and isn't accessible in as many clicks, with equivalent screen real-estate usage.
- q-big 4y ago> i.e. if signup is "email and credit card number" then you're going to be hard pressed to explain why a similar option to cancel does not exist So you argue that to cancel a subscription, you should have to provide your credit card number again. If a check on the credit card fails for some obscure reason, you cannot cancel your subscription. This is what "subscribe is as easy as unsubscribe" also means.
- XorNot 4y agoSure: but if it fails, then the card is invalid, and the card no longer can be billed. Again - you wouldn't get away with saying "well we couldn't verify the number" as standard practice - you'd just get sued and then punitively fined if it was found to be a lie.
- kaba0 4y agoI mean, that is precisely the court’s job to interpret the law. Your take is just a deliberately twisted one, it wouldn’t stand a chance in a court setting the same way as a willful offense can’t be defined that precisely, yet there is generally no problem with it.
- jamesrr39 4y agoNitpick: most of it falls under the Civil law system, some of which is Napoleonic. Wikipedia has a pretty nice map of the breakdown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)#/media/File:Map_of_the_Legal_systems_of_the_world_(en).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)#/medi...
- lin83 4y agoAmazon's attempts to get users to unwittingly sign up to Prime is one of the most egregious examples I encounter on a regular basis. As a European I cannot wait to see it gone.
- pessimizer 4y agoI feel like I remember it being pretty easy to cancel Prime, though. Have things changed?
- bcrosby95 4y agoIf it's easy to accidentally sign up for something, does that mean it has to be easy to accidentally cancel something? Because that would be hilarious.
- haswell 4y agoI’m imagining a scenario where you’re about to check out, and decide not to finish the transaction because you wanted to add something else to your very first. So you click the cancel button. Only you find out you’ve cancelled Prime.
- psyc 4y agoAfter the last iOS update, Apple nagged the shit out of me to setup Apple Pay, for two days. No way to say ‘fuck off’ - only ‘remind me’. No obvious way to stop the nagging. Finally I gave them just the tip, and then pulled out before the money shot, and that seems to have shut them up for now.
- bgro 4y agoRemember when Xbox let you sign up for Live online, but you had to do a 3 hour interrogation on the phone to cancel? And calls would cost like 25 cents a minute or something crazy. Or the auto renewing subscriptions that either cancel your service immediately the second you turn off auto renew, even if you paid for the current time allotment, or they just prevent or ignore your request to not renew. I feel like reverse charging didn’t exist back then. There’s also entitled devs that say your email domain or VOIP number isn’t good enough when signing up for their service. There’s no reason for anybody to use an email from their perfect in test whitelist of gmail or Microsoft domains… And why would anybody ever have a voip number unless they were a terrorist?
- SantalBlush 4y agoThere's also this classic attempt at cancelling Comcast service. [1] What a nightmare. [1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yYUvpYE99vg https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yYUvpYE99vg
- vmladenov 4y agoYou know, I’ve heard this a lot and I hate Comcast for their abysmal upload speeds + their pricing, but I’ve cancelled Comcast at five different residences now and the experience took less than 5 minutes each time. “Why do you want to cancel?” “I’m moving.” “Would you like us to transfer service to your new address?” “No.” “OK”
- Terretta 4y agoOr DirecTV recently: “Hey we couldn’t process your card due to a temporary error so we went ahead and cancelled your $59 for AllTheThings plan you had for the last 10 years as a loyal customer. We’re very much not at all sorry that plan isn’t available any more. Now AllTheThings costs $129, but don’t worry, just click to reactivate, we’ll try your card again.” … “AllTheThings processed successfully for $129, thank you for your custom.”
- einszwei 4y agoI am very tired of the cookie/tracking popups on many websites that don't have option to "reject all" but just "accept all" and "customise". Main example being Google Search. Looking at this, I am hopeful but not too optimistic.
- jsnell 4y agoFrom a couple of days ago: https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/new-cookie-choices-in-europe/ https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-europe/new-cooki...
- einszwei 4y agoWow, best UX change from Google in sometime now.
- hnbad 4y agoDon't let the prose fool you. They're doing this because what they did before was in violation and the walls were closing in. This reminds me of supermarkets in Germany loudly announcing that they would abandon plastic bags to save the environment ... a few weeks before legislation came into effect banning them from selling plastic bags. Why wait until you're potentially facing fines if you can move slightly ahead and sell it as a voluntary good thing you do for your users/customers?
- hiptobecubic 4y agoThat's basically WAI though. Plastic bags were banned because of the environmental impact. For some particularly naive customers they might think it's a feel-good initiative from a brand they now love a little more, but at the policy level it's really not important how various implementers want to spin it. What's important is that the outcome is a reduction in plastic bag use.
- hnbad 4y ago
- jpz 4y agoSounds extremely subjective. How do you measure it and where do you draw the line? All marketing is somewhat coercive. How do you get economic and business growth (things which are good for people - jobs and employment) without marketing and advertising?
- nathias 4y agoIt's objective its just very widespread. Amazon is probably the greatest offender, but most of the platforms and BigTech is just dark patterns all the way down.
- ugjka 4y agoI hope this makes Google Pay app subscription cancellations actually cancel them instead of postponing them for 3 months or so
- bratwurst3000 4y agoWindows is fuckinh the worst at this. The whole system experience is at some point „ please login to the mircrosoft produkt you never signed for“ or whatever new noninteresting feature they have. That there isnt something like a windows version striped off that stuff is a shame . Oh and firewall or defender that puts a big !! Everywhere so it seems that my system will explode anytime Are they aware that people use it for working?