3 ms·

The obvious ethical alternative is to make it an easy process to cancel and an easy process to renew and restore cancelled accounts.

• mbesto 4y ago
  > an easy process to renew and restore cancelled accounts. What if the person was cancelling and was never given the opportunity to know there was a potential benefit? The ethical thing would also be to completely delete all of their data (including their login). They now come back and you say "sorry we can't restore all of your data, you need to start over". Didn't you just create (1) a bad UX and (2) a new dark pattern? Again, my point isn't whether the 3-modal pattern is a dark pattern, but rather that dark patterns are incredibly difficult to define, are novel and thus require nuance when determining their ethical ramifications.
  • mixmastamyk 4y ago
    It's not difficult at all, when you understand the workflow and are honest with the user about the ramifications. If honesty is difficult, that is the problem.
    • mbesto 4y ago
      > Didn't you just create (1) a bad UX and (2) a new dark pattern? You still didn't address this? Care to elaborate on what the "honest" path is here?
      • mixmastamyk 4y ago
        0) Do a better job so more folks understand the benefits. 1) Have one confirmation that explains the situation clearly (≤ 3 bullets) and avoids fat fingers, such as disallow input for three seconds. Github delete repo flow is reasonably similar.
  • dleslie 4y ago
    _Eventual_ total deletion is ethical, yes, but having a grace period after cancellation where data is temporarily retained is both obvious and established practice.