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It should not be normal that companies are trying to fool their customers. I may be wrong, but I feel that dark patterns have gotten worse and have become quite

It should not be normal that companies are trying to fool their customers. I may be wrong, but I feel that dark patterns have gotten worse and have become quite normalised. I'm well aware that companies are not your friends, and they are only in it to earn as much money as possible etc. But in the ideal world it should never be a consideration to willingly deceive your customers. Then something is wrong that needs fixing.

zerosizedweasle 11mo ago
If your product is this bad and no one wants to buy it normally, maybe you should build a new product.
- estimator7292 11mo ago
  But it's so much more profitable for shareholders to force users to engage with the shitty product
  - givemeethekeys 11mo ago
    It's much cheaper for execs to buy bundled "it can do everything for less!" junk for the peasants. That and, they're paying for Excel anyway...
    - cogman10 11mo ago
      Literally the exact reason we ended up with MS teams instead of slack.
  - wat10000 11mo ago
    Even if you have a great product, you'll still get more money out of people if you apply some dark patterns like this. It's very hard for a company to resist that siren call.
- vjvjvjvjghv 11mo ago
  Making new products is very hard. Just look at the innovation output of the tech giants. Compared to the resources they have it’s pretty pathetic. They are simply out of ideas.
- RoyTyrell 11mo ago
  Yea but Satya bet a lot of the company on AI, and if it fails he's fucked as CEO. So he's going to make damn well sure he's shoved AI down everyone's throats as much as possible, even if it alienates some percentage of their customer base.
alex1138 11mo ago
There's no accountability either on a liability - legal, prison - level or a personal duty to make sure you Do The Right Thing (when, of course, you have a family to feed) Behavior like what some of the tech giants do (and I don't crusade against "big tech" but individual cases are ridiculous) wouldn't be justified if you, like, wrote it down on a piece of paper and showed it to them, but they get away with it because you can just ignore all feedback, you don't have to actually answer support tickets from a distance of potentially hundreds of miles away (if you acted like that to my face, well, you wouldn't dare) Some are worse than others; some legitimately just do not care how much evil they're pumping out into the world (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178)
tsunamifury 11mo ago
Uber, Airbnb and DoorDash are the primary dark pattern users in the industry. I am an executive design leader and all hires from these three companies are screened in detail about their honesty level in their designs due to how many issues I have with these companies training their workers to lie. If you work for them know that it’s a black mark on your record. I have hired two from these companies who literally opened the interview with “I want to leave X because they literally are lying”
- kenjackson 11mo ago
  What are examples of their lies?
  - tsunamifury 11mo ago
    Progressive anti disclosure in prices and fees. Full on fraudulent display of prices then charging another price. Hiding service/worker fee splits Global predatory pricing Blatantly false forecasting revenues to businesses or workers. And much more. These are all active UX designs I have seen presented.
- netsharc 11mo ago
  Considering their business model is exploitation of regulations (for hotels, for employment), no wonder they're using dark patterns too. And it seems other companies see them and think "hey, can we do that as well?" (Like the issue of this article...) Meta with its exploiting of children's (and adults') insecurities is probably worse though.
noir_lord 11mo ago
Welcome to 2025 - Cyberpunk without the cool aesthetics but all the downsides. I realised the last time I was in a major city (I live in a village) at night just how close we are, ebikes wizzing around with youngish adults wearing corporate logos all over themselves while using e-cigs, gangs of others waiting outside each restaurant for a pickup. Straight out the opening of Snowcrash but without the cool car. We really did invent Torment Nexus from the classic cautionary tale "Don't Create The Torment Nexus". I love computers, I love programming (and have for 35 years), I really really am coming to detest larger and larger parts of the modern tech scene - consumer tech and the Microsoft/Meta/Googles of the world.
- Asmod4n 11mo ago
  Thank luck we aren’t in the Warhammer 40k universe yet.
  - noir_lord 11mo ago
    If anything we'd be more likely to open a portal to hell for Argent Energy. `Meta today announced a strategic partnership with Union Aerospace Corporation - the deal will give Meta access to UAC's energy network powering the next revolution in AI.`
- wat10000 11mo ago
  We thought computers were different. That freedom of information would throw off the shackles of the old order and usher in a new era of human flourishing. Turns out computers weren't different at all, they just hadn't caught the full attention of government and business yet.
  - IT4MD 11mo ago
    [dead]
  - matheusmoreira 11mo ago
    I think I became depressed because of this. I used to be so enthusiastic about computers. We had the freedom to do anything we wanted. Now they're locking everything down, destroying everything the word "hacker" ever stood for. I'm watching it happen in real time. It's heart breaking. Computers are world changing technology. They are so powerful they could defeat police, judges, governments, militaries. Left unchecked, they could wipe out entire segments of the global economy. They could literally reshape the world. The powers that be cannot tolerate it.
thewebguyd 11mo ago
You can thank Friedman for that with the whole "The social responsibility of business is to increase profits" mindset and the Dodge vs. Ford court case that ruled Ford had to operate his company in the interests of its shareholders above all else. We need to end shareholder primacy and have stronger antitrust enforcement.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- itopaloglu83 11mo ago
  Leaving the markets uncontrolled is the problem. Fine the hell of them for acting anti-consumer and they will quickly align themselves with the realities.
  - ares623 11mo ago
    Or just lobby harder tbh
  - plorg 11mo ago
    Better yet, pursue structural remedies. Break up or shut down bad actors.
- themafia 11mo ago
  Friedman told people what they wanted to hear. Unsurprisingly Friedman was lauded and rewarded for this behavior.
- kevin_thibedeau 11mo ago
  The interests of the shareholders doesn't mean extract all profit immediately.
- AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
  > the Dodge vs. Ford court case that ruled Ford had to operate his company in the interests of its shareholders above all else. That case is from 1919 and it doesn't say what most people think it says. The problem there was that Ford was trying to claim he could do whatever he wants because he has the most votes, minority shareholders be damned. In practice what companies do now is that they do whatever they want and come up with some explanation for why it's in the interest of the shareholders, e.g. charitable donations are tax deductions and strengthen the company's brand with customers, instead of explicitly telling the other shareholders to eat sand. The real problem with modern companies is diffuse ownership. You invest your retirement money in some fund, the fund is the thing that actually elects the board and what the fund wants is to increase profits, and typically short-term profits at that, so they elect a board to do it and that's what happens. It's not because the law requires them to do that, it's because that's the result of that incentive structure. And then all the companies that you own as a shareholder are out there screwing you over by double when you're their customer. Whereas if you have a company owned and operated by the same people, then they can say "hey wait a minute, this is only going to increase short-term profits by a small amount and it's going to make everyone hate us, maybe we shouldn't do it?" Which is the thing that's missing from large publicly-traded companies. > stronger antitrust enforcement This is the other thing that's missing. Even if companies are trying to screw you, if they have a lot of competition then they can't, because you'd just switch to one that isn't. But now try that in a market where there are only two incumbents and they're both content to pick your pocket as long as the other one is doing the same.
giancarlostoro 11mo ago
I call it Marketing Driven development. Its also responsible for a drop in higher quality software as business people have to justify their jobs and push developers off maintenance tickets that are “low priority” items but still impact enough customers that it should be embarrassing.
vjvjvjvjghv 11mo ago
There aren’t enough opportunities to make the profits they need to keep the stock price up in an ethical manner. So they have to use dark patterns. It will keep getting worse with these trillion dollar behemoths having to maintain their growth rates. Ads everywhere. AI will become more and more of a tool for manipulation.
themafia 11mo ago
> and have become quite normalised. Enforcement agencies are asleep at the switch. Without any pressure to constrain them then these major corporations will stop at nothing. > it should never be a consideration to willingly deceive your customers. They don't see it that way. They just see it as a new profit stream that they're daring enough to capture.
- Yeul 11mo ago
  Windows 11 OneDrive that just decides to backup files without consent was certainly daring. Look I am computer savvy enough to "fix" Windows I can live with it but I advised my mom to get an Apple laptop.
- watwut 11mo ago
  > Enforcement agencies are asleep at the switch. They are not asleep. They were intentionally weakened, step by step.
netsharc 11mo ago
Isn't it amazing that big corp is like the stereotypical rug salesman now... I suppose since they're (they being Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft) helping pay for a ballroom for the biggest rug conman..

zerosizedweasle 11mo ago

If your product is this bad and no one wants to buy it normally, maybe you should build a new product.

estimator7292 11mo ago
But it's so much more profitable for shareholders to force users to engage with the shitty product
- givemeethekeys 11mo ago
  It's much cheaper for execs to buy bundled "it can do everything for less!" junk for the peasants. That and, they're paying for Excel anyway...
  - cogman10 11mo ago
    Literally the exact reason we ended up with MS teams instead of slack.
- wat10000 11mo ago
  Even if you have a great product, you'll still get more money out of people if you apply some dark patterns like this. It's very hard for a company to resist that siren call.
vjvjvjvjghv 11mo ago
Making new products is very hard. Just look at the innovation output of the tech giants. Compared to the resources they have it’s pretty pathetic. They are simply out of ideas.
RoyTyrell 11mo ago
Yea but Satya bet a lot of the company on AI, and if it fails he's fucked as CEO. So he's going to make damn well sure he's shoved AI down everyone's throats as much as possible, even if it alienates some percentage of their customer base.

alex1138 11mo ago

There's no accountability either on a liability - legal, prison - level or a personal duty to make sure you Do The Right Thing (when, of course, you have a family to feed) Behavior like what some of the tech giants do (and I don't crusade against "big tech" but individual cases are ridiculous) wouldn't be justified if you, like, wrote it down on a piece of paper and showed it to them, but they get away with it because you can just ignore all feedback, you don't have to actually answer support tickets from a distance of potentially hundreds of miles away (if you acted like that to my face, well, you wouldn't dare) Some are worse than others; some legitimately just do not care how much evil they're pumping out into the world (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178)

tsunamifury 11mo ago

Uber, Airbnb and DoorDash are the primary dark pattern users in the industry. I am an executive design leader and all hires from these three companies are screened in detail about their honesty level in their designs due to how many issues I have with these companies training their workers to lie. If you work for them know that it’s a black mark on your record. I have hired two from these companies who literally opened the interview with “I want to leave X because they literally are lying”

kenjackson 11mo ago
What are examples of their lies?
- tsunamifury 11mo ago
  Progressive anti disclosure in prices and fees. Full on fraudulent display of prices then charging another price. Hiding service/worker fee splits Global predatory pricing Blatantly false forecasting revenues to businesses or workers. And much more. These are all active UX designs I have seen presented.
netsharc 11mo ago
Considering their business model is exploitation of regulations (for hotels, for employment), no wonder they're using dark patterns too. And it seems other companies see them and think "hey, can we do that as well?" (Like the issue of this article...) Meta with its exploiting of children's (and adults') insecurities is probably worse though.

noir_lord 11mo ago

Welcome to 2025 - Cyberpunk without the cool aesthetics but all the downsides. I realised the last time I was in a major city (I live in a village) at night just how close we are, ebikes wizzing around with youngish adults wearing corporate logos all over themselves while using e-cigs, gangs of others waiting outside each restaurant for a pickup. Straight out the opening of Snowcrash but without the cool car. We really did invent Torment Nexus from the classic cautionary tale "Don't Create The Torment Nexus". I love computers, I love programming (and have for 35 years), I really really am coming to detest larger and larger parts of the modern tech scene - consumer tech and the Microsoft/Meta/Googles of the world.

Asmod4n 11mo ago
Thank luck we aren’t in the Warhammer 40k universe yet.
- noir_lord 11mo ago
  If anything we'd be more likely to open a portal to hell for Argent Energy. `Meta today announced a strategic partnership with Union Aerospace Corporation - the deal will give Meta access to UAC's energy network powering the next revolution in AI.`
wat10000 11mo ago
We thought computers were different. That freedom of information would throw off the shackles of the old order and usher in a new era of human flourishing. Turns out computers weren't different at all, they just hadn't caught the full attention of government and business yet.
- IT4MD 11mo ago
  [dead]
- matheusmoreira 11mo ago
  I think I became depressed because of this. I used to be so enthusiastic about computers. We had the freedom to do anything we wanted. Now they're locking everything down, destroying everything the word "hacker" ever stood for. I'm watching it happen in real time. It's heart breaking. Computers are world changing technology. They are so powerful they could defeat police, judges, governments, militaries. Left unchecked, they could wipe out entire segments of the global economy. They could literally reshape the world. The powers that be cannot tolerate it.

thewebguyd 11mo ago

You can thank Friedman for that with the whole "The social responsibility of business is to increase profits" mindset and the Dodge vs. Ford court case that ruled Ford had to operate his company in the interests of its shareholders above all else. We need to end shareholder primacy and have stronger antitrust enforcement.

deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
itopaloglu83 11mo ago
Leaving the markets uncontrolled is the problem. Fine the hell of them for acting anti-consumer and they will quickly align themselves with the realities.
- ares623 11mo ago
  Or just lobby harder tbh
- plorg 11mo ago
  Better yet, pursue structural remedies. Break up or shut down bad actors.
themafia 11mo ago
Friedman told people what they wanted to hear. Unsurprisingly Friedman was lauded and rewarded for this behavior.
kevin_thibedeau 11mo ago
The interests of the shareholders doesn't mean extract all profit immediately.
AnthonyMouse 11mo ago
> the Dodge vs. Ford court case that ruled Ford had to operate his company in the interests of its shareholders above all else. That case is from 1919 and it doesn't say what most people think it says. The problem there was that Ford was trying to claim he could do whatever he wants because he has the most votes, minority shareholders be damned. In practice what companies do now is that they do whatever they want and come up with some explanation for why it's in the interest of the shareholders, e.g. charitable donations are tax deductions and strengthen the company's brand with customers, instead of explicitly telling the other shareholders to eat sand. The real problem with modern companies is diffuse ownership. You invest your retirement money in some fund, the fund is the thing that actually elects the board and what the fund wants is to increase profits, and typically short-term profits at that, so they elect a board to do it and that's what happens. It's not because the law requires them to do that, it's because that's the result of that incentive structure. And then all the companies that you own as a shareholder are out there screwing you over by double when you're their customer. Whereas if you have a company owned and operated by the same people, then they can say "hey wait a minute, this is only going to increase short-term profits by a small amount and it's going to make everyone hate us, maybe we shouldn't do it?" Which is the thing that's missing from large publicly-traded companies. > stronger antitrust enforcement This is the other thing that's missing. Even if companies are trying to screw you, if they have a lot of competition then they can't, because you'd just switch to one that isn't. But now try that in a market where there are only two incumbents and they're both content to pick your pocket as long as the other one is doing the same.

giancarlostoro 11mo ago

I call it Marketing Driven development. Its also responsible for a drop in higher quality software as business people have to justify their jobs and push developers off maintenance tickets that are “low priority” items but still impact enough customers that it should be embarrassing.

vjvjvjvjghv 11mo ago

There aren’t enough opportunities to make the profits they need to keep the stock price up in an ethical manner. So they have to use dark patterns. It will keep getting worse with these trillion dollar behemoths having to maintain their growth rates. Ads everywhere. AI will become more and more of a tool for manipulation.

themafia 11mo ago

> and have become quite normalised. Enforcement agencies are asleep at the switch. Without any pressure to constrain them then these major corporations will stop at nothing. > it should never be a consideration to willingly deceive your customers. They don't see it that way. They just see it as a new profit stream that they're daring enough to capture.

Yeul 11mo ago
Windows 11 OneDrive that just decides to backup files without consent was certainly daring. Look I am computer savvy enough to "fix" Windows I can live with it but I advised my mom to get an Apple laptop.
watwut 11mo ago
> Enforcement agencies are asleep at the switch. They are not asleep. They were intentionally weakened, step by step.

netsharc 11mo ago

Isn't it amazing that big corp is like the stereotypical rug salesman now... I suppose since they're (they being Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft) helping pay for a ballroom for the biggest rug conman..