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Skip the Tips: A game to select "No Tip" but dark patterns try to stop you
- chungy 9mo agoAre all these food items real? Some of them sound made up... and are these California prices? It's totally bonkers.
- newsclues 9mo agoThis is where I want a digital wallet on my phone with payment details that I control (no tip, lowest fee possible)
- amelius 9mo agoHow well would an LLM score at this?
- randycupertino 9mo agoMade by https://vladimirj.dev/ https://vladimirj.dev/
- zippyman55 9mo agoNice! I’ve started only tipping on fridays for coffee, etc. I’m a great tipper at restaurants But being hit up for a $5 tip for a $4 drink is way wrong. I’d tip you, but today is Thursday!
- kstrauser 9mo agoI tip great at sit-down restaurants. I don't tip at fast food places, or carry-outs where they don't actually provide and service, or at the oil change place. Summary: if I didn't tip in a situation 10 years ago, I'm not going to start now.
- kulahan 9mo agoI tip my barista and budtender a dollar every visit, personally. I love those people though. Restaurants get 20% unless they fuck up, then it's 15%, unless it was absolutely egregious. That's it. I cut my own hair.
- kstrauser 9mo agoMy barber earns his fat tip taming my unruly cowlicks. Barista and bartender? Definitely. Cashier at a convenience store? Oh hell no.
- eclipticplane 9mo agoMy barber earns his fat tip by being my therapist.
- kstrauser 9mo agoI get it. That's worth the compensation.
- codazoda 9mo agoI also cut my own hair, but sometimes I’m lazy and just hit up the Barber shop. She charges me $15! I tip +$25 and it’s still a cheap haircut. My haircut has to be one of the simplest around, but 9 out of 10 stylists will leave me fixing it myself later. Once I paid $50+tip for the same cut at a swanky joint and STILL went home and fixed it. She doesn’t know what she’s worth.
- bigstrat2003 9mo agoIMO restaurant tips (and other service businesses) are 15% by default, 20% if they do well, 10% if they do poorly. If they do especially poorly (like, completely ignoring the table for an hour while chatting with coworkers off to the side), they get $.02. If they do especially well, more than 20% (I've gone as high as 50% once).
- elAhmo 9mo agoThis mentality of doing 20% by default for something you already paid is what got us in this situation. People should be paid a living wage by default.
- 9mo ago
- IshKebab 9mo agoIn the UK the sort-of rule is that you tip for 10% food if you pay after receiving it (and that's pretty much the only situation where anyone tips). It seems like since the pandemic even that is less expected though, which is nice.
- roryirvine 9mo agoTaxis used to expect tips, black cab drivers often still do. People used to play this whole unpleasant game of saying "round it up to £30 if you do me a receipt", and the driver providing a fistful of blank receipts in return - almost as if expenses fiddling was less shameful than tipping. Thankfully, the likes of Uber and mandatory card payment terminals in cabs have ended all that.
- Symbiote 9mo agoI think people also used to tip the postman, newspaper boy and binmen at Christmas.
- roryirvine 9mo agoOh, yeah. And I remember a columnist in one of the Sunday papers in the late 90s talking about tipping the butcher for the Christmas goose, but I think that was probably a bit of a "look how old-fashioned I am!" affectation even back then.
- Mr-Frog 9mo agoMy current strategy for how much total I'll pay for a coffee is FlOOR(price+.50) + 1, which keeps the bill nice and clean and kicks some goodwill towards someone who makes less than 1/5th the average earnings of my coworkers.
- SoftTalker 9mo agoI make my own coffee. It's not hard.
- cactusfrog 9mo agoSometimes I want coffee before I make my coffee
- wxre 9mo agoThe trick is to prep your coffee machine the night before. I've only done it a few times, but it was very nice to wake up to that surprise.
- foo12bar 9mo agoI'm going to charge you $1.50, then.
- IshKebab 9mo ago> kicks some goodwill towards someone who makes less than 1/5th the average earnings of my coworkers. The coffee shop owners? They're probably making a decent amount of money no?
- SoftTalker 9mo agoProbably not. Food service is ruthlessly competitive and making a profit after paying for product, rent, utilities, labor, financing and/or franchise fees is easier said than done.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- School-Cotton 9mo agoWhere asks you for a $5 tip for a $4 drink? I’ve never seen anything like that.
- zippyman55 9mo agoIve totally seen it at local coffee shops in the Pacific Northwest. When I do see it, and if I’m in a tipping mood, I slide the other way.
- kstrauser 9mo agoI hate every bit of this. Well done!
- vlad1m1r 9mo agoThank you!
- renato_shira 9mo ago[flagged]
- dunham 9mo agoI've got a local cafe that pre-selects a $3 tip on a $5 purchase.
- Graziano_M 9mo agoI try to 'punish' for these and tip less than I would normally.
- koolba 9mo agoAt an airport once the coffee stand had a girl behind the counter that would just hand you an empty disposable cup. She didn’t even handle cash, it was card only using a self checkout POS system. And it still asked for a tip with the default of 20%. There should be a way to specify a negative tip.
- nvader 9mo agoIf you really want to make a deal out of it, you hand it back to the server and ask them to select 0 for you. Mention that you don't think the service deserves a tip, and that you resent being asked. If enough of us start doing this, it has a chance of applying some back pressure, although unfortunately that force acts through the poorly-paid checkout operator who doesn't directly have the option to influence decisions.
- mmooss 9mo agoThe server isn't the one who configured the UI, and probably needs the money. You're punishing the wrong person.
- Wowfunhappy 9mo ago> it's that calculating a custom amount requires more effort than just tapping accept. 0% is easy to calculate.
- kulahan 9mo agoThis was cool, but I got to one where it would load after every button you click. That's fine, but then I "lost" because it simply wouldn't load a winnable option in time it seems. Maybe I was moving too fast and missed the real button, but I still didn't tip in the end, so eh.
- MeetingsBrowser 9mo agoThere is a small "skip tip" link below the button
- Liftyee 9mo agoActually doesn't make for a bad reaction time and processing game since you need to think fast and avoid distractions. Mobile offers a speed boost for taps but heavy nerf to text entry tasks.
- amarant 9mo agoMade me want to sing that classic song from the animated movie "sausage party" "Just the tip"
- ThrowawayTestr 9mo agoI enjoyed the restaurant names
- O5vYtytb 9mo agoBuy me a coffee? Jokes on you I just practiced avoiding this.
- tedchs 9mo agoThe "buy me a coffee" button at the end is :chefskiss:
- theYipster 9mo agoSuperb!
- aleph_minus_one 9mo agoI have a feeling that this HN submission is rather some test run which dark patterns work well on technically affine users. :-) Having the knowledge which dark patterns even work well for technically affine users while still being "socially acceptable" can be worth a lot of money to specific companies.
- frameworkeGPU 9mo agojfc new 'orthogonal' just dropped
- calvinmorrison 9mo agoIn fact, odds on someone who was complicit in developing many of the dark patterns that have run billions of dollars from consumers is reading this from their phone, thinking they should go to bed so they can wake up to the acai bowl, cold plunge, and early retirement to hobbies in seattle.
- ryandrake 9mo agoExactly. We're doing this to ourselves. These horrible patterns are an HN reader's JIRA ticket next week, and they're going to happily implement them.
- deaux 9mo agoAre you actually complicit in this or do you really feel such a part of the "tech community" that you truly consider it as a "we"? If the former, stop doing it right now and atone. If the latter, I don't think that's healthy, you have nothing to do with it unless you're at a FAANG or something.
- bugbrained 9mo agoAre you using "affine" to mean "for which one has an affinity"? I have never heard that nor can I see that as a wide-spread definition. Just curious!
- AnotherGoodName 9mo agoOoooh do the one where hitting ‘payment’ on the app buys $25 of store credit by default rather than just paying and deducts the 9.64 from that credit. Then when you spend down the credit to $2 any attempt to buy something that costs more refills the credit. Starbucks app btw. You have to specifically pay with card on the payment screen to avoid buying credit and paying as above.
- gib444 9mo agoThat is wild
- reactordev 9mo agoI've been trapped for 15 years!
- disillusioned 9mo agoEinstein's Bagels does this asinine shit, too, like I want to bank with a fucking mediocre bagel joint.
- ipnon 9mo agoThis is called a float business in finance. Starbucks has more than a billion dollars in unredeemed balances, and they make ~$200 million per year in interest with this cash. They're basically a bank with a coffee shop side hustle.
- gcau 9mo agoIf they're intentionally causing the customer to have an unspendable balance, knowing that it's making them $200m/yr, how is that not fraud (or some kind of crime)? I'd expect atleast CA would do something about it.
- ipnon 9mo agoCustomers agree to this when they accept the terms of the app. This is also how a debit or savings account at any bank works. Both businesses have sophisticated models to determine how and when customers are likely to make withdrawals, and based on these models they lend out the money based on acceptable risk criteria.
- nimz 9mo agoWhy tip someone for a job I'm capable of doing myself? I can serve food, I can drive a taxi, I can and do cut my own hair. I did, however, tip my urologist.
- b00ty4breakfast 9mo agoYou definitely get the spit-coffee at the diner.
- nimz 8mo agoNot many fans of The Office I see :)
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- mikepurvis 9mo ago"buy me a coffee"
- alexjplant 9mo agoOn a separate but vaguely related note: if somebody comps all or part of your bill at a restaurant or bar then you should split the difference on the tip. As a practical example let's say you take a date to your local trendy sushi place. You both get gold-leafed deep fried Wagyu fatback tuna rolls and some Yuzu duck fat-washed 50-year-old whiskey highballs. The final bill is $100 (I'll use round-ish numbers for this example). The bartender comps you 30% because you all are cool and discuss your shared experience bartending or jetskiing or whatever. Ordinarily your tip would have been 20% for a total of $120. In this case your bill is now $70 plus your newly selected gratuity. Take the difference between the original bill with tip and your current bill without tip and divide it in two. This is the floor for your new tip, in this case (120-70)/2 = $25. This is indeed something like a 35% gratuity but they hooked you up and made that custom drink for your charming new beau. As a matter of fact you should round up from this number because they have side work to do and you make pretty decent money as a software engineer/LLM tickler/product sorcerer. Just make it $30 for a nice round hundo. If you're friends with the manager and they comp your dinner to do you a solid and impress your date then you should tip 50% of what the bill would have been minimum. This is why you should keep cash in your pocket - shake the waiter's hand on your way out and palm it to them. If that's not possible then go to use the restroom and talk to them on your way back so they can run your card through the POS on a blank check to give them said tip. This is how you do things with class. This is what I wish somebody had explained to me when I was 20 and kinda broke (i.e. eager to save money that I would have spent anyway) before I embarrassed myself by failing to do such. If you are similarly unaware then now you know too :-) As an addendum this also applies to coffee and pizza places but the numbers become coarser. Buying them the equivalent of a beer at your local dive ($3ish) is customary.
- bcook 9mo agoI've only been given 1 free meal (by the manager). I just gave the entire difference as my tip. I was already going to spend the money, so why not make a random waiter happy.
- schrectacular 9mo ago... So pay your server for ripping off their employer?
- syntaxing 9mo agoI once went to go pick up takeout and they covered the no tip button with a sticker. I was so confused so I put in 10 cents because I could find the button at first. I stopped going to the place since.
- lordswork 9mo agofun idea but a bit repetitive and boring.
- tonymet 9mo agoThe darkest patterns are fees that don’t exist . Like 300% tax fees and nightly parking when parking is free
- sciencejerk 9mo agoInstacart has these, or at least it used to. You pay an annual membership, thinking that it gets you out of fees, but the FULL invoice (very hard to locate!) show a mysterious service fee of $3-6.
- tonymet 9mo agoshady!
- qingcharles 9mo agoI help a blind friend order his groceries online from Walmart once a month. He's disabled and on food stamps (EBT/Link). The groceries are all taken care of, but the site always requests a $30 tip for the driver. I drop it down a bit and pay it on my credit card for him, but what's the right way to deal with this situation?
- UltraSane 9mo agoMan $30 can still buy a lot of food at Aldi
- spjt 9mo agoWalmart InHome is $40/year and no tips.
- pests 9mo agoWow, that's not bad. "Walmart InHome is a premium service that delivers groceries and essentials directly into a customer's home (fridge/kitchen) or garage, using trained, vetted Walmart associates. As an add-on to Walmart+, it costs an additional $40/year (or $7/month) to provide unlimited, tip-free, and free-delivery-fee service." Can even do it when you aren't home.
- mrguyorama 9mo agoMy sister has run her Daycare company and family off this service for many years and has high praise for the service.
- qingcharles 9mo agoWow, thank you, I had no idea about this. Going to look into it. He has Walmart+ which you get for half price if you are on benefits, which also removes the regular $9.95 delivery fee.
- Jolter 9mo agoA 30$ tip? Does this company not give their drivers a wage, or something?
- sourcegrift 9mo agoGreat game. I squirmed at typing "no tips" the first time but second time was fine. I'm going to practice this a lot more to tonne down some (frequently abused) empathy
- presentation 9mo agoI like how at the end the author tries to get you to give him a tip with the buy me a coffee link
- lubitelpospat 9mo agoAre any of these illegal in the US or Canada?
- gs17 9mo agoThe one where the options move when you hover over them feels like it should be but might not actually be.
- dotancohen 9mo agoSomebody had to invent it, and a lawmaker had to become aware of it, before a law could address it.
- 0xDEFACED 9mo agois there a name for the phenomenon where a user immediately assumes the smallest and lowest contrast button on an interface is the option they want, before actually reading any of the words?
- dotancohen 9mo agoBeing conditioned.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- xeonmc 9mo agoEnter through the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the road is easy that leads to destruction, and there are many who take it. For the gate is narrow and the road is hard that leads to life, and there are few who find it. [Matthew 7:13-14]
- daemonologist 9mo agoI'm not aware of a specific term, another than just conditioning, but I am reminded of "banner blindness" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness (I was definitely expecting a level to swap the contrast eventually as a trick.)
- unglaublich 9mo agoI was waiting for the cases where they inverted this. That would really trick me. But it didn't happen in the few cases I tried.
- yard2010 9mo agoThis reversed cta thing is what I've been evolved to do. Always look for the opposite of a cta button and click it. This reconciles with the fact the incentives have been off for the past few years or decades.
- shmeeed 9mo ago
- spjt 9mo agoI'm one of those cowards that always succumbs to the pressure and ends up tipping, but it bothers me enough that I just won't buy anything if I know I'm going to get asked. This is good training.
- mmooss 9mo ago> Every checkout screen has become a guilt machine. Is bill-paying UI also a guilt machine? If you don't pay, you feel guilty! How about holding the door for elderly people? Going to your kid's event? Not running people over in the crosswalk? Saying please and thank you? Buying birthday presents? It's all so unfair - to me!
- rspoerri 9mo agoI tried to tip OP 0$, but that wasn't possible.
- loeber 9mo ago"Hold to skip tip" was devilish.
- bibimsz 9mo agolol, it got me to do 5% more on the first try.. i lost. souls-like
- fogzen 9mo agoIt should be illegal to solicit tips when asking for payment.
- Markoff 9mo agoEasier approach - make tips completely illegal as tax evasion or tax them higher than the meal, let's say 100% tax on tips.
- Ekaros 9mo agoTreat them as bribes. Punish the one who gives one with fine(1% of income/net wealth) and one who takes with mandatory imprisonment. After that they will quickly go away.
- drnick1 9mo agoA guy with short hair should not have to pay more than $20 for a basic haircut, inclusive of tip. If you can't find someone that does it for less than that in your area, invest about $100 in professional grade clippers and cut your own hair. It's easier than it sounds and you will get better at it over time. Learn to make your own coffee. You shouldn't have to pay more than a couple of bucks for coffee with perhaps some milk in it. An espresso machine and a grinder will quickly pay for themselves. While you are at it, cancel all those streaming subscriptions, and stream for free in the high seas or YT ad-free with uBlock. The above "tips" will save your thousands of dollars each year, and most likely also save you time. There are also things like DIY car maintenance that can be fun to learn and save you a lot of money, but you need space (a house) and some tools to get started.
- pests 9mo ago> While you are at it, cancel all those streaming subscriptions, and stream for free in the high seas Setting up jellyfin+plex (some devices support one but not the other) and most of the arr suite (radarr, sonarr, prowlarr, tunarr) has really been the best choice I've made this year. I have every TV show or movie I ever want to watch, all my favorites, all the classics. And all in one place. And I made sure to keep it local-first so I still have access at home if we lose internet. Started sharing with family and friends and I get a few requests a week to add content, so its being used. Just removing the "what streaming service is this show on that im watching?" has been a nice improvement.
- shiroiuma 9mo agoI'm going to "third" this advice (though not the Plex part). Jellyfin is fantastic. Yes, you have to be careful which devices you use it on, because the client app isn't available for all smart TVs, but you can get around that by just buying a GoogleTV stick (like the $30 one from Onn) and plugging that into your TV; then you can install the JF app on it through the Play store (or even sideload it if you really want). I did this for my wife's parents, and it works great, and my own parents' Roku TV has the JF app in its store already.
- distances 9mo ago
- foo12bar 9mo agoSecret slow mode for us boomers: https://skipthe.tips/?debug=1 https://skipthe.tips/?debug=1
- setnone 9mo agoNeat game! Is this called monetary abuse?
- _blk 9mo agoI was gonna tip the developer but it feels like losing now
- rkomorn 9mo agoIntentionally and knowingly tipping is winning, no? Unless we start arguing that gratitude is a dark pattern.
- joshuaheard 9mo agoI had food delivered the other day and the suggested tip included tax and the delivery fee in it's calculation.
- modeless 9mo agoNow do one where you have to withdraw your card from the machine before it starts beeping obnoxiously at you but the screen keeps trying to trick you into withdrawing too early.
- globular-toast 9mo agoI've considered going back to cash just to avoid these. The social convention used to be the seller writes a price and if the buyer can meet that price the deal is done. These abusive card machines have brought "tipping culture" to the UK and I hate it.
- tommica 9mo agoGot to round 8 - was too slow with the notifications popping up! How many of these are real dark patterns? The "new entry suddenly prepended to the list" one I have seen before.
- sota_pop 9mo agoThis reminds me of a gag voting simulation website from the early 2000s when BushJr was running for president against Al Gore. The (maybe flash?) game simulated voting, but when you tried to click, the buttons would “run away” from the cursor, or change size to avoid being clicked… dark patterns… always fun to “play against”. More recently though, I must say, YouTube has really jumped the shark in terms of perfecting their dark patterns/algo stickiness. I can’t even go to the site without immediately forgetting my original intent.
- smilespray 9mo agoAlso see The Simpsons, Treehouse of Horror XIX, where Homer tries to vote for Obama using an electronic voting machine: https://youtu.be/47QZ6PoHl44 https://youtu.be/47QZ6PoHl44
- croisillon 9mo agoi'm old too and remember that, i believe it was javascript, not flash
- mrguyorama 9mo agoYesterday I scrolled down the front page of my Youtube, and saw the "shorts" shelf. I clicked "Show me fewer shorts" like I have a hundred other times. I did something else for a few minutes, then I scrolled down another page or so. The shorts were right there again. Google is evil. Anyone still working for them is enabling this.
- alister 9mo agoI want to mention another infection happening at payment terminals and ATMs if you're using your credit card in a foreign country: You get a message saying "Would you like to pay in your own currency? Click [Accept] or [Decline]", and there's fine print that says there's a 12-15% currency conversion markup. To give a concrete example, if you're an American traveling in Brazil withdrawing cash from an ATM or buying something for BRL 500, you'll be presented with an option to pay BRL 500 or pay just US$110.58 in your own currency (with text saying conversion includes 15%). But the typical American (and Canadian) credit card adds at most 2.5% to the Visa or Mastercard exchange rate, which is at most 0.5% higher than the interbank rate. So basically by clicking the wrong button, you're paying an extra 12% to the payment processor. In the example above, your credit card would have charged you about US$99.04 had you declined the conversion, and saved you $10. I can't imagine a situation where it's to your benefit to accept the "conversion service" they're offering. I wonder if the payment processor is kicking back some of the profit back to the merchant because this swindle is spreading everywhere. The worst part is that a couple of people that I've tried to warn don't get it. They still think that they should pick US$ (or whatever their own currency is) because that's what their credit card uses.
- imp0cat 9mo agoNowadays banks usually allow you to block DCC (dynamic currency conversion) and it is definitely worth it if you travel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_currency_conversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_currency_conversion
- alister 9mo agoThank you for telling me what it's called! On the positive side, it seems that Wise must block it because I never see the DCC "choice" when using a Wise card. As a negative point, I've noticed that AirBnB, which used to use reasonable conversion rates, has just recently started to use exorbitant currency conversion and not allow you to pay in the local currency of the country you're traveling to (so you can let your own credit card do the conversion at a lower rate). I.e., if you try to book a property in Brazil in BRL (literally clicking on the price to pay in BRL), the charge will nevertheless go through in USD (or whatever currency is your own) with AirBnb doing the conversion at the rate they choose.
- mystifyingpoi 9mo agoAll these silly excuses people make: "I tip when the service is good", "I tip when conversation with bartender is engaging", "I tip when the server runs around me in circles, I count the circles and convert it with an exchange rate of $2/circle". Wow. I'm from EU, so ymmw. I simply don't tip. Why? Because I don't have to. And if I don't have to, then I don't. It is that simple.
- n4r9 9mo agoWhat's ymmw? Your mileage may waver?
- ragazzina 9mo agoYour mileage may wario.
- kleiba 9mo ago> I'm from EU Now we know they mean Germany.
- hocuspocus 9mo agoFunnily enough Germans do tip, for pretty average service compared to most European countries where waiters are expecting zero tips.
- llamara 9mo agoOf course. After living in Germany I can say that if I has not been not insulted in the process and the staff did not glare at me like I'm interrupting their free time, then the service was already much better than average
- bambax 9mo agoYes but here in France where service is included and tipping is never compulsory (or expected), payment terminals are appearing where you need to select the tip before typing your code. This is usually shoved in your face by the waiter at touristy places, and they're watching you. Don't fall for it though! Just select "no tip" or "0" like in this game and you're good.
- bambax 9mo agoThe most shocking part of the game is the price of goods! $14, $17 dollars for one meal to be eaten standing up? Wow. Here in Paris sandwiches cost between EUR 4 and 6 (usually 5), with a "menu" option that includes a can of soda and sometimes a "dessert" for 9-10. Anything above that would be considered extorsion.
- benhurmarcel 9mo agoRight, at the same time the median salary for a full time job in the US is $5280/month, that €4450. In France it's €2183, half as much.
- bambax 9mo agoYour user name being a reference to Coluche you're probably French? As a French you probably know these aren't exactly comparable. Yes, the US are probably richer than France per capita -- but not twice as much.
- torstenv 9mo agoI assume that my tip benefits the people who provide the service (Starbucks employees, not Starbucks shareholders). I also assume that the employees' salaries are not “great.” I am satisfied with my income, so I have no problem tipping. I tip little when the service is not good and tip a lot when the service is excellent.
- einpoklum 9mo agoInstead of assuming that - take the amount you wanted to to tip, and donate it to the Starbacks Workers' Union: https://sbworkersunited.org https://sbworkersunited.org or buy their merch to support that worthy struggle.
- stbtrax 9mo agoyeah we all understand the basic premise. But it's applied completely unequally and you subsidizing their salary is keeping starbucks from paying them more. It creates unnecessary friction and decision fatigue for the consumer as well. Those farmworkers doing back breaking work to pick your berries? No tip.
- Mordisquitos 9mo ago> I assume that my tip benefits the people who provide the service (Starbucks employees, not Starbucks shareholders). > I also assume that the employees' salaries are not “great.” The employees' salaries not being “great” benefits the shareholders. How the shareholders get away with paying such low salaries is left as an exercise to the reader.
- alvatar 9mo agoShould be mandatory training to obtain the ESTA permit to enter USA (even if just for transfers)
- pronik 9mo agoAn especially egregious case I've encountered was at Berlin train station. Normally in Germany, you've got those distinct card terminals with a display where you see your total before paying. Some of those have started nagging you for tips which you need to explicitely accept or decline first before tapping your card. Not in this case though: after you've ordered your food, they point you to the combined order/pay display and while you awe at the technology marvel of combining both, you tap your card on that and then you notice that 15% tip has been automatically included and charged. You needed to notice some small text and small buttons in the corner of that display beforehand and actively tap on "0%" or something before tapping your card. I'm already furious they've let this tip begging to be added to the card terminals, but charging tips without explicit consent should be completely illegal.
- nicbou 9mo agoI am pretty sure it is completely illegal.
- port11 9mo agoAnd wonderfully done in a city where people are usually paid a living wage, and even students don’t have to work for free (hi Belgium!)
- RestartKernel 9mo agoAt Schiphol they offer tipping options to presumably prey on Americans, but the attendant physically reached over the counter to reject it after I ordered in (native) Dutch. Can't imagine how much trouble locals had been giving the shop before training staff like this.
- Markoff 9mo agoFor X-Files fans who might be unfamiliar with the reboot, the reboot has actually one episode dedicated to this - S11E07 - Rm9sbG93ZXJz, Mulder/Scully don't want to tip the robotic self-service and are punished for it. Available to watch here: https://www.tvseries.video/series/the-x-files/season-11-episode-7-rm9sbg93zxjz https://www.tvseries.video/series/the-x-files/season-11-epis...
- singularfutur 9mo agoDark patterns are just polite robbery by corporations that realized psychological manipulation pays better than service. The grift is the product, not the bug.
- spaceman3 9mo agoReally nice game OP. Would you consider making a version of the game with no timer? I was thinking in sending this link to my family but probably the timer is really fast for them but I think they could used your app as "training" so they know how to spot a dark pattern in the future
- vlad1m1r 9mo agohttps://skipthe.tips/?debug=1 https://skipthe.tips/?debug=1
- latexr 9mo agoFun idea but gets boring when patterns repeat in seemingly random order. The timer also sucks a lot of the fun out of it and makes the game too easy, because the patterns can’t be dark enough. I just plowed through without ever even looking at the wrong options, because it was so obvious what the right one was. I’d much rather the game progressed in a fixed logical order and the choices became less obvious without a timer. In other words, I think this makes more sense as a puzzle game, not a reflexes game.
- Zealotux 9mo agoTipping culture is properly weird to me as an European, I probably tip much more than the average European and I still find these prompts obnoxious, and they're popping everywhere in Barcelona. No thank you, that's a part of the U.S. culture I certainly don't want to see imported over here.
- MarceliusK 9mo agoIt's one thing to read about dark patterns, it's another to feel your cursor being baited in real time
- markussss 9mo agoThe written price is the written price, and that's final. No tips.
- hardlianotion 9mo agoAre all of these dark patterns seen in the wild? OR are some of these merely a dreadful warning of what may happen?
- wellf 9mo agoDamn I hit that coffee button and paid $100 tip. Expensive game.
- zerof1l 9mo agoI hate the tipping culture in the USA and Germany. Instead of being an extra, it feels like an obligatory surcharge I have to pay just to receive the service, good or bad. I usually don’t return to restaurants or bars that nag for tips. In those few places that I like and visit regularly, I don’t give tips. Me being a regular customer brings them more revenue than any tip I’d give otherwise. Somehow, employers of these establishments convinced the staff that it's the customer’s fault that their wages are inadequate and that they should go after the customers to get the difference. I would much rather pay a higher price and not hear anything about the tips.
- jeffwass 9mo agoDoes annybody worry about sabotage if you don’t tip? Eg the cashier does something to your food? “Nice muffin you got there, I’d hate for it to get accidentally sneezed on.” I recently bought my mom flowers for her birthday. Despite the price showing no delivery fee, the final price included $15 delivery charge, $8 service charge, taxes, and then asked me for a tip. I chose no tip, expecting the delivery and service charge should cover everything. The flowers were left on her front porch in below-freezing weather, they didn’t even knock or ring the doorbell. Luckily my mom happened to open the door and saw them before they completely froze. So was the delivery person incompetent, or acting out because I didn’t add additional tip?
- K0balt 9mo agoNow more than ever it is against your best interests to tip on any automated platform. The data collected will definitely be used against you in algorithmic pricing. These days it pays to aggressively demonstrate that you are price sensitive and will delay or cancel transactions at the slightest whiff of additional expense. I only ever tip off-platform or cash even if I pay with card. Also that helps to enable my gift to go only to the service provider. It fucks me on some platforms but I find that an acceptable cost to not get algorithmically spitroasted. Besides, it also helps to eliminate predatory platforms from my ecosystem.
- dizzant 9mo agoCan an industry insider confirm this tracking? Interesting take, thank you. I hadn’t considered the privacy implications of tipping.
- xplt 9mo agoE.g. Uber / UberEats offer lower fairs to drivers if the client is expected to tip higher. I'm not an insider, but it can be observed in the wild as discussed on Reddit.
- K0balt 9mo agoI’m no industry insider, but tipping would seem to me to be a key indicator for discretionary spending, so a very valuable data point. I have no doubt that a dataset of 1m clients and their tipping patterns would be worth >500k per client (dataset user). A list of consistent, large or skimpy tippers significantly more. (Skimpy so as to know to target them with “deals”, big tippers for the upsell and value added advertising.
- matt123456789 9mo agoHilarious. I lost it when it started asking who to fire.
- throwaway2016a 9mo agoFirst I will say, I am very much against dark patterns and I believe servers should be paid a fair wage and not have to rely on tips. But until that I do tip for dine-in service. But I found the "buy me a coffee" link on the button of this to be much funnier / ironic than it probably should have been. It's also missing what I think is the worst dark pattern: Having no option not to tip at all. Instead requiring that the customer press "Custom" and manually entering "0.00"
- tonymet 9mo agoPB 34 skips!
- ianboyko 9mo agoTip-creep is still better than the alternative, which is denying customers the option to tip at all.
- skrlet13 9mo agoI won hehe
- ryanmcbride 9mo agoReminds me of the game Ad Attack from Neopets. Back when the plague on the internet was popup ads. Wild how we're back in popup hell now just like we were back then, even though the method for web popups is different now.
- jdlyga 9mo agoBesides payment kiosks having tipping on by default, I wonder how much of this is an indicator of inflation over the past 5 years. Businesses have dramatically broadened tipping on payment kiosks to avoid having to increase wages. "We'll still pay you 12 dollars an hour, but now you get tips!"
- zzo38computer 9mo agoI always pay in cash, and I would want to know all of the prices (including tips, if any) ahead of time if I can (and also be able understand the prices). (My draft specification of Computer Payment File is intended to avoid many kind of dishonesty when paying by computer (it is not needed or useful when paying in cash), including this kind; one of the things it requires is that the buyer calculates the payment amount from the information (such as the catalog) that the seller provides; they cannot charge you any other amount of money.)
- brachkow 9mo agoI understand that US has a weird tipping culture which results in such UI. But these UI's are occasionally slipping into a countries where tipping is not expected. This leads to a strange situations like "transaction isn't approved by me because instead of ApplePay and walk away, I need to solve some quiz on a payment terminal or payment will not pass". Every time this happens, it annoys me a lot which affects my wish to visit this place again.
- itopaloglu83 9mo agoAt this point it’s more profitable for companies to just enforce tipping everywhere using the UI as an excuse. It’s a total ripoff especially at already expensive places. Even if a law was passed in the US to correct the minimum wage at restaurants etc. nothing will be resolved. Restaurants managed to outsource their wage problems to customers without raising their prices. Even with an adjusted minimum wage, people will say that it’s not enough.
- olivierestsage 9mo agoThe time limit accurately simulates the experience of being under the accusatory stare of the person who handed you the machine