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> Acting shady hurts your brand. These companies are not silly, they understand the damage to their brand can be quantified as $x and that the benefit to their

by buro9 13y ago

> Acting shady hurts your brand. These companies are not silly, they understand the damage to their brand can be quantified as $x and that the benefit to their bottom line can be quantified as $xx . Sometimes you do things you know have a negative, because you believe that the positives outweigh it. Not that I agree with these dark patterns, but I understand why companies choose to implement them.

adrianhoward 13y ago
These companies are not silly, they understand the damage to their brand can be quantified as $x and that the benefit to their bottom line can be quantified as $xx. Actually - they often are silly. It might be $x right now, but it turns into $10x later on as the consequences of that initial damage roll on and affect future interactions, recommendations, etc. It's very easy to quantify the short-term gains being sneaky get you. It's much harder to quantify the longer term consequences.
- luikore 13y ago
  By doing this they survived first and took place of some other honest companies. Still very large benefits.
  - jmagoon 13y ago
    Do you have examples of that? Because he has several examples of the opposite in his talk.
grey-area 13y ago
If you scroll right to the end, you'll find a great example of a site who thought they were being smart by being shady, and instead annoyed their users enough that people just went elsewhere (experts exchange), even though the measures were easily worked around. If, as you acknowledge, these are user-hostile patterns, using them is going to lose the trust of your users, and in the end you will flounder, even if in the short term they provide economic benefits. That's the premise of the article, and yes the companies are silly for employing these dark patterns because they're trading long-term trust in their brand (and thus long-term profits) for short-term economic advantage.
npsimons 13y ago
These companies are not silly What evidence do you have for that? Even assuming perfect knowledge, humans are what run these companies, and we all know how irrational those can be. Sure, sure, "the market" will kill them off, sooner or later (maybe; that's also assuming perfect knowledge of consumers, and we know how true that is), but until then, this shadiness should be called out and shunned whenever possible.

by buro9 13y ago

adrianhoward 13y ago

These companies are not silly, they understand the damage to their brand can be quantified as $x and that the benefit to their bottom line can be quantified as $xx. Actually - they often are silly. It might be $x right now, but it turns into $10x later on as the consequences of that initial damage roll on and affect future interactions, recommendations, etc. It's very easy to quantify the short-term gains being sneaky get you. It's much harder to quantify the longer term consequences.

luikore 13y ago
By doing this they survived first and took place of some other honest companies. Still very large benefits.
- jmagoon 13y ago
  Do you have examples of that? Because he has several examples of the opposite in his talk.

grey-area 13y ago

If you scroll right to the end, you'll find a great example of a site who thought they were being smart by being shady, and instead annoyed their users enough that people just went elsewhere (experts exchange), even though the measures were easily worked around. If, as you acknowledge, these are user-hostile patterns, using them is going to lose the trust of your users, and in the end you will flounder, even if in the short term they provide economic benefits. That's the premise of the article, and yes the companies are silly for employing these dark patterns because they're trading long-term trust in their brand (and thus long-term profits) for short-term economic advantage.

npsimons 13y ago

These companies are not silly What evidence do you have for that? Even assuming perfect knowledge, humans are what run these companies, and we all know how irrational those can be. Sure, sure, "the market" will kill them off, sooner or later (maybe; that's also assuming perfect knowledge of consumers, and we know how true that is), but until then, this shadiness should be called out and shunned whenever possible.