
How e-commerce sites manipulate people into buying things - hellllllllooo
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/technology/e-commerce-dark-patterns-psychology.html
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2T1Qka0rEiPr
> About 30 sites made it easy to sign up for services but particularly hard to
> cancel, requiring phone calls or other procedures. The Times requires people
> to talk with a representative online or by phone to cancel subscriptions,
> but the researchers did not study it or other publishing sites.

Nice that the editor was at least allowed to point out that their own employer
employs many of these "dark patterns".

~~~
exergy
Also, I'd actually been considering a Times subscription for a while. That's
going to be a hell no from me now.

~~~
nicudad
The hack I use for subscriptions is to pay with a money order, mailed to their
location. This makes it impossible for them to autorenew. I started doing this
after discovering to my dismay that one subscription used my checking account
routing number to auto debit a subscription renewal the following year, at a
significantly increased rate, direct from my checking account! I don't see how
this isn't larceny or bank robbery.

I also track who is selling my name to marketers by using initials. So my
subscriber name instead of Bob Jones is Ned Y. Jones for the NYT sub, Will S.
Jones for the WSJ sub, and Roger D. Jones for the Readers Digest. Then when I
get mailed an ad for sex toys advertised to Ned Jones, I know the NYT sold my
name to them.

~~~
neilv
> _after discovering to my dismay that one subscription used my checking
> account routing number to auto debit a subscription renewal the following
> year, at a significantly increased rate, direct from my checking account_

You might ask your state's banking(?) regulatory authority or attorney
general's office about that.

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readbeard
Not just e-commerce sites—change.org shows "### have signed," where the number
is programmed to tick upwards at a somewhat randomized rate. This is simply
dishonest—a lie designed to make you feel like you'll be missing out unless
you sign.

Example: [https://www.change.org/p/target-stop-filling-the-world-
with-...](https://www.change.org/p/target-stop-filling-the-world-with-plastic-
bags)

~~~
sizzle
I've pondered this for a while, if this disingenuous design pattern is biasing
people to sign their names, in addition to their shady user engagement email
spam with click bait polarizing email subject lines and targeted spam "Sizzle,
the discussion keeps evolving..."

How they promote petitions after you sign one by showing you 'trending' high
shock value petitions is pretty scummy way to grab your attention and stay on
the site signing more petitions. There has to be a better way to drive
engagement than shoving polarizing clickbait petitions in my face.

Don't believe me? Sign up for the site and sign a petition, enjoy the flood of
petition spam in your inbox.

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3xblah
"The report coincides with discussions among lawmakers about regulating
technology companies, including through a bill proposed in April by Senators
Deb Fischer, Republican of Nebraska, and Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia,
that is meant to limit the use of dark patterns by making some of the
techniques illegal and giving the Federal Trade Commission more authority to
police the practice.

"We are focused in on a problem that I think everyone recognizes," said Ms.
Fischer, adding that _she became interested in the problem after becoming
annoyed in her personal experience with the techniques_."

If we used programmer vernacular we might say she was "scratching her own
itch".

~~~
digitalengineer
Too bad lawmakers must first experience the problem themselves, before they
spring to action. I believe support for healthcare problems and modern-day
solutions (such as s embryonic stem cell research) would benefit from showing
more passion towards others.

~~~
dangerface
The pointless popups became acceptable again because of the pointless cookie
law forcing developers to implement dark ui. By the way did you know browsers
use a thing called cookies? Scary i know.

~~~
jjulius
>By the way did you know browsers use a thing called cookies? Scary i know.

Not sure why you're being snarky - how entities utilize cookies _can_ be
unsettling/'scary' to some.

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vmurthy
An age old tactic I have encountered: Deep discounts (after raising the prices
of course). For e.g.

(Harvard research paper - WIP)
[https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/18-113_16977...](https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/18-113_16977967-84c0-488d-96e5-ffba637617d9.pdf)

[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/how-
ret...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/how-retailers-
trick-you-their-amazing-black-friday-discounts/355525/)

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2018/09/24/what...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2018/09/24/what-
retailers-dont-want-you-to-know-about-sale-prices/#4997add96878)

~~~
SmirkingRevenge
Those seedy furniture stores that have "going out of business" sales that seem
to last for years, are often running the same scam. Grocery also stores do
this, with their shoppers cards discounts.

Consumers are the other half of the problem though. At least some of the
scummy tactics are psycological hacks to get around real irrational behaviors
that actually work against both the consumer and the business. The rest are
dark patterns meant to manipulate and coerce that work strictly for the
business, consumers be damned. I'm not sure where the line is.

Side note: Even to this day, I still catch myself sometimes thinking/saying
the cost of something is $X rather than $X+1, when the listing price of
something is $X.99, and I curse myself for the foolishness :P

~~~
baud147258
> real irrational behaviors that actually work against both the consumer and
> the business

Do you have examples of such behaviors?

~~~
pixl97
Look up JC Penny sales. Their CEO got rid of sales and marked the products
down so the normal cost was the sale price. They almost went out of business.

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throwaway13337
Not all these notifications are fake but they can still be misleading.

I've investigated a few of these sorts of apps on Shopify. They do use actual
customer names but how long ago those orders came in seems a little dubious.

I believe it's not so much to promote fear of missing out - other apps do that
better - e.g. ones that copy booking.com's pattern of 'only x left!'.

Instead, they're a very good way to signal to potential buyers that the
(usually small) shop is being used by other shoppers to increase trust.

Few people go in to empty restaurants.

It would be interesting to know if there are legal implications to lying about
your visitors using services like these, though.

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djflutt3rshy
Why would the ThredUp example not fall under current regulations against false
advertising? If I say "This dress was bought 4 minutes ago!" or "Hurry now!
Only one left!", those statements are obviously either true or false.

~~~
RandomInteger4
Those statements say nothing about the product they're selling to you.

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cabaalis
The FTC regulates advertisements. [1] At what point is a statement like "[x]
just saved $[y]!" on your own site being shown to a visitor constitute an
advertisement for your service? Or is it just advertisements involving a paid
third party?

From 1: "Advertisements with specific claims can be substantiated with
evidence"

[1] [https://bondstreet.com/truth-in-advertising-
laws/](https://bondstreet.com/truth-in-advertising-laws/)

------
mrhappyunhappy
As much as I don’t like PayPal I will never sign up for any subscription that
does not go through PayPal. Reason being, I can log into PayPal and stop my
subscriptions any time without jumping through hoops.

------
jimhi
I run an international e-commerce site in several countries. We have been
recommended all these dark patterns. Sometimes I see sites that apply all of
them at once and a new user gets no less than 3 pop-ups within 10 seconds
engaging them in different ways.

Many of these don't work long-term. These sites won't last long when they get
one-time users who are deal seekers. This reminds me of back when all video
sites had 10 ads and pop-ups or blogging sites. They all learned eventually.

I predict two dark patterns will stay with us. Making it hard to unsubscribe
and designing the "YES" button to be more attractive to click than the "NO"
button. They don't involve lying and they work surprisingly well.

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wazoox
I think most of these tactics are explicitly forbidden in the EU. Opt-in (to
newsletters and spam) is mandatory, for instance.

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eswat
I recall in another FB thread that shaming employees was not totally frowned-
upon if it planted the seed in the engineer that they should maybe reflect on
what they're contributing to and consider alternative work.

Would shaming designers that are complicit in these dark patterns be a
similar, favourable way of movement towards a better direction?

I actually finished a book that tries to do that[1]. But I don't believe
enough designers are told from their peers that maybe the way they’re
exercising their knowledge of design theory and psychology is being shitty
towards people.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44432844-ruined-by-
desig...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44432844-ruined-by-design)

~~~
DaveWalk
Thank you for this point (and book recommendation). It has clarified my
thinking on dark patterns, something I've long suspected. We need to
(re)educate designers about the mistakes they're making, in service of what I
assume are data- hungry marketing employees.

I also enjoyed and support the phrase from the article: "confirmshaming."

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jumpinalake
NYTimes + incognito = rejection.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Disable javascript on their site.

The next question would be "why is the browser advertising that it's in
incognito mode?", but that's not a question for the NYT.

~~~
SaturateDK
This "feature" is being removed:

[https://twitter.com/paul_irish/status/1138471166115368960](https://twitter.com/paul_irish/status/1138471166115368960)

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rgovostes
Here's ThredUP's Julia Boyle posting a number of open engineering positions in
a recent "Who is hiring?" thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18358221](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18358221)

~~~
vmurthy
The link is 7 months old. I am geniunely curious how this is relevant to the
discussion. Can you clarify please?

~~~
mrunkel
Thredup is the first company mentioned in the article.

~~~
vmurthy
My bad! Apologies for not catching this earlier.

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RandomInteger4
There goes that nasty evil capitalism, "It wasn't my lack of will power and
cognitive short falls that caused me to buy these things ... it was
capitalism's fault. I'm completely innocent and would never make bad decisions
of my own accord ..."

~~~
i_am_nomad
That is somewhat unfair. Most of the time, it’s a naive consumer on one side,
and an army of UI experts and behavioral scientists on the other. That
consumer is hopelessly outmatched, and the company will absolutely find a way
to hack his or her psychology.

~~~
RandomInteger4
Citing human psychology is a sad excuse to excuse one's self from personal
responsibility. You are the final arbiter of all decisions that you make.
Nobody else. You are the one that is ultimately responsible.

If this were loot boxes, then maybe we'd be having a different discussion, but
unless they're tricking you into something other than what is advertised, then
the onus ultimately falls upon you to control your desire to purchase
something.

~~~
yifanl
Um, what makes one form of dishonesty acceptable and loot box dishonesty
unacceptable?

Personally I lean on the "I am the final arbiter of my purchasing decisions"
side, but surely this principle would have to be applied consistently (and
what this looks like is I have bought almost nothing online ever)

~~~
RandomInteger4
Lootboxes aren't a form of dishonesty. It's a form of gambling. Gambling needs
to be regulated, because that specifically does abuse psychology, whereas when
you're buying a product, you know exactly what you're getting. There's no
deception there, unless there is, in which case we have laws against it,
because it's called false advertisement. We have laws against gambling,
because we know how math works and the human mind doesn't by default.

