
‘Dark patterns’ are steering many internet users into making bad decisions - pseudolus
https://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-dark-patterns-consumer-consent-20190625-story.html
======
gnicholas
I hate dark patterns and wish they didn't exist. But I'm not sure that putting
the government in charge of policing them is a good idea.

There are some objective criteria that can be applied (don't have addons like
trip insurance selected by default), but other things are more subjective than
this.

Is legislation going to make this better without having unintended
consequences that make life difficult for startups who aren't necessarily
trying to be sneaky (the quoted language refers to things that are either
intended to produce a certain result or have the effect of doing so — even if
there was no intention).

I would also note that dark patterns even exist in the legal/governmental
sphere. For example, the California Bar website, which lawyers use to pay
their annual dues, has optional fees added on by default, and they obscure
this fact by making it seem like the default is the barebones cost. It was
only after a year or two of paying my fees that I realized how they had hidden
these tacked-on fees.

Perhaps the testing ground for anti-dark patterns laws can be governmental
websites like calbar.ca.gov!

~~~
Despegar
>I hate dark patterns and wish they didn't exist. But I'm not sure that
putting the government in charge of policing them is a good idea.

I think after about 30 years of deregulation and "I'm not sure that putting
the government in charge of policing them is a good idea", it's time for the
pendulum to swing the other way.

Yes that means there may be bad regulations and/or enforcement, but nothing is
written in stone. Those things can be fixed as they come up.

Relevant:
[https://twitter.com/camerondare/status/1143538064402157568](https://twitter.com/camerondare/status/1143538064402157568)

~~~
dvtrn
I’m always incredulous about legislation ala carte because lived experience
has shown me that the “fix later” part of “legislate first fix later” so
rarely happens because of all sorts of forces from political to social mixed
with the passage of time.

But maybe I’m a bit bias in my incredulity residing in a state where
legislative sessions happen every two years resulting in sometimes two year
waits to come back and address a bit of policy that probably could have been
deliberated on more in committee.

~~~
Barrin92
>But maybe I’m a bit bias

everyone is biased this or that way, what irks me about the "I don't like
legislation" comments is that I rarely see a proposed equivalent alternative.

Because just praying that the dark patterns are going away is probably not
going to work.

~~~
buildzr
Not everything has an ideal solution. We can't just magically apply
regulation, technology or markets and fix every problem.

Sometimes solutions create direct tradeoffs between freedom and security and
we need to understand the valuing security can mean a loss of freedom - the
PATRIOT act is a prime example.

The best solution is occasionally to just accept that there is no solution,
that the tradeoffs aren't worth it and that we should just educate as best we
can but accept these things as problems we can't avoid without significant
costs.

~~~
autoexec
> Not everything has an ideal solution. We can't just magically apply
> regulation, technology or markets and fix every problem.

Doing nothing takes us from having "a less than ideal solution" to having "no
solution at all".

I think we can try for sensible regulation that strikes a good balance between
freedom and security while also acknowledging it might not be a perfect
solution in every situation.

The patriot act is a terrible example to use because even before it passed it
was clearly going too far in the wrong direction and people concerned with
privacy and civil liberties were very vocal in opposing it. The flaws were
obvious but included by design and so objections were simply ignored. It
simply wasn't an example of government making a good faith effort at sound
regulation. It was a blatant power grab which they manipulated frightened
people into accepting while ignoring all other objections.

Some of these dark patters are essentially fraud and there absolutely should
be a process for reporting them to a governing body for review.

~~~
buildzr
> Doing nothing takes us from having "a less than ideal solution" to having
> "no solution at all".

No, doing nothing takes us from having a completely harmful and destructive
solution that's very difficult to change to having no solution at all.

Sometimes, you need to be willing to accept no solution at all is the least
harmful choice.

------
karmelapple
Target also has employed dark patterns at brick and mortar stores, something I
wrote about [1]. Thankfully it seems they’ve toned this down a little bit in
the past year.

1\. [https://link.medium.com/RpkO9xcxOX](https://link.medium.com/RpkO9xcxOX)

~~~
hinkley
Brick and mortar stores have been using dark patterns for decades. The
gauntlet at the cash register is designed to increase sales, especially to
people shopping with kids.

------
chiefalchemist
At least for starters, maybe this is a candidate for a browser extension?
Where the guilty sites/pages can be compilated via crowdsourcing? If it can't
be automated a la ad blockers then can't we work together to protect
ourselves? Somehow?

~~~
jononor
A visual highlight _Warning: dark pattern detected. Tries to trick you do to
BadThingX_ , with a link that allows for more information. And maybe also
allows easy way to report the offense to relevant authorities (we have them in
Norway at least).

------
timw4mail
The problem with a legislative solution is that this is a cat and mouse game.
And the government tends to be a very slow cat. And that's assuming a law
would be effective to begin with.

That said, there should be SOME incentive for fewer dark patterns.

------
Nasrudith
Personally I suspect one thing that would help for certain dark patterns would
be definitions of affirmative consent - that the interface must default to its
most barebones option and any adddd fees must be specifically checked by the
user.

There would undoubtedly be loopholes like separate bundles and display order
priorities - but those likely impose their own "expenses" through website
interfaces being more encumbered.

It would add some compliance costs but such a limitation would be fair and not
overreaching.

------
zadkey
There is a dark pattern I saw on a website that explained how hard it was to
close an amazon account. They called the pattern the "Roach motel".

~~~
zadkey
It was video on [https://www.darkpatterns.org/](https://www.darkpatterns.org/)

------
pmoriarty
By far the biggest dark pattern on the web is javascript.

Enabling javscript in your browser (which is what almost all browsers do by
default) opens you up to all sorts of tracking, hacking, spying, and
advertising (which itself is a significant vector of malware, once again
through javascript).

This is why I surf the web either through a browser that doesn't support
javascript at all (like emacs-w3m), or in Firefox with the uMatrix extension
set to deny javascript from all sites by default.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of users are neither computer-savvy enough to
know how to do that, nor to even know how or why they're vulnerable, and
probably wouldn't go to the trouble even if they knew how and cared. So they
get hacked, and sometimes the rest of us pay the price for it through things
like major data leaks of our personal information from organizations where
employees browsed the web with javscript enabled.

~~~
pmarreck
I don't know what websites you are limited to visiting, but pretty much none
of the ones I use on any regular basis would be functional without Javascript.
Sorry, not a viable solution except for extremists.

~~~
pmoriarty
You're using just such a site right now: HN runs fine without javascript --
except for voting, which I rarely do anyway.

Reddit runs fine without it (again with the exception of voting). Most news
sites run fine or even better without javascript, as without it you're not
subject to all the bloat that advertising heavy sites burden you with.

Recently there was some post on HN that linked to a Forbes article, and there
were a bunch of complaints in the HN thread about how nightmarish the Forbes
website was, with all the ads it foisted on the user. But in emacs-w3m, which
does not understand javascript, the site was perfectly readable. There are
plenty of other sites which implement anti-ad-blocking code via javascript
which are completely bypassed by simply using a browser that doesn't run
javascript.

Overall, I find that maybe 90% of the sites I visit run fine or well enough
without javascript. Sometimes a website will have a legitimate need for the
interaction or live updates that javascript facilitates (thout maybe some or
all of that could be done via HTML 5.. I haven't done web development in
decades, so I don't know, but I suspect it could), like finance sites which
run stock tickers, or some art or games sites. I mostly don't use any of
those, though, so very rarely run across a site I need that actually
legitimately needs something like javascript.

Much more frequently I run in to sites that don't need javascript (because
they're just delivering static content), but which choose to use javascript
anyway -- either because it's more convenient for them, because a lot of web
frameworks make use of it, and/or because they want to deliver ads and track
their users through javascript. When I run across such sites, I either try to
circumvent them somehow (maybe by manually reading the source and extracting
the content), or when that fails I just avoid them. In the very rare cases
when I can't avoid them, can't circumvent them, and absolutely need them, I'll
grudgingly enable javascript. This case accounts for maybe 5% or less of my
web use.

~~~
doc_gunthrop
> HN runs fine without javascript -- except for voting, which I rarely do
> anyway.

You can still sign in and vote with JS disabled on HN.

------
didibus
I don't know that people really have the foresight to value their privacy. I
mean, when Apps switched to a granular permissions model where you had to
explicitly agree to each permission you would grant it, did that really deter
a bunch of users from the app? I'm not sure it did.

In my opinion, this shouldn't be about allowing users to.make better informed
decisions. As a user, I don't want the burden to analyze, reason, evaluate and
determine the right choices to protect myself everytime I engage with an app
or website. I'd like a bill where the government or some other agency made
that choice already and had good privacy choices enforced. At least as a
default or a strong recommendation.

This is one scenario where I'd like to outsource the decision making, because
I just don't have the time.

------
foobar_
It's fascinating to see the mainstream media pick it up now while this is old
news in tech circles.

------
lanrh1836
I feel like fasting and intentionally buying nothing is the only way to fight
back against a consumption driven society nowadays.

------
kodz4
Anyone know whats happening with Tristan Harris's Ledger of Harms? I thought
that was a good idea. Like a bug tracker for social issues caused by tech.

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/alEl8](http://archive.is/alEl8)

------
crankylinuxuser
And these laws need to include the following:

"Citizens may sue at up to $2000 plus incidental fees or costs carried due to
dark patterns in a user interface. A lawsuit of this manner is not subject,
and supersedes any prior agreements of 'Arbitration' or other means intending
a deviation from a court."

~~~
EGreg
How about “citizens may sue lawmakers for damages suffered under any law that
is ruled unconstitutional”

~~~
marcosdumay
Honestly, I never understood how forced arbitration is constitutional on the
US. It seems completely contrary to entire spirit of your Constitution.

~~~
pseudolus
It arises from the belief that parties should have the freedom to contract as
they see fit. Of course, that's just the theoretical underpinning and it
doesn't take into account situations where there exists a disproportionate
imbalance in negotiating power.

