
Dark UI patterns on the verizonfios website - seoguru
https://twitter.com/mixonic/status/736575632226852865
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mixonic
Whoa. Getting pretty well shared around the web.

I want to be clear that it seems there is an _attempt_ at accurate data:
[https://twitter.com/rikschennink/status/736618354098737152?s...](https://twitter.com/rikschennink/status/736618354098737152?s=09)
but the implementation is a completely failure.

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zw123456
"Dark UI patterns" seems a little over the top to me, I think it might be
attributable to Hanlon's Razor. Probably some lazy programmer at Verizon
stubbed in some code then forgot about it or moved on and no one remembered to
go back and put in the actual code to find the actual wait time, or they
couldn't figure out how to do it so just put bs in.

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ZanyProgrammer
Yeah, usually with Dark UI Patterns I associate a bit more hostility to
users=like tricking someone into buying or downloading something. This seems
more like someone had a good idea, but found out it was too hard to implement
so fudged it.

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lips
This is tricking you into staying on the page, pursuing a route that may or
may not be in your best interest.

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vermontdevil
Saw that. Makes you wonder about other BS we see or hear when we call for
support. "Our agents are busy with other customers. You are in #5 with a 25
min wait" hoping you'll hang up and drop the support request.

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ianai
That I would trust in so far as you're in wait. Management probably wants your
call answered. The technician's the one hoping you drop.

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startling
Management wants you to wait and give them a chance to solve your problem
before you e.g. cancel. This kind of thing tricks you into waiting longer than
you otherwise would, it doesn't trick you into going away.

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ciokan
I won't take their part in this but, having owned a software company since
2009 already, I know there are certain "lazy" individuals who prefer to submit
such code just to close those issues faster. I know we are supposed to check
the code commits more carefully but code like this one sometimes gets into
production...It could also be a mock that made it into production.

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morgante
I don't see how this is necessarily a dark pattern.

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bduerst
It's an anti-pattern, not a dark pattern.

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joneholland
The code fetches some sort of number serverside, and then randomly updates it.

It's pointless anyways, my guess is the marketing company that made that page
has no actual integration with the IVR system.

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slowmovintarget
Except there's more on that page:
[https://twitter.com/vcsjones/status/736715020793417729](https://twitter.com/vcsjones/status/736715020793417729)

    
    
      Their "detecting problems" progress bar is a timer...

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jwatte
You assume too much malice from people, and too little problems with
enterprise integrations.

My guess is that the spec said to use the real number, and when the team
couldn't deliver that, after six failed months of repeated attempts to
integrate, they had to put something in because it was too late to change the
ui wireframe that had already been signed off by executives.

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threesixandnine
In my personal experience 99% of everything today is fake.

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ergothus
...including statistics?

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threesixandnine
Everything. I was and still occasionally work in media and you wouldn't
believe what is going on. The whole world is fake. It makes me sick. From
people pretending to fake stories to fake statistics, yes.

Don't get me wrong. It was always this way. Maybe today it's a little better
than in other periods in history but we still didn't evolve much. We're all
talk mostly.

