
Confirmshaming - Sgt_Apone
http://confirmshaming.tumblr.com/
======
alttab
If anything, I get a little chuckle when I see this stuff. I'm sure we've all
been there trying to make things clearer for the user.

That said, I'm more concerned with the fact that I can't go to any web page
these days without getting one of these pop-ups.

It's even worse when the pop-up comes 20 seconds later since loading all of
the Javascript takes a while on mobile - and then shows up halfway down the
page.

It's even worse when being scrolled down the page prevents the widget from
rendering correctly.

The internet is quickly becoming a ghetto, and other parts of the internet
(Facebook, Instagram, Reddit) are getting incrementally controlled and
censored.

... Sigh ...

~~~
acangiano
> I'm more concerned with the fact that I can't go to any web page these days
> without getting one of these pop-ups.

People use these pop-ups (Landing Pages, Optinmonster, etc) because they are
extremely effective at capturing emails. Your average programmer or techie on
HN is horrified when prompted to sign up via a pop-up, but many regular users
will just comply. The site has now converted a random passer-by, into someone
who might continue to receive new content (and marketing material) in the
future. Nothing comes even close to the ROI that you get from people
subscribing to your mailing list. Note that I'm not talking about whether this
is right or wrong, just that it's done for a very good reason. Would I put a
pop-up form on a programming blog? Obviously no. Know your audience. But on a
regular site? Not doing so is literally leaving money on the table. And that's
why they are ubiquitous. When you don't see one it's often either an ethical
choice (the site owner decided to maximize user experience, not profit) or
lack of knowledge of how effective these pop-ups are.

~~~
gedrap
Exactly.

>>> Obviously no. Know your audience. But on a regular site? Not doing so is
literally leaving money on the table. And that's why they are ubiquitous.

This.

Most (all?) of the mentioned ones are run by companies, not individuals who
are not seeking any profit or anything. In terms of ethics, I wouldn't even
call it unethical or a dark pattern. Some sneaky checkbox to receive spam is
bad. Sneaky checkbox for addon when purchasing is horribly bad. But pop up
with email field? Nope. Calling it ethical decision is a stretch. Worst case
scenario - you close the tab and move on with your life. If anyone loses then
it's the business, not you.

At the end, it's a business decision whether it's worth annoying some users in
order to extract more value later from a fraction of them and it's the users
choice to accept or not. It's a personal choice, to each their own.

You think the UX is so crap because of it and surely something better can be
done? Take it as a business opportunity!

~~~
vitd
>In terms of ethics, I wouldn't even call it unethical or a dark pattern.

I disagree. Offering your user the option to get on your mailing list is fine.
But when you a) shame them if they chose not to, and b) make it significantly
harder to find the way to express their "No" choice, it becomes an unethical
dark pattern. Arguably, blocking their access to the material you offered them
until they make this choice is also dubious.

~~~
gedrap
>>> shame them if they chose not to

It's not unethical to potentially harm your own business. I'd say it's just
bad for the business, that's all.

Offline companies occasionally run silly/trying to be too clever campaigns.
But no one really calls them unethical, as long as they stay clear from
potentially discriminating topics. People mock them, but they don't call them
unethical.

>>> make it significantly harder to find the way to express their "No" choice.

I see where you are coming from on this one. But, again, it's not preventing
the user to quit using the standard way of quitting.

~~~
tadfisher
Obviously "No thanks", "Close", "Cancel" and so on are standard mechanisms for
dismissing a form. You're arguing that it's standard to make the user read and
understand that the funny or insulting quip is the mechanism to close the
form. I disagree.

------
larrykubin
Reminds me of the canvassers on the street whose line is always "do you have a
second for the environment?", "do you believe in equal rights?", "would you
like to prevent puppies from dying?", etc.

~~~
Splines
What gets me is when the canvasser goes into mock-surprise mode when you tell
them no.

Dude, you and I both know that your job here is to try to sell something to
me, so don't be shocked if I'm not interested.

~~~
tamana
You and I both know their job is to feign surprise, why are you surprised?

------
agentgt
This is one of the reasons I still enjoy paper magazines and yes even
catalogs. I remember being on a plane trying to read some article and just
giving up and reading the SkyMall magazine the whole flight. The damn SkyMall
magazine foisted on all delta fliers (and takes up valuable space) is less
invasive than todays ad pop crap.

While magazines certainly have some annoying things (like the paper
subscription post cards) and I suppose the eco unfriendliness these negatives
are starting to look continuously better than the alternative. Ironical I
think I was even shamed by a publisher recently for ordering "the paper copy".
I know many banks do this as well... damn you for wanting paper... we must
pop-up shame you and paper makes that difficult.

I suppose PDF is a good middle ground.

~~~
tamana
SkyMall no longer publishes printed catalogs to airplane seats.

------
__jal
You can almost smell the "growth hacker" desperation.

~~~
Splines
Every app does this, and I hate it. What grinds my gears is the negative
review dark pattern funnel (i.e., ask a user if they like the app, if not,
keep them in the app and get feedback. If they do like the app, forward them
on to the app store).

I was in the middle of using your app, don't bother me.

~~~
xirdstl
I will on occasion go out of my way to visit the app store and leave a 1 star
review when this happens.

------
clizzin
Here's another Tumblr collecting passive-aggressive opt-out messages:
[http://cruelestoptouts.tumblr.com/](http://cruelestoptouts.tumblr.com/)

~~~
ComodoHacker
"To submit a cruel opt-out form, click here!"

Very deceptive! I thought it's a live example of such form.

------
gl2748
This was the original:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=national+lampoon+puppy&safe=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=national+lampoon+puppy&safe=off&client=ubuntu&hs=6qh&channel=fs&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi0kr_QuZbNAhUPKFIKHbkDAW8Q_AUIBygB&biw=1873&bih=983)

------
fisherjeff
> No thanks, I'll stick to the latest Adam Sandler films.

Okay, Esquire, that one's kinda good.

~~~
kbenson
While somewhat egregious and dark, the Duolingo language bird one made me
laugh.

------
cespare
Related to
[http://passwordshaming.tumblr.com/](http://passwordshaming.tumblr.com/).

~~~
kazinator
When a site insists that certain characters are not allowed in passwords, that
is strong indication that they are storing them clear-text in text files.

Those characters are disallowed because they would cause delimiting issues for
the shell/sed/awk/perl/php crap they are using to process those files, or db
injection attacks.

A proper password hashing function takes any byte string.

~~~
jameshart
It's often just a reflexive behavior on a website. Fields which have to be
displayed back to the user naturally tend to have reasonable restrictions on
what characters they can contain (no linebreaks is a common one, for example).
The fact that passwords will never be displayed back to anybody (ideally) is
no deterrent to your typical business analyst writing a hundred page spec for
the account management pages, and just like every other field on the site they
will place some arbitrary length restriction on the field, and pronounce that
certain special characters are off limits. Programmers will then implement the
restrictions because hey, it's an easy two points.

There are, actually, a couple of reasonable UX reasons for placing some
restrictions on the characters someone can use in a password. If you hope that
they will be able to enter the same password from another device later, you
want to encourage them not to exploit all the wonderful input possibilities
afforded by their plug-in emoji keyboard on their phone. Sadly I don't think
this kind of reason underlies any restrictions I've ever seen in the wild.

~~~
tamana
Password has to be compatible with phone input -- legacy 0-9 phone, not mobile
computing devices.

~~~
shivsta
Why would this need to be restricted to A-z 0-9? Isn't it safe to assume that
nobody will be typing in passwords from their land line?

------
geofft
I'm pretty sure that Duolingo one is photoshopped. The mascot's name is "Duo",
not "Language Bird." (The image, however, is what you get if you get too many
words wrong:
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bc9NiTxCUAA1Qek.png](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bc9NiTxCUAA1Qek.png))

~~~
iaw
That was the only one up there that I thought was reasonably humorous and good
natured.

~~~
pen2l
Yeah, that doesn't belong there.

If I understand it right, the emails are trying to convince you to practice...
as one needs to, when learning a language. That's like the only acceptable
reason to annoy/spam people, "COME ON JOHNNNN, WHEN YOU GONNA PRACTICE YOUR
SPANISH LIKE YOU SAID YOU WERE GONNA"

------
rdiddly
Interesting how many of them are literally true for me, with no shame
whatsoever, because it's hard-won personal wisdom, which is a source of pride,
not shame.

Examples: I don't want to know about power breakfasts. I'm not interested in
delicious recipes. (I already know how to cook the things I like.) I'd rather
be sleeping. (True dat.) Continue with boring old email. (It's fine.) I reject
my free issue. (And all subsequent ones. Really just, don't encourage them.) I
do not want to get the most important news in my inbox. I prefer to pay full
price. (And thereby be free of a lot of bullshit.)

------
ikeboy
[https://imgur.com/iIK58E0](https://imgur.com/iIK58E0) (From dsfba.com)

~~~
chillacy
Wow, someone messed up the button sizing there. Unless they both go to the
same place and the tiny text below is the opt out

------
pfista
Reminds me of mobile apps that periodically ask if I like the application. If
I say yes, then they inevitably ask for a review on the app store.

~~~
squeaky-clean
There's no winning with some of them. If you select 4 stars or higher "Great,
please continue to the app store and review us!". If you answer with 3 or
fewer, "Oh no! Please visit our contact page and tell us how we can make it
better!"

~~~
chillacy
The sad reality is that you can have thousands of users and no reviews if you
don't do that stuff. And because the (apple) app store wipes reviews every
update, it also encourages devs to never update, lest they go and nag all
their users again. All around difficult situation for apps, especially if you
go about it as a solo dev.

Also sad that the most effective way to get a bunch of 5 stars is to say in
your app: Have a free X item if you rate us 5 stars! <link to app store>,
nevermind that there's no way of actually verifying that they left you any
feedback, nonetheless plenty of people actually do it.

------
ssharp
I think a fair majority of these exit-intent popins are designed and delivered
by BounceExchange, or at least influenced by what BounceExchange has set as
the standard. They specialize in implementing this kind of stuff and have a
wealth of data and a/b tests to back up their use and this type of
"confirmshaming".

------
chinathrow
Curious: has confirmation shaming increased conversion? Can someone confirm or
provide some insights?

------
nsxwolf
Earliest I remember seeing this was the defunct mobile gaming platform
OpenFeint. Every time you launched an OpenFeint integrated app, you'd get the
splash screen and the dismiss button was "No thanks, I don't want these
awesome features".

------
xirdstl
Idea: browser extension that transforms the confirmation text to something
more .. colorful.

~~~
galistoca
Yeah but instead transform the modal into something more.. invisible..

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dageshi
Seems to me this is the kind of behaviour that's going to have people reaching
for technical solutions so as to never see the popover in the first place...

------
x1798DE
Is there anything that blocks these modal dialogs on mobile? I absolutely hate
these things, but they don't seem to be blocked by uBlock.

------
vinchuco
Does adblock catch these? Shouldn't it?

------
andykmaguire
First Round Capital does this on their blog.

Reject subscribe popup requires clicking "No I don't want to learn more"

------
Dowwie
On Esquire: “No thanks, I’ll stick to the latest Adam Sandler films.”

