When Websites Won’t Take No for an Answer

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/technology/personaltech/when-websites-wont-take-no-for-an-answer.html

by hvo • 10 years ago

94 90 10 years ago

nytimes.com

dustinupdyke• 10 years ago

Click --> NYT Article --> Back --> Open in new incognito window

A dark pattern if I ever saw one.

BrandonBradley• 10 years ago

My NYT savior! Thanks

x5n1• 10 years ago

They don't care cost of doing business. Internet is an advertising and marketing platform with all the downsides of that. Part of the function of an advertising marketing platform is to gather as much information about users to sell them stuff. That's what pays for billion dollar valuations. This is not going away.

55555• 10 years ago

A lot of it could go away with better consumer protection laws and enforcement. I'm not sure why this country puts up with deceptive negative-option rebills. They should just show the sales funnel to 100 random citizens, and ask them how much they think they are going to be charged after going through it. If more than 50 people get the answer wrong, what you are doing is obviously deceptive (Yes this would include things like mortgages and credit card fees).

uxp• 10 years ago

Because one person or company that is bound to lose millions of dollars, or their entire business model (deceptive advertising and marketing, for one) has more of an incentive to lobby against a regulation than a million unorganized people that might lose 25 or 30 dollars over signing up for a difficult to cancel "membership".

semi-extrinsic• 10 years ago

"``That’s when things start to drift into manipulation,” said Katie Swindler, director of user experience at FCB Chicago, an ad agency."

Really, her last name is Swindler? That's just funny.

xg154• 10 years ago

To help companies gauge where their techniques fall along the persuasive-to-manipulative spectrum, Chris Nodder, a user-experience consultant in Seattle, has developed guidelines for ethical conduct. Systems that nudge people to act in the public interest are “charitable,” he told me, while products like Fitbit, which may help people develop better habits, are “motivational. “If the company benefits more than the consumer, I would call it ‘evil design,’” said Mr. Nodder, who wrote a book on the topic called “Evil by Design.” If an approach benefits the company and the customer equally, he added, “you are probably in the realm of ‘commercial design.’”

I find it surprising that the researcher apparently makes the distinction whether a certain UI is "dark" or not depending on what it is used for.

As a customer, unless I signed up with the explicit goal of habit-change (e.g. for a fitness service) I would very much not like to be manipulated no matter if the cause is "good" or not.

golemotron2• 10 years ago

“If the company benefits more than the consumer, I would call it ‘evil design,’” said Mr. Nodder, who wrote a book on the topic called “Evil by Design.”

That is stunningly poor reasoning. It doesn't matter whether a company benefits more than you do as long as you are not harmed. Not all games are zero-sum. Thinking you should be getting more or equal to the other party is not harm, it's envy.

exodust4• 10 years ago

I would say it does matter if a company benefits more than I do, but makes out like it doesn't. Any fair transaction should surely balance? In the end, nobody likes being deceived or presented with false information, even happy customers.

cortesoft• 10 years ago

Yeah, if the situation is pareto-superior, then who cares if the company benefits more?

adevine2• 10 years ago

I would very much not like to be manipulated no matter if the cause is "good" or not.

The problem is the definition of "manipulated" is not black and white. Consider the relatively recent change in StubHub's fee model. Consumers will always tell you they hate having a service fee tacked on at the last minute when checking out. So, for a while, StubHub tried all-inclusive pricing on their search results, and consumers said they liked the change. However, it ended up tanking their conversion rates. When they A/B tested putting the fee on last, they immediately saw an increase in shoppers willing to buy.

Is this manipulation? The fee was still clearly stated on checkout, but I imagine the subconscious thought process of shoppers was "well, crap, I've already made it this far, I just want these tickets now."

I agree some of the outright "tricking" examples from the article are over the line, but most forms of marketing are manipulation in some respect. When does "persuasion" become "manipulation"?

zyxley• 10 years ago

Is this manipulation?

Yes.

xg154• 10 years ago

I see that as a very clear example of manipulation, actually.

They presented a meaningless price when in situations where potential customers would compare them with competitors. Only when they can be sure that a customer would likely not check the price anymore (because they think they already know it or because of psychological reasons), they show the actual amount.

That's a very clear case of improving their own situation (better conversion rates) by worsening their customers' situation (higher likelihood of overspending, reduced ability to compare prices) and making them act against their own interests. This would be manipulation by the all of article's criteria.

Of course as a company you can decide do use that strategy - it's not your job to think for your your customers. But don't be surprised if consumer advocacy groups flag you and at some point you find people demanding a law against that practice.

More generally, I'd draw the line to "marketing" if you supply information to the customer that's either meaningless or misleads the customer, but could not possibly help them reach their own goals. (As in this case presenting an amount in the search results that has no practical relevance.)

I'd draw the line to "manipulation" even earlier, if you make a person act in a way that's against their own conscious interests in the moment. As I said, there can be rare cases in which that manipulation could even be wanted by the person, but I don't see that changing the fact that it's manipulation. It's different from "persuasion" where you make the person change their interests.

pbhjpbhj2• 10 years ago

Is this manipulation? The fee was still clearly stated on checkout //

That instance seems very clearly manipulation. When the cost is known people don't buy, only when they've sunk time on the process do they buy - probably because they have to assume other sites in the field are equally manipulative.

Unless the full cost is available without going through the sales funnel I'd say it's fraud.

arjie2• 10 years ago

Suppose I were to advertise a car for $18000 where the best deal at an equivalent dealer is $19900. When you arrive at my store, you find I only sell it for $20000, and that I never sold any at $18000. The prices on each of these cars is clearly displayed, and at the time you are looking at the car, it is clearly priced at $20000.

Say people come to the store after having seen the advertisement, but when they arrive they decide that after coming here all the way, they don't care to save $100 and they buy the car.

It is conceivable (even probable) here that if I had honestly advertised it as $20000, few would have come. Therefore, making this change would increase my conversion rates on my advertisements. The argument stated by you would mean that my behaviour is defensible, and that I should advertise prices I do not intend to deliver, allowing advertisement conversion rates to be my guide.

However, that's a classic bait-and-switch scam, a kind that is illegal in the US, and I doubt you'd find anyone who'd support it.

exodust4• 10 years ago

LinkedIn suffered a class-action lawsuit for their email spam! I didn't know that, good to hear. I left years ago and remember it difficult to leave (lack of close account function, and kept receiving emails after unsubscribing).

On the LinkedIn issues, this tweet surely is the funniest: https://twitter.com/darylginn/status/590664399041519617

On dark patterns, or at least it felt dark... I was booking an overnight ferry trip across Bass Strait in Australia. After selecting the fare, entering my details about my car make and model, name and address, cabin choice etc, and about to enter credit card details, the website proclaims "our real-time fare system has adjusted the price" and my fare went up $40 right there and then on the final step of the booking process. Not happy.

hellbanner• 10 years ago

I wonder if that was because they thought you had a nice car.

RyanAir in Europe is notorious for this. Cheap flights but expensive, unadvertised baggage fees.

exodust4• 10 years ago

My car is nothing special. They would claim that prices change due to other people booking while you're going through the process, but I don't believe that.

I was booking well in advance - more than a month, and I was using the site after midnight.

There should be regulation against changing a price that is advertised, at least lock it in for a minimum of 5 or 10 minutes of selecting the fare. Bumping the fare up at the last step only a couple of minutes later is highly suspicious.

oliv__• 10 years ago

Hahaha that's sadly hilarious.

CaptSpify2• 10 years ago

I hate this, because it's made me cynical. I don't even try to un-subscribe from emails like this anymore, I just mark them as spam. And that hurts the good companies that do listen and unsubscribe you easily, because now they are being looked at as spammy.

ams6110• 10 years ago

Yep. Anything sent by Constant Contact or MailChimp is auto-junked for me. I never see it.

jlgaddis• 10 years ago

If I didn't run my own mail systems, that's what I would do.

Instead, I just blacklist the sender's IP address. It's even nicer when the sender (e.g. LinkedIn) publishes TXT RRs for SPF in their DNS zone as it allows me to easily blacklist all of them.

cm21874• 10 years ago

I own my domain so that I now give each website a different email alias. So that:

1. If I start receiving spam I know who leaked my address

2. If I can't switch off the spam hose, I just delete the alias, which severs any way this website can contact or bug me.

It should be generalised. All it requires is a sort of index to remember who was given what alias.

thomasfoster96• 10 years ago

A similar thing happened to me the other day as well (oddly enough, also in Australia).

I was buying a ticket for a football game, but just to make sure there wasn't a better seat I clicked the back button on my browser to go back to looking at seats. Suddenly I saw that the same seat had gone up by 10% in price.

Anyway, I pressed the forward button to see if the new price would apply, but it didn't. So I somehow avoided paying an extra 10% because their confirmation page was cached, but not the seat selection page.

cylinder• 10 years ago

Always browse incognito when buying things like this, including flights.

CPLX• 10 years ago

I consider myself pretty cynical by nature, and I still found this Ryanair example rather astonishing: https://twitter.com/Jelliott08/status/430777503360491520?lan...

JadeNB• 10 years ago

It's mentioned in the article:

Whereas Ryanair once placed the insurance opt-out option in a drop-down menu of passengers’ home countries — between Denmark and Finland — it now simply gives passengers the option of adding insurance.

kerkeslager• 10 years ago

Facebook is pretty guilty of this too. I "deleted my account" on Facebook years ago and the only effect this had was that I lost access make changes to my account. The account still exists and still is accessible[1], albeit with outdated information. I have no doubt they're still making money off my data.

[1] https://www.facebook.com/david.kerkeslager

eevilspock3• 10 years ago

The EFF wrote a nice stinging indictment of Facebook, Internet Companies: Confusing Consumers for Profit: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/internet-companies-con...

dave2000• 10 years ago

It wouldn't surprise me if Facebook created profiles for people who've never used it, just by virtue of having enough of their friends having their contact details. IE if 5 people are friends and all have "fred bloggs" in their contact list then there's a good chance it's the same "fred bloggs". I'm not sure what this virtual person is worth to advertisers, though, just like I'm not sure what you're worth if you don't use it any more.

mason55• 10 years ago

They absolutely do this and have been doing it for awhile. If you google "Facebook shadow profiles" you'll get plenty of info about it.

spicyj• 10 years ago

That doesn't sound right. Have you tried logging into it again? If you can, you should be able to follow these instructions then which really do permanently delete the account:

https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674

(If you can't get in, reset password, etc?)

eevilspock3• 10 years ago

The key last line from this EFF indictment of Facebook[1]: "If a business model wouldn’t work if users had to opt in, it deserves to fail."

To me the entire ad-supported "business model" is the darkest pattern of them all. Please read this comment before a knee-jerk rejection of my claim: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773

[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/internet-companies-con...

andybak• 10 years ago

So far the negative effect on my life of the sum total of tracking and ad-profiling has been - to the best of my knowledge - neglible. (Largely because the ability of companies to use data to my detriment hasn't kept pace with the thirst for collecting it).

In return I've been given free access to a huge amount of free content and free functionality. Plus - very occasionally - the advertising is beneficial rather than merely irrelevant.

eevilspock3• 10 years ago

If you read my link then you'd realize that society is subsidizing all your free shit. There is no free lunch.

ikeboy7• 10 years ago

Two rants:

Signed up for pickydomains a while back, they send me emails every time there's a new listing. I decide I don't want to get the email anymore. Click the unsubscribe link. They want me to sign in. I sign in, and am unable to do anything without agreeing to their changed Terms of Service.

In other words, I have no way to get them to stop emailing me without agreeing to new terms.

Similarly, I once signed up for a trial of IBD newspaper. I still get emails from them occasionally (although those at least go to spam), and the unsubscribe link requires a sign in, which I don't remember. I could probably reset my password if I cared enough, though.

(These are just the two I remember, I'm sure there's been others that were similar. I had an issue with PayPal spam at one point as well but it was more complicated.)

As far as I can tell, both of those are in violation of the CANSPAM act. Companies are required to offer an opt out link with no additional requirements to opt out. But there's no consumer right of action, so the only one who can enforce it is the government, and they focus on worse spammers, so real businesses that are just aggressive mostly get off free.

arjie2• 10 years ago

If a single click doesn't unsubscribe, I click Report Spam. Gmail takes care of it from there on.

ikeboy7• 10 years ago

But if it's an otherwise legitimate company, not enough people will do that and so Gmail won't end up flagging it.

(I don't think spam flags are personalized, so even to me future emails wouldn't go to spam. I could set up a filter, though.)

cm21874• 10 years ago

Unsubscribing is a waste of time. Even when they do stop the spam, in 99% of the time it is only temporary and after a few months they start again. Deletable email aliases is the solution. If they spam you, you show them the finger and delete the alias.

ikeboy7• 10 years ago

That's true for actual spammers (i.e. if they buy your address from a list and so on) but not for legitimate companies. Both examples I gave are real companies that I signed up for. I'm pretty sure if I managed to unsubscribe they would honor it.

dredmorbius3• 10 years ago

That had been my experience for quite some time. More recently it seems to actually have some effect.

As I'd just noted in another comment, many senders use a mail service provider, and a single bad actor can have very bad knock-on consequences, even for mail which doesn't transit the MSP (SPF records listing MSP IP space).

For many major brands / companies, unsubscribes work reasonably well. I've seen some success with this, don't offer email addresses generally, and flag the remainder as spam, with blackhole rules in my various filtering tools.

The larger problem with email is I simply don't trust it any more.

hannob• 10 years ago

This is actually a widespread practice among German ISPs. I once fell for this myself. What they do is that when you order something they automatically add some service most customers almost certainly don't want or need (like a software package or homepage webspace) and that is free for the first months. You cannot remove that from your order, you have to later cancel it manually. As it's free at the beginning new customers checking their bill won't notice it as something odd (it's some free addon, why care?). Then after some time it starts costing a fee.

robert_tweed• 10 years ago

That sort of thing is now illegal in the UK and most likely in Germany too. The trouble is that there are no penalties beyond individual refunds and not enough people are aware of their rights for it to have a significant impact.

See: http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2014/08/26/some-dark-pa...

Note that this article is from two years ago and at least one of the sites called out is still doing the same thing.

pluma3• 10 years ago

Not sure who you are referring to (wouldn't be surprised if you are thinking of Telekom though) but at least 1&1 and NetCologne only try to upsell you throughout the entire process but don't automatically add this kind of stuff.

lfender6445• 10 years ago

godaddy is notorious for this when you are purchasing or renewing a domain

Animats• 10 years ago

Amazon Prime.

If you use Amazon but don't want Amazon Prime, you get deceptive dialogs shoved in your face at least twice per purchase.

pluma3• 10 years ago

Did you know you can save $20 on this purchase by applying for an Amazon credit card?

If you try Amazon Prime for FREE, you also don't have to pay for shipping.

gohrt5• 10 years ago

Don't worry, we'll default to Prime when you check out, as long as you don't hunt for the obscure opt-out link.

dredmorbius3• 10 years ago

The ultimate problem with such dark patterns is that they darken the prospects for all participants.

I'veb been long aware of such trends. Something as simple as a multi-step transaction process, across multiple screens. I literally cannot see what the end-stage requests will be before committing. If I don't bug out immediately, I'll just throw random inputs at the page to see what the hell it does.

But it's another reason why I'll strongly prefer in-store, brick-and-morter purchases, or anything that doesn't have a service contract (the "agree to our new ToS to cancel your account" story below really puts the shine and hurt on this), etc.

Much as the whole microlawsuits thing sounds like an absolute PITA, something which reduces frictions for consumers to sue would be interesting. Respond to failed opt-out tools with a claim for damages and costs....

Sigh.

dingaling• 10 years ago

Something as simple as a multi-step transaction process

Amazon UK has an horrid check-out process that omits any clickable bail-out links, should you want to back-up to change something you have to edit the URL bar.

They also only provide a total for all postage, on one page, with no break-out of what applies to which item ( from multiple vendors ).

I assume it's meant to be slick and non-distracting but it feels like a greased laundry chute through which you are sliding...

gohrt5• 10 years ago

I assume it's meant to be slick and non-distracting

well, yes, non-distracting from completing checkout using the most-expensive options.

grogenaut2• 10 years ago

They rolled out a go back to browsing mode in the us a few months ago on checkout. I think they looked at the data about how often people want to add one more item especially with the hated "Add on item" and prime. Also how often carts were being abandoned anyway to add more items.

iampims• 10 years ago

Meetup.com forces you to log in to unsubscribe. Their emails go straight to junk.

Endy• 10 years ago

I'd call Meetup a different case; as someone who actively uses the service, both as Organizer & Member... I need to know if someone knew signed up to my Meetup so I can send the a message and engage them. Or if a new group started up competing with me (or groups I'm a member of). My own RSVP notifications are obvious. Sorry, but the email Meetup sends is literally integral to the function of the service.

ninguem2• 10 years ago

So I clicked on the link and, for the umpteenth time, was greeted by their pop-up saying "we can't go on like this" and asking me to whitelist them on my adblocker. I am a subscriber of their online edition. Oh, the irony.

When Websites Won’t Take No for an Answer

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