I'm not convinced that the Feedly option is as much of a dark pattern as you might think. There are a few ways this could be addressed which would come with their own tradeoffs:
1) Remove the "x" close button since you're not a Pro user therefore setting clear expectations that you have no ability to dismiss an ad. This is clean but then the user wouldn't have known that they COULD pay to close the ad.
2) Change the "x" close button to something like "How do I remove ads?" or "Upgrade to Pro to close" - this would set expectations clearly upfront but for many users who don't mind seeing the ads this is additional information/noise.
The current experience optimizes for delivering information only when there's strong intent. The intent is derived when the behavior has been expressed by the user in the form of "I dont' want to see this ad" and then the information is delivered to explain "Here's how you can complete this action".
There are enough alternative symbols that aren't obviously misleading. For example nowadays we often get the ellipsis as button symbol for "do something with this element".
But this? This is doing exactly what shady "you're the 100,000th visitor, you get a free iPhone" online ads have been doing by punching you in the face as reward for clicking on the X button.
Just use an ad blocker. Ads aren't worth a click each to get rid of.
> for many users who don't mind seeing the ads this is additional information/noise.
Ads are additional noise, so those users wouldn't mind it.
Feels like you’re just easily triggered by it for some reason and making up arguments. Assuming not the first time on the internet, are you really surprised by x button on ads not doing it right away? Three dots are usually used to modify/report the ads tile. Their x button is crystal clear here, you’re just dissatisfied with the results.
This is doing exactly what shady "you're the 100,000th visitor, you get a free iPhone" online ads have been doing
How is that even related?
by punching you in the face as reward for clicking on the X button
“They literally attacked me by asking for a payment for an obviously extra option”
Ads aren't worth a click each to get rid of.
Pretty sure that once you pay, all ads go away, not only the ones you clicked x on.
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I can’t agree on anything here except for using an adblocker. It’s the best “augmentation” software humanity ever invented.
Another option would be to replace the X with a small (i) symbol or similar, so at least users won't be confused when it doesn't do what they expected.
> I'm not convinced that the Feedly option is as much of a dark pattern as you might think.
I'm not convinced any of the article's examples are dark patterns. They're annoying, but I thought dark patterns require more.
There needs to be some deception and a stronger consequence than a bad popup. Accidentally signing up for a mailing or buying something unintended, for example.
> There needs to be some deception and a stronger consequence than a bad popup. Accidentally signing up for a mailing or buying something unintended, for example.
To the contrary, I think that intent to inconvenience people who don't make the choices the website wants but doesn't need the user to make can be enough to make a UX pattern a dark pattern in most cases. There's no need for a strong consequence, and there's no need for users to actually fall for the deception. There doesn't even need to be a deception to fall for.
Suppose that I shop online. I add an item to the cart. Then I decide that I don't want the item anymore, so under a minute later I go to the cart and click the cancel button. Fully transparently, the website tells me that I need to wait 1 minute after clicking "add to cart" in order to remove the item. The website always does this for items in the cart, but doesn't present the waiting as a feature of the service. It's not as if having multiple items in my cart means that I have to pay for all items vs. none at all; I can select which items in the cart to buy at any given time, so there isn't any strong consequence. But making me wait to permanently remove the item from my shopping cart is a dark pattern by default. (There are ways to make it not a dark pattern, such as transparently making the advertised gimmick of the online store "You need to wait 1 minute to remove items from the cart. Shop slowly and responsibly!". Wordle uses what would normally be a dark pattern - making people wait to play a game which needs no waiting - and turns it into a core advertised feature, a core charm point.)
There needs to be some deception and a stronger consequence than a bad popup. Accidentally signing up for a mailing or buying something unintended, for example.
Or the classic one: anyone can sign up for an account and subscribe to the service but to cancel you need to call and speak to a retention specialist over the phone.
IT would be much better to put a '?' icon in its place rather than 'x'. You're abusing user expectations. It's a dark pattern when that happens. Trade off or not, a dark pattern is a pattern that tricks user into acting against their own interests or desires.
MSFT just announced custom Azure chips too which likely also played into the "synergy" with Sam's desire to reduce reliance on Nvidia as computing capacity and demand scales with AI advancement.
I’ve been lucky to have caught a flight back to SF after cancellations and can wait at home while figuring out how to get to my original destination.
What I don’t understand is how come SW couldn’t enlist help to get customers rebooked on other airlines - their phone lines were slammed (I waited 3 hours) just to get a refund since their app wouldn’t allow me to choose to rebook/cancel.
If I was as customer focused as they say they are - I would’ve contacted AMEX global travel and gotten their entire network of booking agents to backfill and rebook customers on other flights.
Southwest doesn’t have interline agreements with other airlines nor, AFAIK, the integration into reservation systems that allow rebooking onto another airline.
I’ll believe it when I see it, I am out of pocket $500 so far in chaining my own flights on other airlines to get to my destination after my SW flight on Christmas Eve was cancelled. They offered a rebooking only on their own routes on the 27th which would have been cancelled again in hindsight. I am finally headed to my final destination today 4 days later on another airline as I didn’t expect SW to pay for any of the extra costs.
Nope it was moist and delicious! Separated the skin from the meat and rubbed with salt and sugar. 450 for an hour then 325 until the internal temp was at 157+. Breast was foiled to prevent overcooking.
I think we should explain this more clearly to the original author; it’s probably true that maybe 5% work on ads but that is literally the ads system like Adwords and Adsense. The only reason those are valuable is that Google has tons of traffic and that traffic is driven by the work of the other 95% working on sub-verticals, core search, Youtube, etc.
If you take away the people working on those these services would stagnate and people will start going to another search engine and then you lose revenue.
What about a physical front page that gets printed daily using something like an HP Designjet T210?
You can mount it (it's wireless) and it can print 2' wide from a roll of paper. You feed the paper into a custom frame (add margins to the PDF -> JPG script) and then add a slightly sharp cutting edge at the bottom of the frame so that every day the previous day's frontpage will come out from the bottom of the frame and you can tear it off (reuse as needed).
You would need to pay for something like a 700' roll of 24" butcher paper for $18 and ink (yes I know HP is a terrible company on ink) but it might be even more realistic!
Now you've got me thinking about how to translate this to my POS printer. I'm already grabbing the NYT front page into DayOne, I might as well get more use out of it :)
I think Rhinehart’s perspective may be that a generation of people are focused on solving the wrong problems (ones that don’t have real impact on human lives) and we (collective) are fetishsizing that singular focus on making the best of something that is largely inconsequential in the real of real problems. For example, should anyone be making the best flatware and why do we care about buying the best flatware when there’s plenty of good enough.
There’s so many points in his article that it’s hard to start in one place but I got the sense that his overarching thesis is this:
There’s a bunch of real human problems today (hunger, climate change, disease etc) and people can either be working on 1) solving these problems or 2) distracting people from thinking about their own mortality and these crises. In the bucket of the distraction-economy is probably anything entertainment related, social networking, consumerism, etc which is not innovative. There are people who are trying to change the system because it’s broken not just simply extract more value from it.
There’s a range of flexibility offered including many homes that have free cancellation until 5 or 1 day before check-in. Some are on Stricter policies that are more strict than what you would find with hotels but homeowners also have different risk profiles and the policies help balance that risk out.
I used to never care much but in 2020 it’s been a big deal. Will the main attraction in the area I’m visiting decide to close down or impose unreasonable restrictions? Will the entire state close down or make me quarantine?
There’s so much uncertainty with traveling these days.
The current experience optimizes for delivering information only when there's strong intent. The intent is derived when the behavior has been expressed by the user in the form of "I dont' want to see this ad" and then the information is delivered to explain "Here's how you can complete this action".