[saguro]

That thing facebook does with demanding your phone number, that's my favorite dark pattern. Apple does the same thing with iOS upgrades.

First you pose a seemingly innocent question, like 'would you like to give us your phone number so we can keep your account secure?' or 'would you like to upgrade to new iOS?'. Then you take away the NO option. You replace it with 'i'll decide later'. And by doing so, you make it not a choice for the user. You make it a statistical guarantee that sooner or later, most users will cave in and hit yes, even if by accident. iOS is an extreme example of this - when you say you don't want to upgrade, you are immediately prompted with a pin code request as if your device just locked itself, and your reflex is to punch in the pin to unlock it again. But if you read what it says at the bottom, it's asking for your pin to get permission to schedule the upgrade that you just said no to.

Whoever the designers are who came up with this stuff, fuck them. This shit is going to be in ethics textbooks in a decade or two. I hope someone from the facebook UX team is reading this, I hope they know their day job is to make the world a worse place.

[Giroflex]

When I first opened up the Netflix mobile app and it asked me if I wanted it to show me notifications I thought "hey, that's nice, most apps just start spamming me without asking". I clicked "No thanks" and went on my way.

It turns out, though, that it asks that _every_ single time I open the app. It's really annoying and I'm about to allow them only to block them at the OS level.

[r00fus]

This is one reason some folks prefer Apple. iOS had privacy options at the OS level for years before Android got into the game (yes xPrivacy but not everyone can root)

[jmanderley]

So, enable Netflix notifications but disable Netflix notifications at a system level? Seems like a silly reason to prefer iOS, considering every modern Android has the same feature.

[TomMarius]

He's just saying that iOS had this feature way sooner than Android did

[tracker1]

And android could sync my contacts through the cloud (google servers) to a new device and edit online, syncing the other way before iOS. What's the point?

[tracker1]

Could whoever downvote explain? It's a feature that Android had first... The fact is, today, they both have Feature X, so debating who had what first doesn't add to a constructive argument was my point.

[Tijdreiziger]

If you buy a current Android phone, it will have privacy controls for 90% (guesstimate) of apps in the Play Store.

[teddyfrozevelt]

You can allow/block permissions from any app, no matter what Android version it targets. If the app targets a version below 6.0 (Marshmallow) then the app won't ask at runtime and Android will warn you that block a permission for that app may break it.

[Tijdreiziger]

Ah yes, I forgot about that.

[zanedb]

100%, you mean.

[Aissen]

I'm guessing this is a bug. It asked me once (per device), and never asked again. Or I'm too trusting, and this is indeed a change in behavior for new customers.

[eneveu]

I had the same issue. I said "yes", then went in the settings and disabled it. I wasn't asked again.

[hutattedonmyarm]

Interestingly, that happened to me on my Android tablet, but not on the Netflix iOS app

[dep_b]

It’s still possible on iOS but if you declined the official pop-up once you can’t show it again. But you can annoy the users with different and equally intrusive pop-ups asking you to go to settings to change it for example.

[sizzle]

As an ethical UX designer, unethical UX designers/PMs/ need to be shamed for creating/allowing dark pattern in their work. This goes against the fundamental tenets of empathetic UX design and in downright manipulative and bordering evil.

[wastedhours]

But who/where do we draw the line for "ethical" design? Every design decision is on a spectrum, and anything above helping someone eat, sleep or shit, is to some degree "un-needed" design.

[sizzle]

I'd say anything that faces a user in a digital experience that utilizes cheap psychological or behavioral manipulation/UI obsfucation to benefit from their interaction in achieving a desired business metric/outcome in which a user may not have otherwise consented to/authorized said interaction had the user interface been written clearly in plain language (no jargon) and accessibly designed for the common lay person (user testing).

In design, everything is intentional and I fail to believe these cheap UI tricks were anything other than intended as designed by whoever designed it. Any seasoned UX designer worth their title knows if what they are designing removes their agency in deciding on how to act or if it feels icky or wrong in a manipulative sense.

[wastedhours]

But where do you draw the line between offering genuine convenience for the end user and UX tricks? Is underlining a link unethical because it's giving undue weight to highlight an action you want the user to notice? (I know, reductio ad absurdum, but I think it's valid to point out personal interpretation of ethics can be stretched beyond usefulness).

That's more of a rhetorical point - I don't believe most things related to "morality" can ever be as clear as black/white, ethical/unethical, and think it muddies waters to assert it does.

Considered design does not always exactly equal purer-than-pure ethical design.

[GuiA]

Out of curiosity, who or what has designated you an “ethical UX designer”? I’m sure you could find an Apple designer who would claim that forcing people to upgrade ensures that their device is patched and secure, preventing many potentially livelihood threatening problems down the line, so they are just as ethical of an UX designer as you are, if not more so since you do not want to protect people from their device being hacked into and their personal info stolen.

[sizzle]

"Out of curiosity, who or what has designated you an “ethical UX designer”?"

Simply put, I would never allow these dark design patterns into the product if I was the designer, by arguing that it would affect perceived trustworthiness of the company and brand credibility if dark patterns start to become pervasive and the norm across the product. As a professional UX designer, it's my duty to be the voice of the user and I'd put my neck on the line to make sure I voiced my concern before they went over my head and implemented dark patterns. I'll never sign off on it.

The issue is a lack of accountability by designers/PMs who hide behind the company name when these dark patterns are exposed. In an era when companies like Facebook sway political elections through their dark pattern designed newsfeeds, watchdog groups and regulatory bodies need to be created to keep them in check.

[Firadeoclus]

What was described is not "forcing people to upgrade" but tricking people into unintentionally upgrading. Your argument can be used to justify the former but not the latter.

[antoinevg]

Only if the incessant streams of breaking updates were primarily about device security would this be a valid argument.

[amazingman]

The invocation of “primarily” here suggests that your mind is refusing to address reality because it conflicts with your ideals.

[salvar]

What an amazingly deep analysis of a person's mind just based on a few words.

[rorykoehler]

From the UX I've studied it seems that ethics is unrelated. Typically in consumer apps the goal is to increase MAU and engagement and UX is dictated by whatever moves the needle on those areas. It's hard to separate whether people are using the app more because of it's better design through UX design feedback loop iterations or if it is a dark pattern.

For example it is entirely plausible that the sms notification being sent once you put in a 2FA number is completely unrelated. In a normalised database there will only be one phone number for multiple uses. If notifications are set to send to the phone number by default and 2fa uses that phone number the app will not necessarily have knowledge whether the phone number was entered due to a 2fa prompt or something else. It only checks for a phone number and acts accordingly. The 2 people/teams who designed each feature would most probably have no idea how else the number is being used such is the nature of complexity.

[koliber]

> In a normalised database there will only be one phone number for multiple uses.

No! Normalization does not mean keeping only one copy of each piece of data, regardless of category and context. I see this behavior all the time in junior and even some senior devs, both in databases, and when they code.

A piece of information has a type, but it also has a context. A 2FA phone number is different than a marketing contact phone number. It should never be normalized into just one field.

My favorite example of this is people re-using a constant in multiple places in code just because it happens to have the same value. Imagine you have a constant defined as `USER_DISPLAY_AS = 'first_name'`. Then, somewhere, you are building sorting and want to be able to sort by first name or last name. You notice you already have a constant that contains a value 'first_name', so you use it. Not you have tied two completely different things together in your code because you thought you are being DRY.

[rorykoehler]

I don't disagree with you on the type issue but you can see in a large organisation how this would easily fall through the cracks. It's also entirely plausible that an intern came up with the sms notification idea and it wasn't caught in code review. I don't really subscribe to Hanlon's razor but in this context I can understand how it could happen quite easily.

[koliber]

This is a type of error that is often found in code and data modeling. I haven't come across a name for it yet. It most definitely can and does fall through the cracks, in small, medium, and large organizations. It is a code smell and should be eliminated whenever it starts happening. However, it is often quite subtle, and a developer's ego is often stronger than the explanation for why it should not be done that way.

I shall dub it "Krystian's Overoptimistic Denormalization Error", or KODE for short.

[solatic]

> From the UX I've studied it seems that ethics is unrelated. Typically in consumer apps the goal is to increase MAU and engagement and UX is dictated by whatever moves the needle on those areas. It's hard to separate whether people are using the app more because of it's better design through UX design feedback loop iterations or if it is a dark pattern.

No matter which metrics you choose, you run the risk of PM's ordering unethical means of increasing those metrics. A bakery can measure itself by sales volume and ensuing revenue numbers - that doesn't by itself prevent bakery managers from adding addictive drugs to the recipes, nor does it mean that those are poor metrics.

What it does mean is a) the company made some poor hiring decisions along the way, and the best way to deal with that problem is by having some b) ethical review board.

[gt_]

I like the example here. I want to outwardly acknowledge the obvious force that is preventing the baker from putting drugs in their recipe: government regulation and law enforcement.

I am an American but I am well accustomed to learning that other countries are able to prevent certain consumer abuse before it replicates at massive scale by acting early and adjusting along the way.

Does this happen in Europe?

[Normal_gaussian]

We're just introducing the GDPR Europe wide which iterates on the member states existing privacy laws to provide definitive rights to any human in Europe, and obligations to any company dealing with their information.

Abusing the 2FA number is likely illegal in most member states now, and is definitely so at the end of May.

[cja]

Probably you mean EU when you say Europe

[gpvos]

MAU = Monthly Active Users

[tomduncalf]

It is a nasty dark pattern but I think in the case of iOS upgrades you can somewhat justify it - it’s important that users upgrade to avoid security issues etc. Of course really, iOS upgrades should be so pain-free that no one would ever want to say no, but that’s a different story!

[cm2187]

iOS upgrades have long been synonymous to me to having to go through a dozen modal screens nagging me for apple services...

[Naomarik]

iOS devices in general. Spend two months away from one and you'll have about 3-5 modals pop up at different times while you just start to use the device. Awhile ago I was using an old iPad, dismissed a several modals and started reading. One modal that I dismissed previously came not more than two minutes later again, completely interrupting me. Stopped using it after that, wanted to throw it against the wall.

[kaizoku_]

I suspect that their motivation to push users to upgrade has far more to do with their planned obsolescence than anything to do with keeping users secure.

[jjeaff]

I wouldn't be so sure. Security issues are bad publicity. Even Microsoft patches known pirate copies of their os for security reasons.

[matthewmacleod]

I see no basis for thinking that whatsoever.

[taneq]

> Then you take away the NO option. You replace it with 'i'll decide later'. And by doing so, you make it not a choice for the user. You make it a statistical guarantee that sooner or later, most users will cave in and hit yes, even if by accident.

Fucking YouTube and their "Would you like to merge your account with your Google Account and use your real name forever more? Yes / Soon."

[Sylos]

I'd still like to know, what the particular difference between that acquisition and Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp is, that made so many countries block the sharing of data between WhatsApp and Facebook, but not the sharing of data between YouTube and Google.

If it really is just that asshole prompt that made the difference, then man, did Facebook fuck up. They should have just blocked people from using WhatsApp until they volunteer their data.

[tripzilch]

WhatsApp has a shitload of alternatives, and it's much easier to switch. YouTube users had way more investment in retaining their account and not switching to another video hosting service (the best alternative is Vimeo I guess?).

I've only had a FB account for a very short while and that was 8 years ago or so, their disrespect for user privacy creeped me out back then already, never went back.

If WhatsApp had forced me to link to a FB account (and thus make a new one), I'd have told my friends "yeah that's nice you can message me on a different platform from now on". And I wouldn't have been the only one.

There's no social network for people refusing to use FB, so we don't know each other :) But there is way more of us than you'd expect (and from many different corners of society too, not just the tech crowd, friend of mine is a doctor and she's very intent on privacy, even if she sometimes lacks the tech knowledge to make the "perfect" choices, she's much more hard core about it than I am, as if I didn't have enough reason already for respecting the hell out of her).

[thisacctforreal]

See also: https://darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-pattern

[pentae]

Same thing that they've done with the new Wifi toggle on the quick menu on iOS 11. You CANNOT turn off Wifi. It just "Disables it temporarily". They do this so that when you are home and your phones plugged in and on do not disturb its automatically downloading updates over Wifi again. This was the final straw for me.

[maccard]

My non technical partner was regularly finding herself out of data because she would turn off WiFi for some reason, forget to turn it back on again, and use a months data in a week. Since that change, it’s never happened. Yes, the option is misleading, (although there is a banner saying “turning off nearby WiFi until tomorrow”) but the vast vast majority of people don’t really turn off WiFi and want it off for good, they mean “I don’t want to use WiFi right now”. If you really do want to turn off WiFi, it’s in settings. I’d rather have a convenient feature that does what I want, even if it’s over use an un-updateable device where all the core services are tied to one of the largest tracking companies in the world, thanks.

[Nition]

YouTube did that a while ago too, when they were trying to get everyone to make a Google+ account.

Websites also do that screen-covering style popup on load with the two options like:

   Yes I'd love to sign up
   I'll sign up later

Neither of those are my true answer of "no" and as dumb as it sounds I don't really like lying by clicking the "I'll sign up later". Their loss because I usually just close the site instead if the box doesn't close when I click outside of it.

There's the other type where they imply the user is an idiot for taking the "no" option, as in:

   Yes I'd love to sign up
   No, I hate great deals

[Steeeve]

You don't want to see annotations on _this_ youtube video? That's fine. I'm sure you'll want to see them on the next one.

[neinzero]

Good call, but I'm a bit confused how that would increase engagement, unlike the other patterns here.

[JustSomeNobody]

They do a similar thing with Apple Pay too. In order to get rid of the Badge on settings, you have to run through the wizard and cancel out at the end.

[jacquesm]

Google does it too, so does Twitter. They're all fishing for your mobile number but 'for your own good'.

[nikofeyn]

this behavior in iOS drives me absolutely insane. and somehow apple gets away with it when it's just as intrusive as the shit microsoft and facebook do.

in that interface, and in mac os x as well, it seems it will upgrade at a certain point anyway, no mater what you choose. i always answer remind me later, and i will often come home to my macbook pro or iPad having been restarted due to an upgrade. the macbook is particularly annoying when it upgrades because it leaves about 10 minutes or so of stuff left to do that isn't triggered until i go to unlock my computer. so i come home having something urgent to do, try to wakeup and login to my macbook only to find it needs to finish the installation i never chose to do (or at least never intended to do). and still apple gets away with it.

[kyteland]

> Whoever the designers are who came up with this stuff, fuck them.

Are you sure you're laying the blame at the feet of the right people? I'm a design lead on a mobile game and I find myself in a constant battle against these kind of shenanigans with the PM team.

[bicubic]

I would argue that you have an ethical responsibility to fight that battle.

Here in Australia, when you become a software engineer, you join the Engineers of Australia, become a chartered Engineer with some additional civic rights and responsibilities, and swear an oath which includes upholding ethics values, much like doctors swear an oath to do no harm. I hope this kind of thing becomes universal and more prominent with the younger generations. If we want to make the world a better place (and most people who set out to do engineering do), we must put ethics and the good of society above KPIs and profits and individual company valuations.

[8bitchemistry]

I've been an Australian software engineer for 20 years and this is the first I've heard about "Engineers of Australia". Source?

[ajdlinux]

I think parent is referring to Engineers Australia (formally, the Institution of Engineers, Australia), which is the professional body to which most engineery-engineers belong.

Most "Bachelor of Software Engineering" degrees offered by Australian universities are EA-accredited and contain mandatory engineering courses that EA requires. Most CS/IT degrees that don't have "Engineering" in the degree name are only accredited by the ACS (or potentially not accredited at all).

I'm also an Australian software "engineer", I don't have an EA-accredited degree, and the more I see of this industry, the less certain I am that we get to claim the mantle of "engineer" with the professional responsibilities that go with it.

[chrisper]

What would be your proposed alternative to engineer?

[sandov]

Even though I hate how these companies take advantage of people, I hate restricting freedom even more. I prefer having the freedom to manipulate and be manipulated into these kind of traps instead of sending people to jail because they did something people don't like.

And we have the freedom to not use products that mistreat us, I left facebook a year ago and I'll soon install lineageOS on my cellphone, limiting myself to only open source apps.

[naravara]

I love the argument that severely diminishing your capabilities and quality of life in relation to others equates to “freedom.”

[dcow]

Keep in mind if more people were proactive about their own digital landscapes, things like LineageOS and open source software would not seem like second rate diminished quality of life to people like you.

Oh fuck it I was trying to be nice but this has got me going. In my opinion it's certifiably dillusional to think that Google and Facebook equate to a higher quality of life. Holy shit that's crazy. It's bonafide brainwash.

I've severely scaled back my dependence on Facebook and Google the last few years and I could not be happier. It's made me pursue real social interactions again. My personal laptop is poewered primarily by free and open source software and in the last year or so has become so smooth it's putting macOS to shame (I am not making that up for the sake of argument).

Idk what has convinced you that Facebook and Google equal better life, but I can only pray you wake up some day and remember how to live life that isn't managed by someone else's server...

I should add I don't disagree with society regulating behavior that negatively impacts society, but I don't think your chosen method of arguing that point is intellectually sound. And in this case I really find it hard to imagine how you'd regulate user experience of an opt in service such as these companies are providing.

[naravara]

>Keep in mind if more people were proactive about their own digital landscapes, things like LineageOS and open source software would not seem like second rate diminished quality of life to people like you.

If wishes were horses then beggars would ride. I prefer to deal with the world as it is rather than the world as I’d like it to be. Also keep in mind that if more people with proactive about their own digital landscapes, they’d be spending more time managing their platforms and less time doing the stuff they actually want to do. It’s solipsistic to think everyone should have YOUR preferred priorities and time allocation.

>idk what has you convinced that Facebook and Google equal better life

Not having to sound like a fussy prig anytime someone wants to get in touch with me is kind of a thing. Not having to have a “well actually, don’t you know that Facebook is bad!?” discussion whenever I meet someone new who wants to stay in touch with me, likewise. It’s like that old joke about “how do you know if someone does CrossFit/is vegan?”

“Real social interactions” means actually being able to participate in the social interactions where people are having them. I don’t know why you think being able to keep in touch with distant family via WhatsApp, or not not having to create extra steps for people who want to send me photos, or not needing to insist on a special process for inviting me to things are all valueless functions. What you’re proposing is like the equivalent of insisting, after the invention and mainstream adoption of the telephone, that people come to your house and drop off a visiting card if they want to speak with you.

[nojvek]

As a tech lead I fight such dark patterns to a bloody battle.

It’s our responsibility to call out on bullshit like this.

[tripzilch]

You are one of the people that can actively make a difference. So yes. Many of us can't because we're not anywhere near any of these decisions.

It's somewhat puzzling to me. Do you really disagree with these practices? Because you are in a (relatively) unique position to do something about it.

Have you ever noticed something that is just wrong in society but couldn't really think of any plan of action to work against it? Maybe you live in one of those places where your vote doesn't really count, one way or the other. Know that feel? Or maybe you recognized injustice somewhere but it's just so far removed from your area of influence that you'd need to upend your life, change career or education to even begin pulling it right.

Of course you can always donate money or I guess, advocate, tell your friends, etc. But that doesn't really do anything (or very indirectly), and you know it in your heart.

This time you have an opportunity. So use it.

On this particular topic, all I can do is encourage you to act and make the world a little bit better. On other topics, I look out and try to notice such opportunities to better the world from my own sphere of influence, and try my hardest to be virtuous and do the right thing (we might not even agree on what is "right", as I don't know you), even if it's hard and it requires exposing myself to risk, going against the grain.