[TechBro8615]

> I wrote the original Disrespectful Design post he links

Following the links from your blog, it looks like you worked at Quora. Outside of news websites, Quora and Reddit are probably the two worst offenders of pushing dark patterns onto the Internet. I still don't understand why Google hasn't deranked Quora for cloaking its pages, a dark pattern that would get any other website banned from the SERPs.

I like your point about recruiting. I can't imagine many engineers would choose a job offer from Quora or Reddit over one from any other company. You're basically selecting for candidates who can only attract one offer.

[Ozzie_osman]

Honestly, yes, Quora and Reddit both have some bad patterns around their signup flows (esp mobile). I won't defend those.

That said, they are far from the worst offenders. Facebook has done some really shady things around inviting your contacts, recommending people you may know, sharing/exposing your data to other apps, etc. LinkedIn has done some lawsuit-worthy shady things in that area too (e.g. [1]). News sites (and others) are paid to put tracking pixels on their sites so data can be harvested via data brokers and sold back into the ad/tracking ecosystem.

All around, Quora had some of the smartest, most passionate engineers / PMs / managers I've ever worked with (some of which have gone on to start very successful companies themselves). I'd be lying if I said I didn't think some product decisions affected recruiting at all, but it's a far cry from "candidates who only attract one offer".

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/3051906/after-lawsuit-settlement...

[noduerme]

As a consumer of posts who wants to occasionally read Quora on my phone's DDG browser, I just no longer bother to click the link. Ditto with Reddit unless I feel like fighting their popups. Logging in or downloading the apps? You've gotta be kidding. Nothing would be a bigger waste of time or storage on my phone. FB is obnoxious in that they only let you view one page w/o logging in, but I never had a FB account so I just ignore any links to them. I suspect a lot of other people as consumers - not privacy advocates or engineers - find these login/download walls annoying enough to drop engagement. Quora is particularly obnoxious and I've never had an account with them, but removing a few invisible divs in the dom editor usually lets me read what I need to.

[soco]

And I thought I was the only one ignoring Quora links.

[Zababa]

> I can't imagine many engineers would choose a job offer from Quora or Reddit over one from any other company.

Considering these dark patterns translate to growth (and thus more money), I don't know why they wouldn't. Lots of people are still working for the tobacco industry.