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by salawat 1709 days ago
It's not my intent to construct a strawman at all. As an American, and as someone who while growing up was regularly a target for abuse by members of my peer group, I'm trying to get across the fact that creating an an organizational obligation to "control" this aberrant behavior doesn't work. Ever. The most effective deterrent, is exercising that responsibility as an individual standing up for common decency. Not one place is an effective deterrer of things, generally because while you might get a bump initially, it wanes over time. In fact, the times when bullying is most likrly is exactly where bullies know organizational blind spots exist. If you formalize a policy on it, they basically know exactly what to look out for.

I one hundred percent agree the dark patterns are an issue. The thing is I disagree with the conclusion of dark pattern use causes bullying that otherwise wouldn't happen to happen.

Awful people gonna awful. Nada's gonna change that. There's therefore a balance point between creating organizational levers to pull to compel action vs. realizable level of attainment of suppression of deleterious behavior.

I'm just saying; doing something about dark pattern use should be just that; don't conflate it with the eternal struggle against getting bullies to stop bullying.