[chime]

Web and modern tech can be fantastic if you take away the dark patterns. The UX for booking a flight isn't complex because reserving a seat or taking your card is difficult. It's complex because low margin businesses like airlines can make more money up-selling extra legroom or travel insurance.

Take away the dark patterns and incentive to eek every last dollar from the user and the entire web can be neal.fun.

[klabb3]

Yes. It’s slightly amusing seeing hacker news bringing the magnifying glass trying to look for which JavaScript framework to blame when the boogeyman is standing right in front of them: it was meant to be this way, largely. It’s a pure function of the parameters given to the developers by their employers and clients. JS hell is just collateral damage.

I mean… try to turn off the adblocker for a bit. And don’t look at the address bar. Now this is hard: but pretend you can’t tell ads and clickbait apart from the content. Also, pretend you don’t know that websites are sandboxed and that they can helpfully warn you about “problems with your computer”. Now you’re somewhat close to the experience of an average user. This is the stage at which the dance between providers and consumers take place.

[jachee]

Take away enough dark patterns and you eventually kill Capitalism. :)

[_factor]

I know you’re being mildly facetious, but profit doesn’t come from thin air (or does it?). If you spend $.30 to grow and ship bananas and charge $1, that $.70 difference is just a made up number by what you hope is a fair market. A dark pattern is just a way of maximizing that difference unethically.

I’ll ignore the clustering and trust structures that form naturally, but those are long-term dark patterns as well.

[smaudet]

> profit doesn’t come from thin air (or does it?)

It doesn't. Its supposed to come from your operating costs (cost of living + insurance costs). That is supposed to be where the prices come from, the problem is the insurance...if the cost of insurance approaches infinity due to infinite uncertainty, then "dark patterns" become "coping mechanisms". Not that I'm saying airline booking websites are in the moral right here, or anything - but someone thought they needed a raise, or to provide stock holders with a quarterly increase, because of rising cost(s) (or greed, but that's just another way insurance costs increase).

[andsoitis]

> operating costs (cost of living + insurance costs). That is supposed to be where the prices come from

That isn’t the only way to set price.

Common methods are:

- Value-Based Pricing

- Cost-Plus Pricing (your example)

- Competitive Pricing

- Psychological Pricing

- Dynamic Pricing

- Bundle Pricing

- Promotional Pricing

[hawski]

What do you mean practically by: "the cost of insurance approaches infinity due to infinite uncertainty"?

[edwr]

In the same way the risk premium of a financial security is proportional to its riskiness.

[toastercat]

Shh you can't say that on Hacker News.