from Hacker News

How e-commerce sites manipulate people into buying things

by hellllllllooo on 6/24/19, 10:54 PM with 107 comments

• by 2T1Qka0rEiPr on 6/25/19, 11:17 AM

  > About 30 sites made it easy to sign up for services but particularly hard to cancel, requiring phone calls or other procedures. The Times requires people to talk with a representative online or by phone to cancel subscriptions, but the researchers did not study it or other publishing sites.

  Nice that the editor was at least allowed to point out that their own employer employs many of these "dark patterns".

• by readbeard on 6/25/19, 1:52 PM

  Not just e-commerce sites—change.org shows "### have signed," where the number is programmed to tick upwards at a somewhat randomized rate. This is simply dishonest—a lie designed to make you feel like you'll be missing out unless you sign.

  Example: https://www.change.org/p/target-stop-filling-the-world-with-...

• by 3xblah on 6/25/19, 7:16 AM

  "The report coincides with discussions among lawmakers about regulating technology companies, including through a bill proposed in April by Senators Deb Fischer, Republican of Nebraska, and Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, that is meant to limit the use of dark patterns by making some of the techniques illegal and giving the Federal Trade Commission more authority to police the practice.

  "We are focused in on a problem that I think everyone recognizes," said Ms. Fischer, adding that she became interested in the problem after becoming annoyed in her personal experience with the techniques."

  If we used programmer vernacular we might say she was "scratching her own itch".

• by vmurthy on 6/25/19, 8:38 AM

  An age old tactic I have encountered: Deep discounts (after raising the prices of course). For e.g.

  (Harvard research paper - WIP) https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/18-113_16977...

  https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/how-ret...

  https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2018/09/24/what...

• by throwaway13337 on 6/25/19, 7:11 AM

  Not all these notifications are fake but they can still be misleading.

  I've investigated a few of these sorts of apps on Shopify. They do use actual customer names but how long ago those orders came in seems a little dubious.

  I believe it's not so much to promote fear of missing out - other apps do that better - e.g. ones that copy booking.com's pattern of 'only x left!'.

  Instead, they're a very good way to signal to potential buyers that the (usually small) shop is being used by other shoppers to increase trust.

  Few people go in to empty restaurants.

  It would be interesting to know if there are legal implications to lying about your visitors using services like these, though.

• by djflutt3rshy on 6/25/19, 11:34 AM

  Why would the ThredUp example not fall under current regulations against false advertising? If I say "This dress was bought 4 minutes ago!" or "Hurry now! Only one left!", those statements are obviously either true or false.

• by cabaalis on 6/25/19, 2:52 PM

  The FTC regulates advertisements. [1] At what point is a statement like "[x] just saved $[y]!" on your own site being shown to a visitor constitute an advertisement for your service? Or is it just advertisements involving a paid third party?

  From 1: "Advertisements with specific claims can be substantiated with evidence"

  [1] https://bondstreet.com/truth-in-advertising-laws/

• by mrhappyunhappy on 6/25/19, 2:42 PM

  As much as I don’t like PayPal I will never sign up for any subscription that does not go through PayPal. Reason being, I can log into PayPal and stop my subscriptions any time without jumping through hoops.

• by jimhi on 6/25/19, 4:35 PM

  I run an international e-commerce site in several countries. We have been recommended all these dark patterns. Sometimes I see sites that apply all of them at once and a new user gets no less than 3 pop-ups within 10 seconds engaging them in different ways.

  Many of these don't work long-term. These sites won't last long when they get one-time users who are deal seekers. This reminds me of back when all video sites had 10 ads and pop-ups or blogging sites. They all learned eventually.

  I predict two dark patterns will stay with us. Making it hard to unsubscribe and designing the "YES" button to be more attractive to click than the "NO" button. They don't involve lying and they work surprisingly well.

• by wazoox on 6/25/19, 2:39 PM

  I think most of these tactics are explicitly forbidden in the EU. Opt-in (to newsletters and spam) is mandatory, for instance.

• by eswat on 6/25/19, 12:30 PM

  I recall in another FB thread that shaming employees was not totally frowned-upon if it planted the seed in the engineer that they should maybe reflect on what they're contributing to and consider alternative work.

  Would shaming designers that are complicit in these dark patterns be a similar, favourable way of movement towards a better direction?

  I actually finished a book that tries to do that[1]. But I don't believe enough designers are told from their peers that maybe the way they’re exercising their knowledge of design theory and psychology is being shitty towards people.

  [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/44432844-ruined-by-desig...

• by jumpinalake on 6/25/19, 10:24 AM

  NYTimes + incognito = rejection.

• by rgovostes on 6/25/19, 2:00 AM

  Here's ThredUP's Julia Boyle posting a number of open engineering positions in a recent "Who is hiring?" thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18358221

• by RandomInteger4 on 6/25/19, 1:39 PM

  There goes that nasty evil capitalism, "It wasn't my lack of will power and cognitive short falls that caused me to buy these things ... it was capitalism's fault. I'm completely innocent and would never make bad decisions of my own accord ..."