Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

Re:Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People ... by Hydraulix989 on Tuesday December 06, 2016 @04:49PM (#13118639)

There's also the "pre permissions pop up" trick where a dialog that looks almost exactly like the iOS permissions box shows up first, and only THEN does the real one show up if the user "agrees" to accept it.

Remember, as an app developer, if a user denies the iOS permissions dialog in your app, you can't EVER show the dialog again -- the user has to manually leave the app and re-enable the permission in the iOS Settings.

Successive calls to the function to ask permission automatically return false for "denied" so it is in the developer's best interest to try to avoid showing the real iOS permission pop up unless the user somehow indicates that they are going to accept the permission (in this case, in the "pre permission" clone dialog).

There's even GitHub projects and CocoaPods for this: https://github.com/yahoo/YMPromptKit

When I used this "trick" (yes, I'm guilty), only a handful of thousands of users actually accepted the soft-prompt and then successively denied the real iOS hard prompt.

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Re:Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People ... by svachalek on Tuesday December 06, 2016 @06:16PM (#13119122)

I've often seen this used to explain what they're planning to do with the permission, e.g. "Would you like to enable camera access so you can customize avatars with photos?"

Done properly I can appreciate it, especially on Android where permissions are often nonsensically bundled together. Although I'm never sure when it's crossed the line into scam. Is the permission for getting the user's gamer id really "make phone calls"?!

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Re:Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People ... by st3v3r on Tuesday December 06, 2016 @05:16PM (#13118785)

Is it a dark pattern, though? You're respecting the user's wishes to not use that permission (ignoring for the moment that you couldn't use it even if you wanted to).

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Re:Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People ... by Hydraulix989 on Tuesday December 06, 2016 @05:21PM (#13118818)

Yes, permission requests should only show up at most once, per Apple, so it is definitely gray area.

Not to mention, the pre permission dialog is usually deceptively similar to the Apple one.

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Re:Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People ... by mikeash on Tuesday December 06, 2016 @09:24PM (#13120006)

I really don't see a problem with it. Apple's default UI is not great, and it can be highly confusing if the user doesn't know why the app is suddenly asking for access to their location or photos or whatever. By explaining and asking first, you smooth that over. There's no deception or trickery, it's just a matter of not surprising users.

(And to be clear, I've never built one of these extra permission prompts, so I'm saying this purely from the perspective of a user.)

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Re:Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People ... by illumin8 on Tuesday December 06, 2016 @07:09PM (#13119416)

It's not a grey area, it's a dark pattern, and you're basically intentionally breaking Apple's app policies, and screwing your users over just to get more permissions than you would get if you followed the rules.

Fuck you.

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Re:Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People ... by Hydraulix989 on Tuesday December 06, 2016 @07:17PM (#13119450)

No need to throw shade without knowing specifics.

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Re:Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People ... by tremon on Wednesday December 07, 2016 @04:39AM (#13121464)

You already threw shade when you declared yourself "guilty", and you readily admit it is against Apple's policies.

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Re:Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People ... by Hydraulix989 on Thursday December 08, 2016 @12:29AM (#13128610)

That's simply not true. Moreover, there are some people with pretty strong arguments who do not even THINK this should be considered a dark pattern.

However, it doesn't seem like you are interested in furthering this discussion. Would you have rather I not posted at all?

There are many YC companies listed on this Dark Patterns site, and their founders definitely frequent this form. So far everyone else has been completely mum.

Given that you are on YC's community web site, may I suggest using some tact?

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