News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Dark Patterns, the Ratchet by vanderZwan on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @03:24PM (#16691903)
I don't think it's much of a stretch to call it abuse.

Imagine this was a person-to-person thing. Person A wants person B to consent to something person B does not want to consent to. And let's not beat around the bush here: we're all thinking of something sexual right now. A repeatedly asks B, and no matter how many times B says no, A claims that B said "maybe later". B does not get to say "fuck off" unless B somehow quits A altogether.

Now that is messed up enough already, but what these forms do is give you no other option than answer "maybe later". That's a level above putting words in someone's mouth that I am sure would be considered a form of violation if someone in a position of power could do that to someone else.

And that very much applies here: I don't get to create the pop-ups in an app or on a website, so the app-makers are abusing a position of power here.

Re:Dark Patterns, the Ratchet by opportune on Tuesday March 27, 2018 @06:25PM (#16693352)
I had just thought of this exact analogy too. Another one that came to mind is a forced/coerced confession. Usually it's combined with something more extreme like sleep deprivation/psychological abuse but the way it often works is just asking someone over and over for hours whether they committed the crime / how they did it. Eventually people confess just to make it stop. I see this as the same thing on a smaller scale: eventually you just accept the terms/update/whatever to make the annoying notifications go away. But you were still coerced into that decision out of annoyance and frustration