U.S. senators introduce social media bill to ban 'dark patterns' tricks

Re:U.S. senators introduce social media bill to ban 'dark pa... by hn_throwaway_99 on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @08:49PM (#19620605)

Thanks to sbov for posting the text of the doc here, https://www.scribd.com/document/405606873/Detour-Act-Final, and my take on this is (and IANAL), well, yes, most definitely it would apply to A/B testing in certain circumstances.

Many types of A/B tests are designed to increase conversion - to get a user to buy something, or signup, etc. I have personally (and I'm sure lots of folks on this site) been involved in A/B tests that specifically test what many would consider "dark patterns" to increase conversion.

Just take a look at Booking.com, which is famous for their A/B testing. Right now I get a popup banner when I hit that which says "Welcome back! It's always a pleasure to see you! Sign in to see deals of up to 50% off." I guarantee the text in that banner has been A/B tested 9 ways to Sunday. I'd even bet they tested the percentage amount (i.e. whether it was 50%, 30% etc.) Of course "up to 50%" could mean 0%, which it probably is in most cases. And the whole purpose of that banner is to get you to authenticate and sign in, so they can track you better.

So yes, it most definitely will apply to certain forms of A/B testing. That also appears to be the point.

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Re:U.S. senators introduce social media bill to ban 'dark pa... by 6gvONxR4sf7o on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @11:27PM (#19621554)

If an A/B test leads a site to adopt bad shit, then ban the bad shit. Don't ban testing.

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Re:U.S. senators introduce social media bill to ban 'dark pa... by ipad23 on Tuesday April 09, 2019 @11:09PM (#19621455)

so, users would much rather get ads they aren't interested in? the point of a/b testing is to show you something you want to see and might be interested in purchasing.

This is a good thing

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Re:U.S. senators introduce social media bill to ban 'dark pa... by reaperducer on Wednesday April 10, 2019 @12:17AM (#19621795)

the point of a/b testing is to show you something you want to see

Not always. A/B testing is the reason that we now have weapons-grade clickbait headlines, and those terrible little grids of ads at the bottom of blog posts. Neither of those are good things.

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Re:U.S. senators introduce social media bill to ban 'dark pa... by Mirioron on Wednesday April 10, 2019 @04:45AM (#19622892)

And you think we couldn't get to that point without A/B testing? Yellow journalism has been around for much longer than websites.

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