[jeppester]

It should not be normal that companies are trying to fool their customers. I may be wrong, but I feel that dark patterns have gotten worse and have become quite normalised.

I'm well aware that companies are not your friends, and they are only in it to earn as much money as possible etc. But in the ideal world it should never be a consideration to willingly deceive your customers. Then something is wrong that needs fixing.

[thewebguyd]

You can thank Friedman for that with the whole "The social responsibility of business is to increase profits" mindset and the Dodge vs. Ford court case that ruled Ford had to operate his company in the interests of its shareholders above all else.

We need to end shareholder primacy and have stronger antitrust enforcement.

[AnthonyMouse]

> the Dodge vs. Ford court case that ruled Ford had to operate his company in the interests of its shareholders above all else.

That case is from 1919 and it doesn't say what most people think it says.

The problem there was that Ford was trying to claim he could do whatever he wants because he has the most votes, minority shareholders be damned. In practice what companies do now is that they do whatever they want and come up with some explanation for why it's in the interest of the shareholders, e.g. charitable donations are tax deductions and strengthen the company's brand with customers, instead of explicitly telling the other shareholders to eat sand.

The real problem with modern companies is diffuse ownership. You invest your retirement money in some fund, the fund is the thing that actually elects the board and what the fund wants is to increase profits, and typically short-term profits at that, so they elect a board to do it and that's what happens. It's not because the law requires them to do that, it's because that's the result of that incentive structure. And then all the companies that you own as a shareholder are out there screwing you over by double when you're their customer.

Whereas if you have a company owned and operated by the same people, then they can say "hey wait a minute, this is only going to increase short-term profits by a small amount and it's going to make everyone hate us, maybe we shouldn't do it?" Which is the thing that's missing from large publicly-traded companies.

> stronger antitrust enforcement

This is the other thing that's missing. Even if companies are trying to screw you, if they have a lot of competition then they can't, because you'd just switch to one that isn't. But now try that in a market where there are only two incumbents and they're both content to pick your pocket as long as the other one is doing the same.

[themafia]

Friedman told people what they wanted to hear.

Unsurprisingly Friedman was lauded and rewarded for this behavior.

[itopaloglu83]

Leaving the markets uncontrolled is the problem. Fine the hell of them for acting anti-consumer and they will quickly align themselves with the realities.

[kevin_thibedeau]

The interests of the shareholders doesn't mean extract all profit immediately.

[deaux]

This is ironic as it's the perpetuating of this myth by people like you that sustains this mindset. And I get that you're not intentionally doing it at all, it comes from a place of misunderstanding. But it's incredibly harmful.

To be very clear:

Companies absolutely do not have any responsibility to maximize short-term profit.

They have a responsibility to not actively and intentionally destroy the company, and to not use the company's resources for purely personal gain in a way unrelated to the company.

That's it.

This is also why you never hear about any company getting sued for anything related to this (let alone succesfully). Because it doesn't happen, as it's not a thing and any lawyer would immediately tell you you don't have a case.

[alex1138]

There's no accountability either on a liability - legal, prison - level or a personal duty to make sure you Do The Right Thing (when, of course, you have a family to feed)

Behavior like what some of the tech giants do (and I don't crusade against "big tech" but individual cases are ridiculous) wouldn't be justified if you, like, wrote it down on a piece of paper and showed it to them, but they get away with it because you can just ignore all feedback, you don't have to actually answer support tickets from a distance of potentially hundreds of miles away (if you acted like that to my face, well, you wouldn't dare)

Some are worse than others; some legitimately just do not care how much evil they're pumping out into the world (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651178)

[zerosizedweasle]

If your product is this bad and no one wants to buy it normally, maybe you should build a new product.

[estimator7292]

But it's so much more profitable for shareholders to force users to engage with the shitty product

[RoyTyrell]

Yea but Satya bet a lot of the company on AI, and if it fails he's fucked as CEO. So he's going to make damn well sure he's shoved AI down everyone's throats as much as possible, even if it alienates some percentage of their customer base.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

Making new products is very hard. Just look at the innovation output of the tech giants. Compared to the resources they have it’s pretty pathetic. They are simply out of ideas.

[giancarlostoro]

I call it Marketing Driven development. Its also responsible for a drop in higher quality software as business people have to justify their jobs and push developers off maintenance tickets that are “low priority” items but still impact enough customers that it should be embarrassing.

[noir_lord]

Welcome to 2025 - Cyberpunk without the cool aesthetics but all the downsides.

I realised the last time I was in a major city (I live in a village) at night just how close we are, ebikes wizzing around with youngish adults wearing corporate logos all over themselves while using e-cigs, gangs of others waiting outside each restaurant for a pickup.

Straight out the opening of Snowcrash but without the cool car.

We really did invent Torment Nexus from the classic cautionary tale "Don't Create The Torment Nexus".

I love computers, I love programming (and have for 35 years), I really really am coming to detest larger and larger parts of the modern tech scene - consumer tech and the Microsoft/Meta/Googles of the world.

[Yeul]

The things companies can get away with in America is insane. Amazon really feels like Weyland-Yutani.

[wat10000]

We thought computers were different. That freedom of information would throw off the shackles of the old order and usher in a new era of human flourishing.

Turns out computers weren't different at all, they just hadn't caught the full attention of government and business yet.

[matheusmoreira]

So when is Johnny Silverhand gonna show up? He's over two years late by now...

[Asmod4n]

Thank luck we aren’t in the Warhammer 40k universe yet.

[tsunamifury]

Uber, Airbnb and DoorDash are the primary dark pattern users in the industry.

I am an executive design leader and all hires from these three companies are screened in detail about their honesty level in their designs due to how many issues I have with these companies training their workers to lie.

If you work for them know that it’s a black mark on your record.

I have hired two from these companies who literally opened the interview with “I want to leave X because they literally are lying”

[netsharc]

Considering their business model is exploitation of regulations (for hotels, for employment), no wonder they're using dark patterns too.

And it seems other companies see them and think "hey, can we do that as well?" (Like the issue of this article...)

Meta with its exploiting of children's (and adults') insecurities is probably worse though.

[kenjackson]

What are examples of their lies?

[themafia]

> and have become quite normalised.

Enforcement agencies are asleep at the switch. Without any pressure to constrain them then these major corporations will stop at nothing.

> it should never be a consideration to willingly deceive your customers.

They don't see it that way. They just see it as a new profit stream that they're daring enough to capture.

[Yeul]

Windows 11 OneDrive that just decides to backup files without consent was certainly daring.

Look I am computer savvy enough to "fix" Windows I can live with it but I advised my mom to get an Apple laptop.

[watwut]

> Enforcement agencies are asleep at the switch.

They are not asleep. They were intentionally weakened, step by step.

[netsharc]

Isn't it amazing that big corp is like the stereotypical rug salesman now...

I suppose since they're (they being Amazon, Meta, Google, Microsoft) helping pay for a ballroom for the biggest rug conman..

[vjvjvjvjghv]

There aren’t enough opportunities to make the profits they need to keep the stock price up in an ethical manner. So they have to use dark patterns. It will keep getting worse with these trillion dollar behemoths having to maintain their growth rates. Ads everywhere. AI will become more and more of a tool for manipulation.