The Very Online Show 14: Dark Patterns

Right on red is the worst.

@voidburger you are a lovely editor and I love what you're doing for Giant Bomb <3

"Technically correct, the best kind of correct." Always enjoy a good Futurama reference.

Another killer edit! Thanks Jess!

Maybe it's the content I consume, but how does Jeff say "among us" and that game's intro stinger not play?

(The episode so far is good! Also make Lucy's face in the last episodes thumbnail a chat emoji. It can compliment the Ben Pack lul.)

Thank you for the content.

never thought about right on red from a pedestrian perspective, but out here in the countryside there are basically no pedestrians so it's better for traffic

also sora-tam was very good

Oh, it's my favourite internet literacy show on the internet, hello.

(great editing as always jess)

Also something worth noting and overstressing - not only did all these shitty dark patterns come from weird corners of the internet as it grew to public fruition, but these shitty practices have been perpetuated, "legitimized", and refined into commercialization predominantly by marketing departments for at least the past 15+ years.

It's not even that any of these assholes ever thought doing any of this shit for the past 15+ years to make a buck was morally wrong or a downward slope for societal collapse - to most, it's "just business". Crossing a line into "black hat marketing" is forever a shifting and sliding scale based on profitability, rather than accountability.

Also FYI, I've worked in digital marketing as a career for 15+ years. The kool-aid that some marketers will drink to make a dollar is fucking insane, and drives me up the walls.

In the words of Austin Walker - fuck capitalism, go home.

After Lucy saying The Guardian (UK) is not a good example for Dark Patterns, i believe it is actually the one that she was referring to earlier as the news site that gives you the fake paywall prompt that she couldn't find again. It only throws up the prompt on certain articles and i think it might have a frequency before it returns. But if you search google images for "guardian support journalism paywall" its the fourth that turns up.

the last 5 seconds of this video killed me

Right on red makes sense in the suburbs where pedestrians don't exist.

Been watching Lucy's twitch streams lately and her *bleeehhhh* is iconic <3

Another great and informative video with amazing editing! Thanks all!!

Let's discuss the roundabout...

Edit: Thank you for the rotten.com drop Lucy

Awesome episode!

The editing in these is great stuff. This show should be, like YouTuber-level big.

Tam's hair is glorious!

Love this show, great editing Jess. My anecdotal "my phone is always listening" story: Our landscaping is done by a company chosen by our HOA. I was not looking into anything lawn related or about to move somewhere I would have to mow. I was driving with my sister, saw a man riding a mower on a steep hill and said "I'd be terrified of the mower rolling over on me." Next day had ads for a riding mower that said "Safe on hills" or "Anti-roll" or something in that vein. Like Jeff said, listening all the time would be the most inefficient way to collect data on us, but fucking spooky nonetheless.

Not going to pat France too much on the back when it comes to privacy as they are constantly trying to pass laws in the EU that significantly erode privacy...

I missed this show going free for all and just binged the episodes I missed. Man, this is so much better as well as more entertaining and informative than I would ever have expected. Excellent work!

Great show. Lucy's very thorough on this subject, I used to work for a software company that allowed customers to record demographics about their customers and it was the most complicated and icky (as in yuck) part of that.

Scrolling through darkpatterns.org, I have to say the most infuriating one for me is the one under “Misdirection”. I get a ton of spam email and attempt to unsubscribe from all of it, and often the link to do that is kept as unreadable as possible underneath text that appears to be the hyperlink you want. When you do find the right page, it’s worded as confusingly as possible to try and get you to click on the wrong option. This, as well as making skipping a “protection plan” on ordering electronics, absolutely drives me up the wall.

Great editing, particularly with the Tamchurian Candidate.

Dark Patternssounds like a scary movie title

Thanks Jess for that last 5 minutes

Thank you for the episode!
It's a weird coincidence, two weeks ago I tested a student video game project about this exact subject, which I had never heard of before! (and the game was pretty interesting)

This show is fun AND informative! Jess' editing really adds alot to it. I love Tamoor as Sora <3

1. Great show, very very important topic.

2. A comment about the audio, I find that the combination of the timbre of Lucy's voice plus the mic being used (and maybe the transmission bitrate) is making her voice not higher in volume as adjusted to Tam's or Jeff's but is louder (in terms of Loudness vs Volume). Maybe some kind of compressor on the peaks or on some of the frequency response could change this. Not that it's particularly bad, just notable to me

This was such a good episode, this series goes from strength to strength. Good research, great presentation, incredible editing - funny as hell to top it off. Internet literacy reaaaaaally needs to be taught in schools.

Love this show. And yea, giantbomb as a website is pretty good with the dark patterns. For one, your 'I refuse all cookies' thing is surprisingly not annoying and even pretty informative!

So Tamoor is a HasanAbiHead?? Fuck yeah!!

@heatdrive88: can not agree more as working close to that business for years now.

Ita also a problem that everyone in the industry does it and everyone expects it to be done. No glory in not doing it.

Great episode. Loved Jess' editing on this one especially.

I lived in Florida recently for 3 years, I dont think Florida drivers know there are rules of the road. They do whatever the hell they want, when they want. Some of the worst drivers I've come across.

this series is great, killer edits from jess.
loved the simple and clean reference

I just had a major dark pattern experience and it was from one of your sponsors (former sponsors? it's been a while since I heard an ad read...).

I got an email saying my subscription is confirmed. I went to the site and checked my account to see what was up. I saw a subscription order and quickly tried to delete my stored credit card info (which I forgot to remove after ordering my first product there). Finding out how to unsubscribe took a while because on the site a subscription is referred to as different words around the site. Finally when I said cancel, it did the "are you sure" modal with the passive aggressive CTAs... THREE DIFFERENT WAYS, one after the other. I was appalled, especially since they claim to give to charity with each order.

I sent an angry email (because I am old) but it will probably just go to support and then ignored.