Admiral PatrickFTC study finds 'dark patterns' used by a majority of subscription apps and websites | TechCrunch
VahtosSo, a dark pattern is a design that tries to trick the user into something. But what is the word for “knowing what the user wants, blatantly ignoring it and imposing the companies will anyway”?
Example: I think YouTube shorts are a terrible format, and I find them generally irritating. So I click the X on the element in YouTube that has a bunch of side scrolling cards, where each card is one of these shorts. YouTube informs me it will hide them for 30 days and then they’ll be back.
Another example, Windows Update. I’ve set all the group policy settings so it should never restart and update without me triggering it. But, if I allow it to download the update, then damn my group policy settings, it is going to apply that update and restart whenever it wants.
Have you tried blocking them with uBlock Origin?
Hmm I haven’t tried this. Thanks for the suggestion.
It works wonders. I’ve blocked so much crap on YT. Everything including the shopping ads, the little white watch more popus, the related video popups, and whatever else I’ve forgotten about.
My home feed is nothing but actual videos I can watch - no shorts, catagories, special promotions or other junk.
I also set my bookmark to the subscriptions page, that way I always start there. No need to “ring that bell” when all the latest stuff I’ve subscribed to is the first I see.
proleGotta use “medium mode,” and then allow scripts individually until the site isn’t broken.
More people should be aware of this hidden setting in uBlock Origin.
I also use the element picker to straight up remove those fake “sign up to read the rest” “pop-ups” that grey the page out and stop you from scrolling. Can usually get past some of the lazier pay walls that way.
same, i use the picker for all kinds of things.