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.
pelleyBut what is the word for “knowing what the user wants, blatantly ignoring it and imposing the companies will anyway”?
Enshittification will often involve doing things like this, yes. But as the link itself states, the actual meaning—per Doctorow’s original definition—is an entire process, and a little more descriptive. These things are not the same, one is just frequently a symptom of the other.
Sorry if this comes across as pedantic, I’m in a personal quest, of sorts, to protect the original meaning because I think it’s too important to lose.
In other words, asshole design is only one part of the enshititification process.
Yeah, I think you could say that :^)
The most important things to remember about enshittification are the reasons why it happens and the particular manner in which it does. It’s actually fascinating how the pattern applies to so many platforms.
To anyone interested in this topic, consider giving Doctorow’s talk a watch. It’s great, and explains all of this in an engaging way. I’ll add the link here later.