It is endlessly frustrating that companies have universally decided that they won’t let people say “no” to stuff, ever. There are no longer options to reject stupid-ass new “features”, only postponement until next time you open the app/website/program. They’ll continue pestering you for the rest of your life. I realize that my frustration may be a little over-zealous, but we deal with these interfaces dozens of times per day and this is user hostile behavior. There isn’t really an option to just use another service or program, since the entire technology landscape has been commandeered by a few major corporations, and they all enact the same shitty things as a group.
Start holding a grudge against all companies that don’t deserve your respect. If they clearly violate your trust, that bridge just got instantly burned to ashes, and there are no seconds chances.
I actively avoid products that get shoved in my face with ads and sponsorships. NordVPN, SkillShare, Brilliant, Raid Shadow Legends, fucking whatever can all go to hell. I wanna watch my videos in peace and they annoy me.
If a company is is pushing their product that hard, there might be something wrong. Perhaps the company behaves like a psychopath, the product sucks, or both.
Also, consider installing the sponsor block plugin. Not too long ago there was a good post that listed all the essential plugins like that. That post proves to me that I don’t need Reddit any more. I’ve already got what I need right here in Lemmy.
you should use SponsorBlock to block the sponsors, I’ve saved over a day of my life using it.
God Dammit! Now Im getting SponsorBlock ads in lemmy! When will it end!
use SponsorBlockForLemmyV2000
Oh, I do. Probably for years longer than necessary.
But for such a thing as the “Not now” button and there wont barely be software left.
Nowadays it’s even in cars. When service is due, my car offers me to call service desk to schedule an appointment now or later. To get rid of this message, I need to make the call just to tell the person on the other side that this is a company car, I’m not the owner, and service is being scheduled by the leasing company through other means anyway.
Usually Fleet Management companies want you to do an Oil Change and Tire Rotation every 5000mi. So… Yeah.
Microsoft: “Please use Edge!”
Me: “No thanks!”
Microsoft, 6 months later: “Please use Edge!”
Me: “No, thanks.”
Microsoft, when I visit Bing: “Please use Edge.”
Me: “No. Thanks.”
Microsoft, when I open Outlook: “We will be opening links in Edge instead of your default browser. To switch back, go to your preferences.”
Me: “Motherfucker, I think we have a difference in viewpoints.”
Yep, super annoying and you will get the same thing, but for Chrome, when hitting Google sites in Edge or Firefox.
You should be pissed off! It’s software paternalism, utilizing new speak, removing your vocabulary and agency.
Every time you’re given a dark pattern dialogue where it says " would you like this thing that you don’t like? Yes absolutely, later " the developers don’t respect you, they’re trying to say you don’t know what you want, they’re using propaganda on you…
It’s like the classic police interrogation question " is that when you stopped beating your wife?" Yes and no are both traps. So some edgy developer is trying to trap you with oh but you consented (can send it) to seeing this later. When it’s really user hostile dark patterns using forced language to remove your agency as a human being. It’s fucking scummy
This is why I love open source software, not only is it highly unlikely for you to see a dark pattern, if you do you can fix it!
What app or tech is badgering you? I feel like with standard android and pop! OS I have zero complaints. Everything just works
This happens with YouTube, for example. Even though I pay for their premium, whenever I disable their shorts section they tell me “ok, we’ll hide it for 30 days”. How about you don’t show me your shorts ever again?
Companies like this are abusing you as a paying customer. I would use newpipe if you’re on android or if apple has any alternative to newpipe then use that otherwise use firefox with ublock.
I use piped.video for the dozen or so subscriptions I have. I don’t have an account, I once exported my subscriptions and when I erase browser history I upload that subscriptions file. All I want to see on YT is right there.
Use Firefox with adblocker then disable the YouTube app so it goes with Firefox as your default
Use something like ReVanced, which has the ability to hide Shorts forever (or until YouTube changes their backend enough that you need to update your ReVanced install to continue blocking Shorts). ReVanced also has the ability to unlock certain Premium features for free, and it supports SponsorBlock, among many other things.
@PetrusHyde @Gnubyte the problem with these platforms is that you don’t have the control. You can only choose from the available options the platform owner give you
Yeah that’s understandably frustrating. I heard they make like no money off of that. Wonder how long before it hits the killed by google list.
yt enhance u disable it 4ever
Paying for the ability to not be fucking spammed with scam ads was your first mistake
Lol for real
Duolingo just did this to me yesterday. Pissed me off
Huh. I guess I mostly use foss stuff and maybe a few apps like youtube premium/tv, that I pay them for service so I never hear about it.
I’m learning Japanese with duoligo, I discovered that you can get the free trial for premium, cancel it when it reminds you your trial is almost up, and then 2 days later it offers you the free trial again.
My girlfriend kept complaining about losing her hearts on Duolingo and I was very confused as I never had any “hearts” during regular lessons. Eventually I found out that since I had created a classroom while exploring the site, I was given access to a teacher version of Duolingo - which is basically a free premium version 😅
Surprise LPT! I’ll have a poke around, see if I can do that too. I’ll report back. 🫡
Discord has been hassling me about whatever name changes I read about. I only open it once or twice a month, so I’ve been able to delay taking whatever action so far. If I was in there on a regular basis, that’d be a big pain in the ass.
ETA: Oh, and the IMDB app keeps asking me to sign up for an account. I’ve been saying no for literally years.
Discord wants to move away from the #4-digit identifier system because it is an unnecessary hassle for users. The downside is that it means that a username must now be unique. That’s why they’re asking you.
I guess at one point they’ll just force change your username and you’ll have to stick with it or make a new acc.
The tech market slowing after the end of Covid really showed these greedy fucks for who they are. Profits dropped and they all pulled out the enshittification dial for a big old twist.
Like, can’t you just deal with being slightly less insanely rich for a few minutes?
They are legally obliged to, lmao. After companies become public, they have to maximize profits, if not, shareholders can simply vote to fire whomever they want. Look at every company on earth. They all with the same road. from facebook, google, to soon-to-be-public reddit.
I don’t know if this is oversimplified. Probably is. But this is my understanding of it too.
It’s more than an individual greed problem. It’s a systemic mandatory greed problem.
It think it became “mandatory” when we removed pensions from the equation and tied “everyones” retirement savings to The Market™©® so we need companies to be considerate of their stock price as it’s often our retirement that depends on it.
Nothing like a loaded gun put to our future foreheads to make us go along with some more bullshit…
Well put
Yes, it is simplified. But basically this is what happens every time. The pattern is the same.
“Fun” fact, Facebook isn’t a good example here because Zuckerberg has his shares structured so he has full control.
That is not true, since not annoying your users can mean a long time profitability
You are correct, but unfortunately, this is what happens in reality.
When? Give me examples
I think it was Vanderbilt who answered the question of “how much money is enough” with “more”. Billionaires have a hole in their soul. No amount of money will fill it, but that doesn’t stop them from trying.
I suspect for most of them it’s not even about how much money they have so much as it is about optimising the rate of growth of their wealth. IE, they don’t care so much about the total amount they have so much as the amount they have coming in.
I believe it’s a human thing. I’ve heard the term “hedonistic treadmill” where what you once wanted becomes “meaningless” once you have it and now you’re looking to the next thing to obtain.
The ultra wealthy wanted money, but now they “won” capitalism and need more because it literally is never enough. This goes for you and me too though, if we became billionaires we’d be looking for “what’s next?”
I disagree with your assertion that you and I would succumb to endless greed if given a large sum of money. Not everyone is built like that. Look at Tom from MySpace. He was offered hundreds of millions of dollars (not billions) for his website, took it, and fucked off to Africa to take a bunch of pictures. He pursues his hobbies now, and isn’t focused on obtaining more money he’ll never spend. He could have revamped his platform, put Facebook out of business, and pursued endless data and control, but that’s not what he was about, and I don’t think that is what most people are about. The billionaires who never have enough are broken. Something inside them is wrong.
This is just one of a hundred reasons to avoid proprietary software. The only power we have to change the behavior of closed software is not using it.
Every time I go to the ATM to get cash it shows me an ad for a service and the options are “Yes” and “No thanks.”
I am forced to choose one. I am forced to thank them for showing me an ad before they give me my own money.
It would be nice if there was a “fuck-off forever” button.
It’s called a baseball bat.
Jesus where are you from? I never heard of ads in an atm, that scares the sht out of me, something I am trusting my personal data with could end up selling it or using it for ads.
I hate this specifically for one of the corner stores at my house. When I use tap-to-pay (or I assume swiping a card), it gives me a “Would you like to register for our rewards program? Selecting no will not impact your ability to complete this purchase” prompt…
Except then I’m forced to actually physically click “No”, which circumvents the whole point of not having to touch the POS terminal when using tap-to-pay…
Tap to pay isn’t there to stop you from interacting with the terminal though? I mean yeah it was handy during the pandemic to now have to touch things many other people touch but that wasn’t the main idea behind tap to pay.
Tap to pay is there for banks to eliminate the last money transaction they weren’t taking a cut of: cash payments.
They haven’t been trying to get this shit going for almost 2 decades because the convenience othe their customers is their driving motivation…
I mean I hardly use the tap to pay feature on my cards but I use credit cards for everything. Tap to pay is more secure so protects the banks more. Same reason we moved to chips instead of always using mag strips.
I’ve actually worked in smartcard issuance at some point and tap to pay isn’t at all more secure than the cards with smartchips requiring physical contact and a pin code that the banks had finally gotten around to adopt after more than a decade of Visa and Mastercard trying to force them to ditch magstrip (which was laughably insecure).
Tap to pay actuall reduced security because it removed the “locked for anything with a key known only to the user” element and replaced it with a limit on losses (i.e. pinless payments are limited to a certain amount so losses if the card is stolen are limited) and replaced the physical connection requirement with a radio-range one which can be worked around with a directional antenna (something as simple as a pringles can).
Sure, it’s better than magstrip, but then pretty much anything is better than magstrip.
Free Software is the only solution to this in the long run.
It’s just like those stupid GDPR cookie popups. They’re all different, and I can’t think of anyone who would ever want to select some cookies and not others, people either are okay with it or they want none of them, yet few sites offer a “no to all” option, and most push the boundaries of what’s allowed under the law.
At least this popup usually isn’t there the next time I visit, but there’s just so many sites that I keep getting them multiple times a day, so it feels just like what you’re talking about.
I use Consent-O-Matic to automatically select “Reject all”. It’s an extension for both Firefox and Chrome, and I highly recommend it.
Just so people are aware, this can make some pages misbehave, specially shopping, so make sure you add them to some “ignore list” like you do with your ad-blocker
Yes, thank you for adding that aspect. In general it behaves fantastically, but if a site misbehaves, you can disable it for specific sites by clicking the extension when on the page, and unticking the only box there.
and most push the boundaries of what’s allowed under the law.
I worked for a company that wanted me to load all of their analytics stuff, which drops a shit ton of cookies, before the GDPR consent. I told them that is illegal in the EU and they said the legal department already approved it. I’m not an attorney or a GDPR expert, but it seemed to me that the big companies have already found loopholes around GDPR to get the data that they want. I don’t work there anymore.
How about using the cookie auto delete plugin? Once I leave the site, those fishy files are also gone.
lmao. Even after disabling toggles, they got choices like:
- Save my preferences (grayed out) - as much invisible as possible
- Accept (bigger and in blue background) - feels like it will accept based on my choices
That asshole design works on me tho. I misclicked a couple of times and thus “consented” to the tracking. Should be illegal imo.
I always give them a 1 star rating for disrespecting user intent.
Same. Also the same if they give me popups telling me to go leave them feedback. The first time I let it slide, but if it pops up again I’m like “oh I’ll leave you feedback, you mudda fuckers, you!”
THANK YOU. I’m glad others are noticing this and getting fed up with it.
No means no, damnit.
No, YouTube. NO. I will NEVER, EVER want YouTube Premium. Stop asking me about it every fucking time I watch a video.
You don’t want Shorts? Gotcha, we will remind you in 30 days.
YouTube premium is probably the video streaming purchase I get the most use out of lol.
Same here. I always said “ain’t no way I’m ever paying for what used to be free!”
Fast forward to political ad season and some orange peckerhead keeps popping up… “Alright, here’s your damn money. Now let me watch this autistic guy unclog drains in peace.”
You’re only saying that because they forced you to buy it!
Actually I’ve had YouTube premium for a few years now and I love it! I use YouTube a lot, but I also then get YouTube Music which I also use A LOT because it’s actually a really good music service.
Music plus ad free YouTube? Video/music background playing? All worth the money to me, and I’m helping keep a service I enjoy alive as YouTube still isn’t profitable. Which also slows enshitification of another product I enjoy.
I want to help YouTube be profitable while I still like it, to
I tried the YouTube music service and I hated it. It would play the low quality BS that people uploaded instead of studio quality recordings from the bands. It also has way too many live versions of the songs. I also didn’t like the interface. My wife and I considered signing up for YouTube premium, but it costs as much as traditional cable. I might as well just get Comcast or something. At least then I could watch baseball without a VPN. But I’m glad you enjoy it.
Are you sure you haven’t gotten YouTube Premium mixed up with YouTube TV? The latter is priced like traditional cable because that’s basically what it is; premium is just YouTube with no ads, basic app features that shouldn’t be paywalled in the first place like downloading videos, and YT music thrown in.
The YouTube premium family plan (pairs with more accounts/devices) is a little more expensive at like $23 but I didn’t think that was cable tv expensive. All the full-package cable replacement services I know of are around $70-$90.
Ah yes, I was thinking of YouTube TV.
If they wouldn’t have that fucked up “same household”-policy for the family plan, I would be all over YouTube Premium. But for me alone it’s too expensive (I don’t use it THAT heavily) and I couldn’t share it with my family that lives in three different places.
Because they irritate people into getting it. You wouldn’t have it if they didnt turn features off and increase ads until you wanted it.
Fuck google
I heard it’s one of the better ways to support YouTube creators. That’s why I got it.
I have adblockers and a pihole so ads weren’t that bad anyway.
Download LibreRube and PipePipe. No ads.
I switched to Nebula as most of the YouTubers I watched most are on there. NewPipe for the few that aren’t. Now I’m spending the time I used to waste watching YouTube contributing to openstreetmap.
I’ve considered getting nebula. Are you also able to comment, like or dislike? Are there custom playlists?
No comments, likes or dislikes or playlists. No recommendation algorithm, just a nice simple video streaming platform with no ads
In the eighties, it was acknowledged that since the fifties the viewing public are more resistant to commercials and marketing, outpacing their new techniques (more commercials, engaging commercials, obnoxious commercials, product placement, having whole shows that are one big commercial, etc.)
One factor is as marketers hard-sell middle age men, they’re also immunizing their kids and grand kids who grow up skeptical of anyone saying anything nice lest they’re trying to sell something.
This also likely figures into the attendance crises experienced by religious ministries as old parishioners age out and new ones realize they don’t have time for spirit or money for tithes.
I don’t think that you’re being overzealous. Far from that - even the phrasing rubs me the wrong way; it conveys "you’re something fooling itself that it has a choice. You don’t - you aren’t a rational human being, you’re a user. Do as you’re being ordered to. The continued pestering adds “You’ll be bossed around until you learn to obey.” to the insult.
On a lighter side I agree with Grouchy that you have options. I think that we should start giving those companies the middle finger. And frankly I think that we’re better off doing so for other reasons - the data vultures love this sort of “non-confrontational on surface, but bossy upon analysis” discourse.
the data vultures love this sort of “non-confrontational on surface, but bossy upon analysis” discourse.
We need a simple name for this, like we have for enshittification or shrinkflation.
Dark Pattern
It’s a subset of dark patterns.
Yes! It’s a dark pattern microagression.
Consumer manipulation?
Corporate badgering?
Hmmm… maybe something involving “false dichotomy”, “Sysyphus”, “pestering”, “options”, “forced politeness”, …
Illusion of choice.
