My two takes from this article are:<p>1. The author does a good job in explaining why certain, very concrete, pieces of UI implementation make the UI "dark"<p>2. The content doesn't match the title at all, there is no analysis or discussion about why dark UX would have some kind of problem "in the long run", which ... kind of makes the title (to me) a bit click-baity, which I guess is also a dark UX pattern? These are confusing times.<p>Edit: blank line for better numbering UX.
I'm not convinced that the Feedly option is as much of a dark pattern as you might think. There are a few ways this could be addressed which would come with their own tradeoffs:
1) Remove the "x" close button since you're not a Pro user therefore setting clear expectations that you have no ability to dismiss an ad. This is clean but then the user wouldn't have known that they COULD pay to close the ad.
2) Change the "x" close button to something like "How do I remove ads?" or "Upgrade to Pro to close" - this would set expectations clearly upfront but for many users who don't mind seeing the ads this is additional information/noise.<p>The current experience optimizes for delivering information only when there's strong intent. The intent is derived when the behavior has been expressed by the user in the form of "I dont' want to see this ad" and then the information is delivered to explain "Here's how you can complete this action".
Dark ux is largely about letting for-profit business incentives take over the product process. They will always make for a worse product that in the end pushes away users.<p>I wrote about why nfts are dark ux here: <a href="https://www.ramijames.com/thoughts/peak-software-abuse" rel="nofollow">https://www.ramijames.com/thoughts/peak-software-abuse</a>
<i>Someone is trying to leave and you try to stop them</i><p>When I read a webpage, I usually move my cursor away to not distract me. But when this “already leaving?” happens, I never bother finding the (x) button inside the page. It’s the prefect litmus test for morons with whom I don’t want anything in common.<p>But regarding that $subj case, it’s not that bad. A little annoyingly misleading, but I understand the direct financial interests. It’s not a shady trick or ux abuse. They could put “to remove ads go pro” there instead or a hover popup, but wouldn’t you find reading it again and again or accidentally triggering even more intrusive? I think they did the best thing here, really.
Outfits who use dark patterns are so short-sighted. Even if the pattern results in a high-percentage of conversions or desired outcomes from the total audience, you may be pissing off a key demographic that might have otherwise driven true success (ie. The Law of the Few from Malcolm Gladwell's <i>The Tipping Point</i>).
I think there would be no "long run" for Feedly if people didn't buy Feedly Pro.<p>I don't think it makes sense to talk about dark UX when it comes to ads. The only good UX for ads is no ads, so there is no way to ever have a concession between an ad-supported business model and users who feel entitled to free internet stuff.<p>Think of it another way: someone who doesn't think your product is worth 6 dollars a month is going to be mildly annoyed by all the ads you placed.
I think it does work in the long run: People as a statistical entity will continue to fall for things, because at the very least there are a lot of people and there are always new people (people grow up and grow old)<p>As a trained designer, over the years, I found "Dark UX" to be a somewhat simplistic way to think about a complex issue. As with most things in life, most of the time it's not a thing that overtly evil people do, but a mix of confusion, frustration, incompetence, lack of empathy, economic pressure and a honest believe that, surely, this is in the interest of the user that pushes us in that direction.<p>And that is not to say, there will always be poster-boy examples of this, but it's a continuum. Any advertisement will by design not be a 0 on the dark ux gradient.
Can anyone anonymously report on the numbers of people who actually subscribe from the dark pattern of scrolling up or off the page and showing a full screen modal to subscribe?
I just want to vent here a bit:<p>Feedly is the only app I ditched because I did not understand the interface. AT ALL. I tried multiple times, like really hard, over the course of 2-3 years (with some dedication, a decade in total), and all it delivered was a feeling of being insanely stupid.<p>I started my attempts around 2012 (kind of around Google killing Reader). I could not understand if that app even deliver that same functionality as Reader, could not understand if it allows to just add custom RSS url. I was not sure which title-description was an actual pair. I struggled to find article boundaries - I scrolled while reading and it suddenly just closed that and opened another unrelated thing. I struggled to use categories. I struggled to stabilize the layout - every week or so it switched from a list, to two-pane thumbnails, then some other weird view. I tried to set up my custom view but it just toyed with me. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out how to actually browse my feeds by publish time (instead of some random metric app thrown them at me).<p>Dark theme just made it even harder - I had no idea what I'm looking at. I felt that I have more control over watching commercials on TV, than actually using Feedly.<p>It made me start hosting TinyTinyRSS [0] app on public internet for me and friends for many years. When I finally turned off tt-rss instance (due to my servers going down permanently) I came back to feedly... to just realize I don't even try to use it any more. A decade old frustration ended up with simply uninstalling.<p>[0] <a href="https://tt-rss.org/" rel="nofollow">https://tt-rss.org/</a>
Why not replace "x" (close) icon with "i" (information) icon? Result is practically the same, and it wouldn't make people angry.<p>And on the "in the long run" part: if dark pattern stays for too long, it risks ending up in uBlock filters list.
Tell that to LinkedIn and every single social network out there. The “successful web” is successful <i>because</i> of dark UX. That’s the harsh truth. HN’s success is the exception, not the rule.
I thought this is related to another post [1] about dark mode, but it's something different. Even glancing at the Feedly screenshot made me this it is really about dark mode.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.lloydatkinson.net/posts/2024/the-dark-mode-lobby/" rel="nofollow">https://www.lloydatkinson.net/posts/2024/the-dark-mode-lobby...</a>