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this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2024
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Look up "boiling a frog"
They count on this exact reaction.
Every time they implement these little bullshit changes, people inevitably go "It's annoying but it's not that big a deal." And then they do more of it a few months later.
The article isn't being hyperbolic because it's reacting to the overall trend that this is yet another step forward in. Because the writer and everyone here knows it will get worse and worse over time.
Dark patterns are, by design, slow and incremental so as not to trigger too much pushback at once. People need to start being more aware of it and pushing back on it when they see it.
And yes, that information is probably useful to some people, but that doesn't in any way justify hiding the options that used to be there.
Do you know the term "trust thermocline"?
Basically it described a problem with the boiling the frog technique. There's a point for every user at which they're fed up with the bullshit, lose all trust in you(r company) and are hard to impossible to get back as a customer. Every customer leaving has a little unnoticeable effect on you, but with time there will be so many people that you lost that all your tactics to lock your users in will fail.
You mean the myth?
It's a metaphor.
It's a widely-understood phrase/metaphor. Nobody is saying Microsoft literally boils millions of frogs.
What is it with Redditors/Lemmings taking a turn of phrase, interpreting it extremely literally, and completely missing the point?
That's what the win XP search dog was for.
They'd send it out hunting for frogs so that they can boil them all.
Bill Gates first programme was a reverse frogger game, he'd get to drive the cars and score get points for squishing frogs.
I think it was called Grand Theft Amphibian or something. The dude just really hates frogs.
Autism, personally speaking.
I knew it was a metaphor, but it's also a lie and does not actually happen.
That's actually the result of "looking it up", which was the instruction.
What is it with you that makes you so incapable of reasoning that someone might know what it means and also want to point out that it's bullshit?
It doesn't matter that interpreted literally, it's not what happens to frogs. That's not the point of the phrase, and certainly not the point the other commenter was making.
They were trying to talk about Microsoft's business practices, not about what happens if you were to literally start boiling a frog. Yes, we know they aren't fine with it, it's extremely well-known and completely irrelevant.
Yeeeeah, but this isn't a dark pattern, though. That's what I'm saying.
The article really wants it to be, but... well, it's not. The option to log out remains in the same place as the rest of your account info, and the account info they are surfacing is actually useful and relevant to how much money you're spending. They are making it easier to subscribe, for sure, but also to cancel, which used to be pretty hidden away.
I get that this fits into a wider pattern for both MS and other major software companies, but if they inch towards the boiled frog at this pace we're probably fine.
Now, if they ever try (again) to make MS accounts mandatory for Windows or to move Windows to a sub, we can have this conversation. As others said below, when you try to inch people towards dealbreakers you can find yourself losing ground very quickly. Especially if a new comparable alternative surfaces at the same time.