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#darkpattern

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Anthony
Regarding the last boost: Google has been found to be an illegal monopoly multiple times, and so far no judge has had the courage to impose a significant enough penalty that Google actually changes its ways. Its monopoly behavior is frequent, obvious, and damaging.

Anyway, check your Google Drive, if you use that: go to drive, then click the gear. Choose Settings -> Manage Apps, and make sure "Use by default" is checked OFF for everything you don't like, especially Gemini (Google's AI that they're pushing on everyone). This was added and turned on by default for most people, it seems. It also looks like Google is training their AI on every document you open; people report very slow load times when this setting is on, remedied by turning it off.

#Google #Gemini #DarkPattern #monopoly #AI #GenAI #tying #antitrust #DefaultToOptOut
Continued thread
Jonathan Kamens 86 47

The silliness continues. They've disabled paste on the "Confirm Email Address" field, so I couldn't paste the email address they wanted from my password manager where it is stored securely. Fortunately I was able to surmount that barrier quickly with the "Don't Fuck With Paste" browser extension.
#MassRMV #DarkPattern

Anthony
Once again blocked from using a website I've used regularly for years because of "unusual activity" from "your IP". After passing a captcha, no less.

Somehow bot-detecting algorithms have been degrading over time.

This is a troubling trend because people who aren't using the anointed access points of the internet struggle more and more to connect and interact. Large entities like CloudFlare choke off more and more avenues of access in the name of "security", enforcing digital checkpoints without any accountability to anyone.

#dev #tech #web #bot #DarkPattern #security #infosec #cybersecurity #checkpoint
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Lea Verou, PhD

I otherwise like Aegean Airlines but their "40% discount for children" is a scam and a #darkpattern and I finally got sufficiently pissed off I’m going to expose it.

tl;dr: The "40% off" is based on a fake fare, artificially inflated so it can then be discounted. The effective discount is 14% for 1 adult + 1 child, 0% for 2 adults + 1 child, and the fare actually *increases* for adult:children ratios > 2:1 with no opt-out.

[1/5]

Arnd Layer

#PocketCasts is playing with the #enshitification dials. You would think you can get rid of the nag screen but no. To me that’s also a #DarkPattern.

I don’t want / need those features. So paying for the subscription would be paying for not to have to see that nag screen.
I would even pay a reasonable one time price for the app. But now I think about switching.

Does anyone know a good alternative?

C.

I had a crash that took down Firefox, so when I restarted it it was the newest version (an update I'd installed, but hadn't restarted after).

I just went looking through the settings pages, which is a habit I've unfortunately had to get into because #Firefox and #Mozilla keep adding new anti-user fuckery in their continuing quest to drive users away from the only product they make that anyone gives two shits about.

And lo and behold, *this* is the new fuckery I found. Enabled by default. And it reinforces the need to go *check* for this bullshit every version update.

Firefox, if you had asked me how to cut my already diminishing trust in you to do the right thing by your users to near zero, I wouldn't have even dreamed this batshittery up. It's so much worse than I would have suggested. I have *all* the crap turned off - silently adding new crap and silently defaulting it to on is 1995-era Microsoft-screwing-the-users.

You feel you need to add this shit? Fine. But show me a dialog asking me whether I want it on or not when that version first starts. Don't turn it on behind my back and HOPE I DON'T NOTICE.

#fuckery#TwoShits#batshittery
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Rpsu (326 ppm)

Peruutin Disney+ tilauksen, ja voi pojat että olikin aika monen klikin ja pimeiden käytäntöjen takana.

Peruutunappia piti painaa 3 tai neljässä peräkkäisessä samanlaisessa ”tässä vielä yksi mahdollisuus jättää tilauksen peruutus kesken” sivussa ja koko putken alku oli hienosti jemmattu.

Olis kuluttajaviranomaisilla varmaan mielipide tuosta.

Pysykää kaukana.

#disneyplus#DarkPattern#PimeätKäytännöt
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Anthony
New uBlock Origin rule to clobber the intrusive "Copilot" button that recently appeared in Outlook web mail:

! Jul 25, 2025 https://outlook.office.com
outlook.office.com###CopilotCommandCenterButton

Note: there should be three (3) pound signs between ".com" and "CopilotCommandCenterButton". For some reason my fediverse server does not display all three.

#uBlock #AISpam #AI #GenerativeAI #Copilot #Microsoft #Outlook #DarkPattern

This post is not an invitation to criticize me for using a Microsoft product or to suggest an alternative.
Anthony
I don't read BoingBoing very often so perhaps I missed this when it happened. Anyway, is it just me or is BoingBoing now paywalling all their articles? For instance, I only see part of this one. At the cutoff point I'm encouraged to go read the whole article on "BoingBoing Premium". I seem to recall one of their cofounders saying they were not going to paywall articles, but would have a paid tier where you wouldn't see ads.

#BoingBoing #paywall #media #DarkPattern
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