Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “This Industry Shouldn’t Exist”.
Speaking of boring, why don’t you pick a topic? I’M gon na? Do it IRS Pilots direct filing okay? I I did actually into that. I know I know this is great though it I, if you’re not excited about this, maybe you haven’t paid taxes yet uh in 2024, an IRS pilot program will allow residents of 13 states to electronically file their tax returns for free directly with the IRS. This goes against the wishes of tax preparation companies, who have been lobbying against free direct filing for over a decade, arguing that free alternatives are already available, which is technically true in the most BS way. Ever.
Those free Alternatives arose out of the free file Alliance, a 2001 partnership between the IRS and several tax preparation companies to offer taxpayers with simple returns, a free alternative for filing their taxes. A later investigation by Pro publica found that several companies made those options purposefully difficult to find in order to trick their customers into paying for services they could have received for free um. This has been somewhat recently uh called Dark patterns by a bunch of people, including us um they’re they’re called Dark patterns. Yeah, I think that’s a newer term, though, is it. I don’t think it’s that new.
It’S not like this year, new, that’s for sure. I’Ve only heard it within the last few years. I might just be late to the party I think, you’re late to the party, it’s very possible anyways user experience designer Henry brignull coined the neologism neologism neologism. I don’t I’m not not familiar with that word.
On 28th of July 2010, so we’ve been calling them dark patterns for over 10 years. Okay, I definitely didn’t hear about it in 2010. This is fun. In 2021, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Consumer Reports created a tip line to collect information about dark patterns from the public. That’S cool disclosure – I am plagiarizing this from Wikipedia cool um. Oh my gosh.
Okay, this is amazing. There’S classifications of patterns, one of them is called privacy. Zucker whoa. Is that, like that’s that wait hold on that’s like a government recognized term. I don’t know why? Don’T you guess what it is. You know what, let’s play a game, I’m going to read different kinds of dark patterns and you’re, going to tell me what you think they are.
Okay. Are we starting with privacy, Zucker? Oh we’re? Definitely starting with privacy, Zucker uh, getting people to give you their information in exchange for very little or nothing tricks the user into sharing more information than they intended to. Okay, all right good name, uh, okay, we’ll go with a couple of the more straight forward ones. Here, Zucker misdirection, it’s just called misdirection, just called misdirection uh. Would this be like uh the download buttons problem, mhm yeah yeah, you nailed it so uh. You know basically presented with a button in the fashion of a typical, typical continuation button uh.
But it’s actually something else and you have to look somewhere else for the one like. If you noticed when Microsoft offers you the windows 11 upgrade you have to like hunt for it, yeah for the don’t. Do it um, uh, okay, okay, the next one is called confirm, shaming, okay, so that would be when the when the prompt is like uh.
Do you want to continue your subscription click? The click the? Yes, I want to keep supporting this company, or do you not want to continue subscription click, the no I’m a horrible person button nailed it yep uh, don’t forget the bait and switch hm. What’S on that one uh, it’s it’s! It seems like you’re signing up for something, that’s awesome and cool and legit, and then you’re not or maybe it sounds like it’s free and then after you’ve, given them your contact information, they prompt you to put in a credit card or something it’s it’s you’re really Close, it’s they advertise something free or at a greatly reduced price. Then say it is unavailable and uh present similar options at higher prices or lesser quantity.
Okay and the last one is, is roach motel, okay, I’ve actually heard of this, but I don’t remember at all what it is um, no yeah. I don’t. I don’t know this. One provides an easy path in, but a difficult path out got it.
So, for example, a business that would require subscribers to print and mail, their opt out or cancellation request, yeah or like Amazon, Prime yeah yeah, which is full full of different kinds of dark patterns. I’M sorry, I completely hijacked whatever very interesting thing you were talking about. Yeah yeah, it was unintentional the when the it was a dark pattern uh when the IRS banned these uh these companies from hiding their their free filing options, both H .