The U.S. FTC, along with two other international consumer protection networks, announced on Thursday the results of a study into the use of “dark patterns” – or manipulative design techniques – that can put users’ privacy at risk or push them to buy products or services or take other actions they otherwise wouldn’t have. TechCrunch:
In an analysis of 642 websites and apps offering subscription services, the study found that the majority (nearly 76%) used at least one dark pattern and nearly 67% used more than one. Dark patterns refer to a range of design techniques that can subtly encourage users to take some sort of action or put their privacy at risk. They’re particularly popular among subscription websites and apps and have been an area of focus for the FTC in previous years. For instance, the FTC sued dating app giant Match for fraudulent practices, which included making it difficult to cancel a subscription through its use of dark patterns.
[…] The new report published Thursday dives into the many types of dark patterns like sneaking, obstruction, nagging, forced action, social proof and others. Sneaking was among the most common dark patterns encountered in the study, referring to the inability to turn off the auto-renewal of subscriptions during the sign-up and purchase process. Eighty-one percent of sites and apps studied used this technique to ensure their subscriptions were renewed automatically. In 70% of cases, the subscription providers didn’t provide information on how to cancel a subscription, and 67% failed to provide the date by which a consumer needed to cancel in order to not be charged again.
There are a few pieces of software I use (regularly) that would continue to get money from me if they followed the old model of paying for major versions. (pay for v1, get v 1.1-1.9) with v2 being the next “big” update that you’d have to pay an upgrade fee (smaller than a new purchase) to continue on the train.
But they switched to subscription model, and lost me as an “active” customer.
YNAB is the big one I use at least weekly, sometimes daily. I am on YNAB4 until it will no longer function because I’m not paying them a monthly fee to use that product. I would have GLADLY paid for major updates/changes even if it equaled the subscription in the end. But each of those purchases would be a decision I made on whether the change had enough value for me.
Subscriptions allow them to not strive for large enough improvements to warrant a version update / upgrade fee. They just run along with little or no useful changes (IMHO).
I can highly recommend you to try Actual Budget to replace YNAB, it has come a long away and has bank sync and a very usable mobile (progressive web) app now
That has been on my radar for a while. I haven’t checked it out recently. I’m sure YNAB4 will die sometime in the future, but I’m going to milk it out to the end :). There’s already a hack for android (for dropbox syncing) and hoops to jump through to get it working in MacOs. It’s just a matter of time before the house of cards falls apart.
Looks sick. I’ve been using Tiller, and it’s honestly the last major thing holding me to Google Docs. If it’s FOSS and syncs w/ banks, I’ll self-host it and be happy. If it works, I’ll happily send the amount I paid for Tiller to the team.
Edit: Bank account linking seems to be “coming soon”. That’s a critical feature for me, since I have a bunch of accounts and a huge part of the value is pulling all of that in for me. I’ll play with it anyway, but I really need that feature (and I’m happy to pay a service like Plaid for access).
Edit2: Looks like it’s implemented, but it’s essentially EU-only. I’d really like them to support Plaid or something.