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I don't have a solution, but on this topic I let Fable write a browser extension I called "Nee, krijg de tering". It's "No, fuck off" in English, but the Dutch feels more visceral for me. It's really rough, but it tries to find these "Maybe later", "No, thank you" etc. buttons and replace the No button.. I guess it's kind of self-explanatory. Does not really do anything, but it is cathartic (and also messes with a lot of UIs to the point where unfortunately the blocklist of domains this should not be used on is growing a lot :'( ).

I feel this pattern is really abusive. Like I am offering to slap you in the face, giving you two answer options: Yes and "Maybe later/no, thank you". As though you have any obligation to be forced to answer this question again at some late time, or to be very polite while you refuse to be slapped in the face. The correct answer is obviously "No, fuck off".

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Sensible. Add in a 'Nee, flikker op met je kutcookies' button for cookie consent banners, and you're golden.

This 'maybe later' dark pattern seems to have gained so much traction that UX folk just use it because everyone uses it. There is probably some handwavy reason for it that amounts to not wanting to give the user the feeling they are doing something definitive, but it just ends up being another grain of sand on the micro-annoyance pile of today's tech.

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Consent-O-Matic handles those kutcookies for me, but an interesting feature would be to use these fancy new "decision models" to determine the correct explitive to use in the No,-button text based on (an excerpt of) the current page.

> not wanting to give the user the feeling they are doing something definitive

In their refusal, while (accidental) acceptance is always definitive...

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I’ve noticed that most companies do that, not just Apple.
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Apple claims to be the privacy king. They deserve scrutiny.
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Most companies did that before Apple, yes. I hate that trend.
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I have this one notification asking me if I want to enable the Personal focus when I’m at home. I don’t want my iPhone to care if I’m at home or not, so the past two years whenever it pops up I click Later.

It will probably never stop asking.

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It will. Once you accidentally mis-click once and then suddeny there is no way to back out of it.
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I think this should be called the ratchet theory of consent because it only tightens.
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I beat you to it by a couple of years :)

https://jacquesmattheij.com/dark-patterns-the-ratchet/

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Haha! Great minds think alike. (Although they do also say that fools seldom differ...)
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Not sure about the focus pop up but most/all of Apple’s other nags (like set up Siri, try Apple Music and the like) go away permanently if you go to the settings app and click “later” from there (as opposed to the button in the pop up which has the exact same label).
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Google Play Store has a notification to enable notifications. You didn't read that wrong. It shows a badge and everything. I said no for years except that last time. Now I can't find how to turn it off again.
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Can’t you just disable notifications for the Google Play Store app? Maybe it’s because I’m on GrapheneOS, but I can just enable/disable notifications like any other app.
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This hostile behavior has unfortunately grown over the years. Notice how often you cannot really unsubscribe from newsletters, because clicking the small link in the email will only unsubscribe you from 1 of 25 "topics" or whatever and they will gladly re-define the "topics" every 6 months and re-enable them all.
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i see this virtually everywhere, and worked at several places where PMs proactively changed text banners to not equate to "no"

severe industry brainrot

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Feature: Apple does not phone home. Enable this feature?

Would you like to enable the feature where you opt out of disabling telemetry?

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And Sync Immediately's only affirmative option is "For Today", so I get to set a daily reminder to remind the setting that I do in fact want it to be ON.
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I get the annoyance at "ask me again later", but "maybe later" or "not now" is helpful - there's no way to trigger dialogs by yourself, so this is a promise that even if you say "no" in the dialog, you can still go into settings to change your mind. Gives me less anxiety about the choice.
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How about a choice: both "no, maybe later" and "no, never"
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And "no, never" would irreversibly remove the option from settings?
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It would never prompt again.
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That's is the same as what "Not now" and "Maybe later" would (should) do.

Only "ask me again later" is the one that prompts you again. That's why I do mind that one, and appreciate the other ones.

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A much better way would be “Yes” and “No” with a small message of “you can change this later in the Settings”.

Or have three buttons: “Yes”, “No”, “Remind me Later”. Apple does stuff like that in other parts of the OS, like when asking for app permissions, so they clearly know how to do it.

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"Remind me later" means "bug me again with a dialog in the future", which is not what I want. I don't need to be reminded, but if I change my mind in the future, I want to be able to proactively go and change it.

Yes, more text can be another way to provide the message, but if you've ever done any user testing, you'll know that people at best scan through your UI. I know I wouldn't read that, or at least would prefer not to have to read that.

I guess I don't see why "No" combined with "You can change this later in settings" is so much less offensive than "Not now".

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