Google

A fantastic report by the Norwegian Consumer Council that explains how tech companies use dark patterns to discourage us from exercising our rights to privacy. Facebook, Google and Windows 10 are named and shamed.

News article responding to the Norwegian Consumer Council's "Deceived by Design" report.

"Getting desperate now? This came up when I opened the @YouTube app. I don't want premium. I don't want a trial. I've said that at least a hundred times so far, now this without even a close button. Talk about @darkpatterns

Ever looked for an online cancel button and struggled to find it? ‘Dark patterns’ may be to blame (Opinion feature in FT Magazine)

Although it's arguable whether this was on purpose or not, it is likely to have driven ad revenue from accidental clicks.

Report by the Norwegian Consumer Council showing how Google uses dark patterns to manipulate users into enabling location tracking. The NCC filed a GDPR complaint against Google based on the report.

Qualitative evaluation of the consent-obtaining mechanisms implemented and used by the five big tech companies, i.e. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft (GAFAM)

Repeatedly asks user for permission to use location data, only allowing “don’t show me again” to be selected if permission is given, pestering the user until they give permission.

The first four results of a google search for “flowers” are ads disguised as search results. They have a small green tag that identifies them as ads, but many users will not notice this and click on the ads anyways.

Google hiding the ability to say no thanks only if you scroll down. Not immediately obvious that you can

Today @googlenews joined the ranks of "Sites that don't want you to use ad-blockers/privacy tools & just tell you that you're offline if you do" (along with @TheAtlantic) I'm fine with "Turn off your ad-blocker to use this site," less so with lying.

Intentionally confusing buttons from “don’t be evil” @google @YouTube here.

You can set up the phone without a google account connected, but it doesn't show that as an option until you fail to log in 3 times.

Google appear to be tricking the user into 'enabling YouTube history' (in this case it had been disabled) so that the user can then 'choose an auto-delete option' for that history.

A perfect example of "weasel wording" from the Google Backup and Sync app preferences.

Google has recently rebranded its Adwords advertising platform to Google Ads. Together with the new name, the interface also got a big overhaul. And as someone who spends many hours of every day on the platform, I can’t say I’m happy with the results.

Google Calendar has always had a "Add Google Meet / Google Hangout" option on calendar meeting invites, but recently auto-adds the Google Meet if you add others to the calendar invite, without any notification.

"Google has now drawn a line in the sand. Give us all your local SSIDs, local bluetooth connections, with likely even more detail, or they now refuse to allow you to use Maps to navigate."

Following investigations, the CNIL noted that the websites facebook.com, google.fr and youtube.com do not make refusing cookies as easy as to accept them. It thus fines FACEBOOK 60 million euros and GOOGLE 150 million euros and orders them to comply within three months.

"Google for years has used misleading notifications to lure users into disabling its rival’s browser extensions [...] The changes include requiring users to answer whether they would rather “Change back to Google search” after adding the DuckDuckGo extension and showing users a larger, highlighted button when giving them the option to “Change it back”.

A comment on a pop-up that appears on google.com when using a web browser that is not Google Chrome.

"Tech giant Google unfairly steers consumers towards its surveillance system when they sign up to a Google account, instead of giving them privacy by design and by default as required by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)."

"a top European court upheld a ruling that it broke competition rules and fined it a record 4.1 billion euros, in a move that may encourage other regulators to ratchet up pressure on the U.S. giant."

Tech giant ‘continued to collect and store a user’s location data’ even if users turned off their location history, according to suit

Here is the full draft decision and commitments. Strongly recommend reading and sharing. I’ve long said U.S. enforcers should mirror this check on market power. It’s 30 pages clearly explaining G’s surveillance and dark patterns and how to fix them

TIL: Crazy dark pattern for Google Workspace - it WILL not let me select the cheaper pricing plan when I'm signing up. After some research, I found out you have to signup for the expensive free trial and then search for the option to downgrade to the cheaper pricing plan.

"Google to pay $93m in settlement over deceptive location tracking Tech giant continued to collect and store a users location data even if users turned off their location history, according to suit"

"Yelp sues Google for antitrust violations"

""Microsoft is using malware-like pop-ups in Windows 11 to get people to ditch Google" Screenshot shows the notification UI appearing on top of a full-screen game, mid-play."

"How Google is killing independent sites like ours And why you shouldnt trust product recommendations from big media publishers ranking at the top of Google"

"Google settles account settings lawsuit less than one week after being filed [pdf] Interesting comment on hacker news attached as image (unverified but sounds plausible?)"