their marketing practices have been questionable for years, though. the promotional emails (everyone subscribed by default) and even the pricing pages are filled with dark patterns. by the charity fundraisers they do, these dark patterns don’t seem to be necessary for their sustainability.
Imo almost all of marketing can be considered dark patterns. And when your competition uses dark patterns, if you don’t use it you simply don’t gain users.
I’m reminded of a Veritasium video on clickbait (too lazy to link it right now but should be easy to find). They talk about how there’s a balance between marketing (and furthermore, manipulative marketing) and reach. If you believe the user will benefit from your service, then maybe it’s worth a bit of manipulative marketing, just to get them to enter the door. It’s a tricky balance.
They care about privacy and security, not marketing. They probably hate that they have to do marketing in the first place. It’s honestly relatable.
their marketing practices have been questionable for years, though. the promotional emails (everyone subscribed by default) and even the pricing pages are filled with dark patterns. by the charity fundraisers they do, these dark patterns don’t seem to be necessary for their sustainability.
Imo almost all of marketing can be considered dark patterns. And when your competition uses dark patterns, if you don’t use it you simply don’t gain users.
I’m reminded of a Veritasium video on clickbait (too lazy to link it right now but should be easy to find). They talk about how there’s a balance between marketing (and furthermore, manipulative marketing) and reach. If you believe the user will benefit from your service, then maybe it’s worth a bit of manipulative marketing, just to get them to enter the door. It’s a tricky balance.