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Google products have been incorporating a frustrating amount of dark patterns. In gmail for example, if you load one of the smart inbox tabs, it shows the rows
by alphakappa 4y ago
Google products have been incorporating a frustrating amount of dark patterns. In gmail for example, if you load one of the smart inbox tabs, it shows the rows of unread emails at the top. Right when you attempt to click on the top row, it rearranges the rows to show a few rows of ads instead (and the ads are fairly indistinguishable from the unread emails) so you end up unintentionally opening an ad.
Now, there’s no good reason for this loading pattern - since they intend to show the ads, they could have allocated a few rows, shown a loading skeleton, and then asynchronously loaded ads and emails in their expected place. Instead they now get a ton of extra ad clicks, but I wonder how happy their advertisers are to pay for these unintended clicks.
- 12ian34 4y agothis surprised me so much I had to read it twice before realising that it's probably because I've used uBlock since I can remember
- mark_l_watson 4y agoWait, I am curious: you see ads on GMail? I haven’t seen ads in many years. What email client do you use? web app, phone app?
- tristan957 4y agoI can't recall seeing ads on the Android app, but there are definitely ads in the web client. The ads must do a very good job of disguising themselves if you haven't noticed them. I have moved most of my email to ProtonMail. So much nicer paying for that from a company that respects me rather than using a free product from a company who has no other purpose than to drive ad revenue.
- sjroot 4y agoI’ve never seen ads. I believe the difference (and potential explanation as to why GP hasn’t seen any either) is that my account is through google workspace.
- lordgrenville 4y agoHappens in the Android app too, just not in the "Primary" tab. So annoying.
- travv0 4y agoI also haven't seen an ad on the Gmail web client in years. Maybe because I pay for extra storage through Google One? Edit: It looks like it doesn't happen in the primary tab and I have all the other tabs disabled which would explain it.
- l33tman 4y agoThe ads are in the android app if you select a "smart" tab, like the Social or Campaigns (and I pay for google one, still get those ads). Fortunately I'm never in those tabs on the mobile client.
- alphakappa 4y agoCorrect. The smart inbox puts in ads. As in the YouTube example here, it's fairly unpredictable if they appear, and when they do - how they appear.
- coremoff 4y agothe ads are displayed in the smart inbox tabs; if you have turned this off, you won't see ads