> but play these mental gymnastics to give the implementor some benefit of the doubt.
No.
Using psychological tricks to get people to act against their best interests is immoral.
“But if I don’t implement it, someone else will.” That’s merely a justification to make you sleep easier at night. Let that someone else do it.
And if you lose your job over not implementing a dark pattern, was it a job worth having? If they’re willing to let you go for refusing to a task you view as immoral, they aren’t worth your loyalty in the first place.
> And if you lose your job over not implementing a dark pattern, was it a job worth having?
Not everyone can afford to lose their job over their principles. It's a sad state of affairs, definitely. This is what we get for allowing employers to have so much power over us.
It is immoral for you and I, but most of engineers and product managers don’t think so. “It’s a feature that’s been implemented by everyone else and it works” would be the argument during its proposal. If the users really opposed to it they would vote with their browser by closing the tab (like I do). It’s like calling “heavy JS websites” as a burden on user, when most of the users, time upon time, showed how they don’t care.
“Let your employer fire you” argument also doesn’t sit well with me. Like this is not some hardcore feature that will be tasked out to some principal engineer with decades of experience that can find a job easily. Some recent grad will be just labeled as “not a team player” and sidelined. If we want a fair game, we should demote these kind of features (and stuff like 20 clicks to cancel your subscription) in one way or another.
No.
Using psychological tricks to get people to act against their best interests is immoral.
“But if I don’t implement it, someone else will.” That’s merely a justification to make you sleep easier at night. Let that someone else do it.
And if you lose your job over not implementing a dark pattern, was it a job worth having? If they’re willing to let you go for refusing to a task you view as immoral, they aren’t worth your loyalty in the first place.