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Comment by TaylorAlexander | Hacker News Reader

This is a tangent/pile-on, but this is not the only dark pattern google engages in. I absolutely do not want YouTube Red. Any software that respects the user would let you dismiss the offer with an option for “do not ask me again.” And yet, because the software is not respecting the user, YouTube asks me ad nauseum if I want to upgrade to YouTube Red. No. I do not. But I don’t get an option for no. There is something like “yes” and “maybe later.” No google. My answer is no. Please respect me enough to let me make that choice.

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Try buying a Nest camera and NOT buying their "Nest Aware" subscription. You'll be stuck with a massive bar on the bottom of your camera web views -- cannot be dismissed: https://imgur.com/a/iR5C9bH

Their support team responds to (numerous) requests from multiple users about it saying roughly "cannot be disabled without buying but we'll let engineering dept. know you want that". Yeah, right, like it's an engineering problem.

Worse yet -- if you have >1 Nest camera, and you DO pay for Nest Aware on some but not all of them, the banner still shows up on any camera views you aren't subscribing for.

It's really crappy because the bottom bar is a fixed height, so if you shrink the browser window it can easily take up >=50% of your viewport. Absolutely absurd -- only option once you have their hardware is to use a plugin/bookmarklet to kill the nag bar's CSS. =(

Would you like to try YouTube Red for 30 days?

No thanks (again and again) :-)

YouTube red spam is obnoxious. Same with apps that ask for a review and the options are "not now, or not right now"

I'm never going to leave a review.

Funny, when an app is obnoxious about asking for a review, I always oblige.

My review will of course focus mostly on my most recent experience with the app, which was "getting annoyed with an obnoxious pop-up". I hope that this discourages app authors from doing that.

I should start doing that. I do occasionally fill out the stupid lengthy third party form sites use. It has a red logo, I forget the name of it. But in the free form comment section I explain how obnoxious it is. Also that company will hopefully go bankrupt asap.

Presumably they just dump your review.

Tangential on top of the pile-on: when using a "not-logged into google services browser that is not Chrome" the Google captchas produced are at times never ending for me (i.e. I will never spot enough traffic lights and cars for them to let me past). Would be interested in whether others have had similar experiences?

Ad-supported software has ads. No liking the ads and refusing to pay for the product isn't a grand moral stand.

This isn’t the same thing. Some people are happy with viewing ads in general, but are not happy with aggressive pop-ups that tell them to upgrad. In essence these alerts are saying their choice is the wrong one, even though it’s a choice that YouTube itself gave them.

More specifically: "good" ads aren't modal and don't force you to click through to continue. If YouTube just mixed YouTube Red ads in with all their other ads, I doubt that anyone would be complaining. (Except for the people who want everything to be free without any ads.)

A good ad is a blocked ad.

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