I'm on a 20+ city book tour for my new novel PICKS AND SHOVELS. Catch me in PITTSBURGH on THURSDAY (May 15) at WHITE WHALE BOOKS, and in PDX on Jun 20 at BARNES AND NOBLE with BUNNIE HUANG. More tour dates (London, Manchester) here.
Trump's coalition includes a huge number of people who will suffer terribly from his policies, but who voted for him anyway. Trumpism requires that he find ways to keep those Christmas-voting turkeys happy, or at least distracted.
Trump's go-to move for keeping his base happy is inflicting pain on people they hate, like immigrants, racialized people, queers and women. That goes a long way, obviously: there's a kind of person who can be distracted from their own deteriorating material condition by the spectacle of cruel treatment for their enemies.
But Trumpism can't just run on sadism. There's a lot of people who enjoy the sadism, but not so much that it cancels out their own rage at their deteriorating personal conditions. Trump's main tactic is to blame the suffering of his base on the rest of us: "radical leftists," "wokeism" and other hobgoblins of the small-minded. That, too, has its limits – especially when Trump controls Congress, the courts, the senate and the White House. Obviously, Trump isn't above blaming his own people for being traitors (e.g., by sending a literal noose-bearing lynch mob after his own vice president), but there are limits to this, even for Trump. If all the power-brokers in Trump's coalitions are branded as disloyal, cowardly, or traitorous, Trump will have no one left to do the actual work of advancing his agenda.
Ultimately, keeping Trump's base happy requires providing some form of material benefit to that base. Every authoritarian has a version of this – like the cash handouts that Poland's former far-right government gave out:
For Trump, this presents a problem: because he represents the interests of exploitation, extraction and looting, everything nice that he gives to everyday people in his base potentially gores the ox of someone who really matters to him. It's no surprise, for example, that he reversed Biden's price-cuts for Big Pharma's most expensive drugs – the cheaper drugs are for sick people, the less profitable they'll be for pharma companies:
Luckily (for Trump), Biden's consumer protection and antitrust agencies teed up a long list of extremely good policies that would directly shift money from rich parasites to everyday people. For example, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau passed a rule that would make it very easy to find out which bank would charge you the least and pay you the most, and let you switch banks with one click:
It was a move that would have shifted $667m/year from banks to everyday people, every year, forever. But Trump's most important barons, like Elon Musk, hated the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau and insisted that it be shuttered, so that $667m/year will go to the banks after all – indeed, virtually all of the good things Biden's CFPB decreed the American public would enjoy henceforth have been destroyed. Sure, Trump would have liked to have taken credit for these, but the conflict between stolen valor and displeasing Shadow President Musk will always cash out in Musk's favor.
It's not just the CFPB. The FTC also set up a whole roster of ambitious projects to improve life for Americans. Some of these made the news in a big way, like the antitrust case against Meta:
Trump has lots of upsides from pursuing the Meta case. Everyone hates Meta products, including (especially) the people who are trapped using them because that's where their friends, family, communities, customers or audiences are. Breaking up Meta would be hugely popular with the American people. But also, once a court has convicted Meta of violating antitrust law, Trump can solicit favors – cash and favorable algorithmic treatment – from Meta in exchange for ordering his FTC to go easy on Meta in the "remedy phase," letting them off with a fine, rather than forcing them to spin out Whatsapp and Instagram:
But even if Trump lets Meta walk, there's plenty of great stuff Biden's FTC did that he could take credit for – policies that would help everyday people.
The most prominent of these is the FTC's "Click to Cancel" rule. It's a pretty simple rule: companies have to make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it was to sign up for it.
In other words, they can't do that thing – beloved of everything from the New York Times to every manosphere influencer's supplement business – where you can sign up for a subscription with one click, but you can't cancel unless you phone them, wait on hold, and beg them to let you off the hook.
Companies do this on purpose, because it's super profitable. Amazon executives carried on internal email threads where they straight up said that they'd deliberately made it confusingly easy to sign up for Prime and basically impossible to stop paying for it:
This is a no-brainer. Companies make signing up for subscriptions into a greased slide, and they make canceling subscriptions into a greased pole.
No wonder, then, that when the FTC solicited public comments on a proposed "click to cancel" rule, they had no trouble building up the evidentiary record needed to pass the rule.
Now, Trump's FTC has announced that they are delaying enforcement of the rule until mid-July:
This is the second time they've delayed enforcement (originally, the rule was supposed to go into effect in January). Trump FTC chairman Andrew Ferguson had no trouble getting the votes for the suspension, because he illegally fired the two Democratic Commissioners, Alvaro Bedoya and Rebecca Slaughter:
Ferguson is proof that the FTC can't do anything material for Trump's base. Sure, he can set up a snitch-line so tht FTC employees can rat each other out for being "woke":
This should be a slam dunk. It epitomizes the "unfair and deceptive" business practices Section 5 of the FTC Act empowers the agency to snuff out. The Trump admin is unwilling to gore the ox of out-and-out scammers, people who trick you into unkillable subscriptions. It seems that there's no material benefit that Trump's oligarch backers are willing to cede to working people. All they can offer is cruelty.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
Dark Pattern mechanics are not like going to a casino to do regular gambling. A lot of folks seem to think that the issue here is just "gambling" in and of itself but it's not.
Like ok, so imagine a casino is a big pit in the forest filled with bear traps, with a little plank running across the top.
Some people find it thrilling to walk across this plank. That in and of itself is not unethical.
Casinos do add some unethical elements, like creating an atmosphere that encourages overconsumption of alcohol to make you more likely to fall into the pit. And if you demonstrate too much talent for not falling in the pit, they just kick you out. If they find out you're a gymnast and you have special training to walk across planks they just ban you for life.
They also know that some people will definitely fall into the pit and they're ok facilitating that, in fact their business model depends on some people falling into the pit sometimes.
So I'm not saying they're totally upstanding establishments, but for the most part, building a bear trap pit, clearly telling people where it is, and letting (adults only) walk across the plank is not really a pearl clutching situation. The risks are clearly identified and anyone who wants to take them has to physically go there to do it.
Dark Pattern mechanics for games or collectibles or literally anything (including online gambling sites sometimes) are very different.
They've built a pit, filled it with bear traps, covered it in moss, and are doing their best to convince you that it's a solid surface you can safely walk across. They knock on your door and offer to build a "moss patch" in your backyard without telling you that there is a pit filled with bear traps underneath.
Then they prod you with various compulsory, time sensitive "incentives" to walk across it over and over again trying to goad you into walking across it enough that you eventually fall in.
Their business model depends on getting as many people as possible to fall into the pit, and they are specifically targeting folks who would not have chosen to go into the woods to visit the pit on their own. And they're arranging the pit so that it's right next to you, every single day, to increase the chance that you'll fall in one day.
Yes, it's worse than regular gambling. Yes, you should be very alarmed to see these practices becoming more and more normalized.
And no, the people who fall into the pit aren't stupid. They are being intentionally manipulated based on decades of psychological research.
If you've walked across the moss pit and never fallen in, it's not because you're smarter. It's because your neurology is differently wired.
The same way lots of folks drink alcohol but only some get addicted, not everyone's brain is susceptible to these techniques. The people designing them know that, which is why they cast such a wide net, hoping to catch as many of their vulnerable targets as they possibly can.
I hate this shit. Not only does cancelling a Spotify subscription mean clicking through four different screens begging you to reconsider, once you finally do cancel they hit you with this "cutesy" thing.
Cancelling Amazon Prime is the same, just without this saccharine "we'll miss you :(((((" stuff tacked on at the end. Like, under no circumstances should you hand it to Amazon, but at least they don't pull this.
This detail from the new Batman: Dark Patterns issue is very very funny to me because if that was Arkham Batman's batmobile those kids would be getting (nonlethally) tased halfway across the suburb
Può sembrare strano, ma anche giocare a scacchi può creare dipendenza. Ci sono tutti i principali elementi di questo tipo di problemi, specialmente quando si tratta di partite online a tempi brevi (1 o 3 minuti):
rilascio di dopamina a ogni vittoria.
risposta automatica dopo ogni sconfitta per "recuperare".
ciclo continuo di tensione e sollievo.
Non può portare alla ludopatia, ma solamente perché manca la componente economica. Però l'OMS spiega che in qualche caso può portare al "gaming disorder" (disturbo da gioco). Insomma, un vortice nel quale non è bello cadere.
Oltre a cercare di riflettere sul perché si attuino certi comportamenti, può essere utile conoscere un paio di modi per evitarli:
Il primo è quello di giocare solo partite lunghe (almeno 15 minuti), per contrastare la compulsività delle partite brevi. Il problema che ho personalmente riscontrato è che le partite più lunghe online sono spesso infestate dai cheater. Anche quelle brevi, sia chiaro: ma è molto più facile barare se si ha il tempo di seguire i suggerimenti di un software aperto accanto al browser, simulando errori e imprecisioni per non essere beccati dai sistemi automatici di controllo.
Il secondo modo è staccare completamente, stabilendo un periodo di disintossicazione di una settimana o due, durante il quale si decide che non si deve giocare online. Se si vuole, si può giocare offline contro un motore ad un livello simile al proprio, ma sempre per partite lunghe, di almeno 15 minuti. Quando si decide di ricominciare, bisogna monitorare il tempo di gioco e stabilire un limite giornaliero ragionevole, ad esempio mezz'ora.
Durante la pausa è essenziale creare attrito all’accesso, altrimenti la tentazione di fare "solo una partita veloce" sarebbe troppo forte, soprattutto all'inizio.
Quindi l'ideale è proprio cancellare l'app, rimuovere il preferito dal browser, oppure cambiare la password e conservarla solo su carta: l'obiettivo è allungare il tempo che intercorre fra l'impulso di giocare e l'inizio vero e proprio della partita, dandosi così il tempo di riconoscere la tentazione e interrompersi.
Mi sono chiesto se anche le aziende che sono dietro ai siti di scacchi usino le tecniche di manipolazione psicologica tipiche dei social network. Per avere una chiara risposta è bastato iniziare la procedura per eliminare l'app di Chess.com dal mio iPhone:
Appaiono infatti queste frasi molto subdole:
😭 Vuoi mollare gli scacchi? Chissà cosa diranno i tuoi…
😉 Un ultimo problema? Uno solo veloce veloce!
La prima fa leva sul senso di colpa sociale legato alla rete di "amici" creata sul sito (che personalmente mi sono sempre ben guardato dal formare). La seconda sfrutta la leva della ricompensa immediata, la stessa leva che alimenta i giochi d'azzardo (come le slot machine) e i social, con i loro micro-contenuti infiniti.
Queste frasi sono dei fulgidi esempi del cosiddetto dark pattern (o deceptive design): una tecnica di progettazione di interfacce utente studiate a tavolino per spingere gli utenti a compiere azioni indesiderate e dannose per loro.
La paura dell'azienda di perdere un giocatore è così grande che, come si vede, queste frasi appaiono anche se si vuole solamente condividere l'app o impedire l'accesso a utenti non autorizzati.
Alimentare la dipendenza e trattenere gli utenti è quindi una scelta deliberata di design. Dietro la facciata intellettuale di uno dei giochi più cerebrali al mondo, si nasconde una logica identica a quella dei social network: trattenere l’attenzione, a qualsiasi costo.
Il Regolamento UE 2022/2065, al quale Chess.com dichiara di essere conforme, all'articolo 25, comma 1, recita:
I fornitori di piattaforme online non progettano, organizzano o gestiscono le loro interfacce online in modo tale da ingannare o manipolare i destinatari dei loro servizi o da materialmente falsare o compromettere altrimenti la capacità dei destinatari dei loro servizi di prendere decisioni libere e informate.
Non ho le competenze per stabilire se la condotta di questo o di altri siti di scacchi online configuri una violazione sanzionabile del Regolamento UE, ma il quadro generale della situazione è che anche queste aziende non agiscono abbastanza nell'interesse dei loro utenti.
Disintossicarsi dagli scacchi online è una cosa buona, perché non significa smettere di amare il gioco, ma riconsegnarlo al suo ritmo naturale: quello lento, profondo, silenzioso di una classica partita sulla scacchiera.
