I’m not sure whether you’re being serious about this or not. But I’ve come across distressingly many cases where they’ll expire your session (and probably without telling you) long before you’d have time to actually read the full T&Cs they require you to theoretically accept.
"By using this website, you agree..." How can I read their silly terms of conditions if I must use their website in order to even obtain a copy?
The truth is these people are going to do whatever they want regardless of how anyone feels about it and they won't care until they get fined out of existence.
It’s more things like purchasing something that requires ToS acceptance, but they expire your entire session after ten minutes (think airlines as an example where this is almost reasonable), but they have far more than ten minutes’ worth of ToS for you to read.
I say “theoretically” because most jurisdictions have steadily headed in the direction of ignoring consumer-grade terms of service and EULAs, to the point of only considering terms that a reasonable person would expect to find there to be enforceable, since culturally it’s reached the point where it’s understood that no one reads them.
> I assume if the user chooses “strictly necessary cookies”, SO saves as little data as possible, and they decide to not save that choice.
This feels like malicious compliance. Storing an "Opt out: Yes" cookie is clearly not personal data requiring consent, but not storing it makes the opt out experience more frustrating than opt in which I suspect is the real point.
I use the "I don't care about cookies" chrome ext and it has made my life better. But I guess using that extension you are kinda accepting all cookies.
They actually show it only once per StackExchange site, it's just that there are quite a few of those now. And the settings can be changed from a link in the footer. All in all, probably the best they could do without eschewing tracking altogether, in my opinion.
Fun little game. I was actually wondering today, is there a good website out there that parodies modern webpages really well, with “please subscribe for updates”, little prompts from bots to chat, and other things like that?
This game definitely messed me up. I checked out the "Home gardening" [0] submission right after playing the game and was thinking about which links I may click there for longer than I should have.
It's a game with a lot of trick questions. These are the ones I got wrong the first time around.
11: To opt out of opting in to receive marketing alerts avoid not clicking Yes
14: Select the next square in the sequence
20: We would like to send you notifications. Do you disagree to receiving them?
25: (I still can't get this one!)
Select the one truthful statement to opt out of cookies.
All the statements below are true.
None of the statements below are true.
None of the statements above are true.
Thanks for visiting Evil Corp
We attempted to access your data 29 times
and you were kind enough to give it to us 4 times.
That's better than 73% of players
You took 351.52 seconds to complete the game
That's faster than 23% of players
You did particularly well with speedy questions
Thanks for playing Terms And Conditions Apply
Please share with friends so we can extract their data*
*Disclaimer: Game does not extract real data
It's the third option for question 25!
You know there can only be one answer right and the only answer that leaves just one possibility is the third one.
It also seems you have a hard time responding to inverted questions. Just like in logic I try to invert the meaning. If you invert the meaning of the sentence, you also want to invert the answer. Let's say we inverted disagree into agree in question 20. The question would then become: Do you agree to receiving them?
The answer would be no. If you then invert the question back the answer would be yes.
Good point.
I think it depends if the word "below" refers to all statements below the headline or only the statements below the corresponding statement.
Do it, and if it doesn't pass, flip on 3 and do it again?
29 is harder; the trick there is to wait for it to finish spinning before trying the next possible combo; it usually finishes spinning in the same position that it started in
Hey - co-creator here. There's a great explanation for this in the Guardian column that features some of the questions. This is my favourite question because it's really hard, but once you get the explanation it's very satisfying!
Do you know why it tells me it "tried to access my data 28 times" but won't let me retry the extra question I failed or tell me which one it was? There are 29 in total, no?
I totally don't get Question 28. If I keep retrying it I can get it right sometimes by clicking the I Feel Lucky button really quickly, but I can't discern any pattern. "Almost done! Set this toggle to the ‘on’ position and hit 'I'm feeling lucky' to opt out of Cookies. If you are incorrect, the toggle will spin." What's the explanation to this one?
This was fun! I gave my data 2 times, questions 6 and 10 bit me. 6 because I only asked the wrong assistant and moved on, 10 because it got me really confused. The question didn't mention if true or false would opt-out, so I wonder if an accurate decision can be made with the information provided.
I found this question poorly worded, because you can only ask "What would the other assistant tell me to do". I assumed both would try to tell me to agree to the terms. Not what would they tell me to do if I asked them how to opt out.
Every website now greats you with a plethora of pop-ups; Cookie permission, GDPR consent, newsletters, notifications. We’re all becoming unwilling experts at quickly clicking the right clicks (and crossing our fingers we didn’t give away anything too important).
I thought it would be fun to try and make a game out of it.
Puzzles are inspired by (or outright stolen) from real dark patterns that companies are using right now.
A number of buttons and a somewhat complicated description that says that any of the shown buttons would decline the terms but the innocuous close button in the corner of the dialog would accept them. This might catch people who think to have found a shortcut in this close button over having to actually decide which button might be the correct one.
All of the questions were possible for me on mobile. There was just one question where you had to press and hold if you were on mobile and you can't know to do that unless you've played it at least once already.
I cancelled the other and day there were 3 pages asking "Are you sure, maybe you want us to just leave it alone and check back closer to your renewal date" in different ways
The "choose a country to agree to the terms and conditions" should have an alternative answer - let the timer run out! I was really smug about answering that one until it marked it as incorrect.
A) It's a satire game, so the rules of the game may not perfectly align with the laws of the EU.
B) I'm not from the EU, so who knows, that shit might be just fine in my jurisdiction. We'd have to put it in front of a judge to find out. I'm guessing it wouldn't fly, but I've seen the United States Courts come to stupider conclusions.
I'm impressed at how fast other people are. On my first playthrough I was ~40 percentile for speed. Even on my second I was only ~52 percentile and that was when I knew the answers! I finally just went through a third time and clicked the buttons barely bothering to read and got 94 percentile.
Either others are fast or I am slow or people who quit early contribute to the duration stats. (Or some combination).
I think the point of the game is that it took its cues from real evil corps out there. Of course it's a little bit overblown, but really only a little bit.
115 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 178 ms ] threadI’m not sure whether you’re being serious about this or not. But I’ve come across distressingly many cases where they’ll expire your session (and probably without telling you) long before you’d have time to actually read the full T&Cs they require you to theoretically accept.
"By using this website, you agree..." How can I read their silly terms of conditions if I must use their website in order to even obtain a copy?
The truth is these people are going to do whatever they want regardless of how anyone feels about it and they won't care until they get fined out of existence.
I say “theoretically” because most jurisdictions have steadily headed in the direction of ignoring consumer-grade terms of service and EULAs, to the point of only considering terms that a reasonable person would expect to find there to be enforceable, since culturally it’s reached the point where it’s understood that no one reads them.
I assume if the user chooses “strictly necessary cookies”, SO saves as little data as possible, and they decide to not save that choice.
Obviously the UX is terrible for the user concerned about privacy.
One option that for now still works is to hide the popup with an external tool like uBlock Origin.
This feels like malicious compliance. Storing an "Opt out: Yes" cookie is clearly not personal data requiring consent, but not storing it makes the opt out experience more frustrating than opt in which I suspect is the real point.
Why can't they just do that?
This one got me pretty good.
That, or I was just lucky.
1. not clicking Yes -> clicking No
2. avoid clicking No -> click Yes
3. To opt out of opting in -> To opt out of
=> To opt out of receiving alerts click Yes.
"to opt out of opting in" -> ok so just "to opt out"
avoid not clicking yes -> double negative so "click yes"
the dependent logic statements like "none of the above are true" on the other hand..
Click No. Not all buttons are styled as buttons!
I LOLed at several points, including the “pick the next square in the sequence” and the checkbox mini-game.
[0] http://www.gardening.cornell.edu/homegardening/
11: To opt out of opting in to receive marketing alerts avoid not clicking Yes
14: Select the next square in the sequence
20: We would like to send you notifications. Do you disagree to receiving them?
25: (I still can't get this one!)
Select the one truthful statement to opt out of cookies.
All the statements below are true.
None of the statements below are true.
None of the statements above are true.
Thanks for visiting Evil Corp We attempted to access your data 29 times and you were kind enough to give it to us 4 times. That's better than 73% of players You took 351.52 seconds to complete the game That's faster than 23% of players You did particularly well with speedy questions Thanks for playing Terms And Conditions Apply Please share with friends so we can extract their data* *Disclaimer: Game does not extract real data
It's the third option for question 25! You know there can only be one answer right and the only answer that leaves just one possibility is the third one.
It also seems you have a hard time responding to inverted questions. Just like in logic I try to invert the meaning. If you invert the meaning of the sentence, you also want to invert the answer. Let's say we inverted disagree into agree in question 20. The question would then become: Do you agree to receiving them?
The answer would be no. If you then invert the question back the answer would be yes.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/may/17/did-you-solv...
https://imgz.org/iCT476pV/
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/21/opinion/priva...
If you're asking the truthful assistant, then it'll correctly tell you that the other assistant will point at the wrong answer.
If you're asking the untruthful assistant, it'll lie and say that the other assistant will point at the wrong answer.
Bit of background:
Every website now greats you with a plethora of pop-ups; Cookie permission, GDPR consent, newsletters, notifications. We’re all becoming unwilling experts at quickly clicking the right clicks (and crossing our fingers we didn’t give away anything too important).
I thought it would be fun to try and make a game out of it.
Puzzles are inspired by (or outright stolen) from real dark patterns that companies are using right now.
I worked with puzzle writer Alex Bellos to help create the pop-up-puzzles. Three of the challenges are featured today in his Guardian column. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/may/17/can-you-solv...
Thanks darkpatterns.org, reddit.com/r/darkpatterns, webtransparency.cs.princeton.edu/dark-patterns/ and of course HN for all the inspiration!
Also a shout out to plausible.io which I used for web analytics since we couldn’t really have a cookie consent banner on our own site.
A number of buttons and a somewhat complicated description that says that any of the shown buttons would decline the terms but the innocuous close button in the corner of the dialog would accept them. This might catch people who think to have found a shortcut in this close button over having to actually decide which button might be the correct one.
The way I read it, a timer expiration on that one would have opted you in
A) It's a satire game, so the rules of the game may not perfectly align with the laws of the EU.
B) I'm not from the EU, so who knows, that shit might be just fine in my jurisdiction. We'd have to put it in front of a judge to find out. I'm guessing it wouldn't fly, but I've seen the United States Courts come to stupider conclusions.
Either others are fast or I am slow or people who quit early contribute to the duration stats. (Or some combination).
Fun game!
Maybe this has all happened before.