Stepping into the event, the air was vibrant, alive.
After registration and name tagging, I settled in.
Hosts waited for comfort to settle in each seat.
Then came the revelation.
We were tricked, subtly.
Silence followed.
Out of roughly 150 people who showed up to the event and āagreedā to the terms and conditions, exactly 0 people read them.
So what were the terms and conditions?
Right down the end under a section called āReally dodgy things you really shouldnāt agree toā, it said:
You commit to doing the following:
a) By attending this meetup, you unknowingly agree to respond to the verbal cue, āOkay, Google, order me pizza.ā by purchasing pizza for us.
b) By attending this meetup, at the request of the meetup organisers, you agree to providing full and complete access to the photos, videos and files on your personal phone. Full and unrestricted rights to all file types will be transferred to the meetup organisers including for reproduction on the internet.
c) You consent to receiving a daily dose of cat memes in your inbox, carefully timed to distract you from any productivity.
d) By attending this meetup, you acknowledge that your fashion sense will be subjected to judgment by a panel of product designers. āWorst Dressedā attendees will be required to dress as āBananas in Pajamasā for a period of one week
Luckily the meetup was about Dark Patterns and this was done as a jokeā¦
But hereās what I took away from it:
1. We predictably donāt read anything - so if youāre doing something good, donāt hide it in your terms and conditions - make it obvious.
2. Big Tech infamously has pretty dodgy terms too that we all agree to. The exception is that at some point, a few very vocal people realised and it became a PR nightmare. Facebook is in a world of hurt over its dodgy practices.
Out of roughly 150 people who showed up to the event and āagreedā to the terms and conditions, exactly 0 people read them.
So what were the terms and conditions?
Right down the end under a section called āReally dodgy things you really shouldnāt agree toā, it said:
You commit to doing the following:
a) By attending this meetup, you unknowingly agree to respond to the verbal cue, āOkay, Google, order me pizza.ā by purchasing pizza for us.
b) By attending this meetup, at the request of the meetup organisers, you agree to providing full and complete access to the photos, videos and files on your personal phone. Full and unrestricted rights to all file types will be transferred to the meetup organisers including for reproduction on the internet.
c) You consent to receiving a daily dose of cat memes in your inbox, carefully timed to distract you from any productivity.
d) By attending this meetup, you acknowledge that your fashion sense will be subjected to judgment by a panel of product designers. āWorst Dressedā attendees will be required to dress as āBananas in Pajamasā for a period of one week
Luckily the meetup was about Dark Patterns and this was done as a jokeā¦
But hereās what I took away from it:
1. We predictably donāt read anything - so if youāre doing something good, donāt hide it in your terms and conditions - make it obvious.
2. Big Tech infamously has pretty dodgy terms too that we all agree to. The exception is that at some point, a few very vocal people realised and it became a PR nightmare. Facebook is in a world of hurt over its dodgy practices.
Never use a wall of text if you want your user to read something.
Never use a wall of text if you want to hide something, because it will still get found.
Just never use a wall of text.
If you must have one, summarise your wall of text into 1 line for the typical user.
Loved this experiment.
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