> It looks like you’re part of one of our experiments. The logged-in mobile web experience is currently unavailable for a portion of users. To access the site you can log on via desktop, the mobile apps, or wait for the experiment to conclude.
Wow. Most companies at least have the grace to allow users to opt out of these kind of experiments via a "labs" kind of configuration.
They do – there is a beta option in preferences that is unticked by default that lets you opt into experiments. However it seems to me they just kinda forgot about it?
I've subscribed to the beta experiments years ago, before the dark patterns started emerging and I was actually looking forward to any changes, and you're absolutely right, it is totally abandoned. The subreddit has just become a place for people to vent their frustrations and to be completely ignored by the admins.
Doesn't make it appropriate at all but since they're testing "will the average user put up with this crap" restricting to just people who went out of their way to go into settings and enable labs would yield really biased results.
No self-awareness that running such a test ya know might make you the bad guys though.
I mean the other way around. Sure, bully your users by default but let them opt out via a somewhat hidden setting. If they use the setting instead of installing the app you have your result.
It's still not quite what the experiment is designed to test. How many people who opt out when given the ability would stick around when not given the ability?
If they make opting out difficult (ie. You go to a page in settings that you have to directly link to because you’re “signed out” in the main app) then that wouldn’t skew the results that significantly, while still providing an escape hatch that isn’t “wait for this to be finished”.
I get wanting to test the hypothesis that disabling logged-in mobile web will drive app downloads, but the user experience a critical flow you used to use went a way for no apparent reason, and workarounds also went away. It would feel like you're going crazy or your device/IP got banned, somehow.
They accidentally tipped their hand with this. Everyone suspected, but it's basically confirmed that they're pushing to get mobile users onto the first-party app.
Wow. Most companies at least have the grace to allow users to opt out of these kind of experiments via a "labs" kind of configuration.