You may not recognize the term
dark patterns, but you’ve probably seen enough manipulative interfaces to get the idea. A user experience in a site, app, or gadget is constructed to herd customers into following a company’s dictates, even if those will cost people their money or data. Now one of Washington’s consumer regulators is asking how the public sector could address this private-sector plague.
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At the Federal Trade Commission’s “Bringing Dark Patterns to Light” online workshop April 29, speakers uniformly denounced these deceptive interfaces in apps, services, and sites. “We increasingly see companies using dark patterns to manipulate consumers into giving up their data,” acting FTC Chair Rebecca Kelly Slaughter said as she opened the online event.
WASHINGTON President Biden, spurred on by a lackluster January jobs report and Democratic support for his $1.9 trillion economic aid proposal, said on Friday that the economy was in need of urgent help and that Republicans should either get on board with a robust stimulus package or expect his plan to pass without their support.
Biden, taking office amid chaos, seeks to project calm resolve nytimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nytimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Joe Biden s political career marked by personal tragedy
13 minutes to read
By: Lisa Lerer
As a child, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. wrestled with words, grappling with a boyhood stutter. Years later, as a young politician, he could not stop saying them, quickly developing a reputation for long-winded remarks. It was words that undercut his first two campaigns for the White House, with charges of plagiarism ending his 1988 bid and verbal missteps that hampered his 2008 outing from nearly the first moments. And it was his self-described penchant for being a gaffe machine, as he once put it, that would cement his vice presidential nickname of Uncle Joe, the endearing relative who prompts the occasional wince.
Bloomberg / Getty
It still hurts to swallow or drink. Water tastes off. She can’t sleep. She buried herself under blankets all weekend, but she couldn’t stay warm. Then came the pounding headache, the blocked sinuses. So far, she’s spent more than a week in self-isolation, toggling between British TV dramas and news reports about the rioters who wanted to assassinate her colleagues in Congress. Her husband’s symptoms are the same, but he is older than her and in a high-risk group. It’s been four days since they tested positive, nine days since the insurrection. Pramila Jayapal, the 55-year-old representative from Washington, told me that her anger is “next-level.”