Home » Our fight against the dark side of the Net and the bad example of former President Trump

Our fight against the dark side of the Net and the bad example of former President Trump

by admin

The last case that has been talked about (very little, in Europe) concerns Donald Trump: in the months preceding the elections then lost to Biden, the former president of the United States allegedly tricked his supporters into giving him money. A lot of money, a lot more money than they wanted to give him. Second as published by the New York Times in early April, almost 20 million dollars raised during the last election campaign would be the subject of disputes.

To do this, the staff of the then head of the White House would have used (indeed, he used, as seen here) a combination of bad web-design and tricks designed specifically for push people to do what people really didn’t want to do: give them money regularly, every month or even every week, as if they were paying for a subscription to something. It worked like this: connecting to WinRed, the site through which it was possible to make a donation, after choosing the amount, the box “Donate this money every month” was already crossed (image at the top of the page), with the consent already granted without being asked for anything from whoever was to grant it. I got it? In order not to donate money every month it was necessary to intervene and manually deactivate the option, instead of (as would have been more correct) having to activate it manually to choose to donate money every month.

Also according to the NYT, the use of this “trick” would have begun in March 2020 and would have continued until November, even with a sort of escalation: in spring, the pre-filled box only said “Donate this money every month”; in June the possibility (also pre-accepted) of “Make an additional donation” on Trump’s birthday; in September, in view of the televised debate with Biden, the possibility (also pre-accepted) was added to “Automatically donate another 100 dollars on the 29th” and above all the “Donate this money every month” was transformed into “Donate this money every week”. Finally, two boxes were created in October, written with extensive use of capital letters and patriotic terms, which called true Americans to action: both already accepted, they gave the green light to a weekly donation until election day and also to a additional donation of $ 100 on the 9th day of the month.

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Former President Trump and the Dark Side of the Net

If you multiply these figures by the number of people who helped Trump economically in the 8 months between March and November 2020, you understand why it is easy to talk about millions. Many of which are now being asked back, after people realize they have been deceived (if not outright scammed, as so many have claimed): over the course of 2020, the WinRed platform had to repay a total of about 122 million dollars to the supporters of the Republicans, who are a lot of money but still represent more or less 10% of all that received by the party during the last election campaign. For comparison, the Democrats’ ActBlue platform had to pay back just over $ 20 million.

What he did Trump’s staff it is incorrect (ethically and probably also from a legal point of view), but it is a rather widespread practice online: designing sites in order to get those who use them to do what they want, instead of what those who surf would like to do. Often pretending that it happens through a mistake, for a badly designed or badly programmed interface, for a mistake. Which it is not.

Are the forced routes and they represent a sort of “dark side” of the Net, as the programmer called them back in 2010 Harry Brignull, who also created a site to talk about it:

– are the sites where the options Accept and Reject they are not presented with equal importance (usually the first is colorful and very evident and the second is more nuanced and hidden);

– are the banners that it is practically impossible to close except by clicking on them;

– is the subscription to the Wall Street Journal which is very easy to activate but very difficult to deactivate;

– it’s the phones Xiaomi that during the configuration phase they try in every way to make you create an account and therefore to collect your data;

– is Instagram that asks if you want personalized ads and pushes you to accept them, along with accepting the possibility of being tracked and profiled while using the app;

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– is LinkedIn who sends you an email to tell you that you have received a message, but forces you to click to read the text of the message;

– it is the trial period of something that renews automatically and without remembering it and starts getting paid;

– are the pharmacies that in the United States they collect the data of vaccinated people and then they use them to flood them with advertising;

– they are the (fake) countdowns that push you to act quickly and without thinking so as not to miss who knows what unmissable opportunity;

– are the banners that tell you that “This site would like to send you notifications” that appear immediately after the pop-up sui cookie;

– and it’s the same cookie pop-ups that push you to accept everything because rejecting everything is too complex.

The difference with the phishing and the other types of computer scams now known and known? This is not about an email asking you for your credit card details or a site that copies that of the post office or your bank to steal something from you: here we are dealing with badly made sites specifically to make you wrong and make you spend money or give something you would not have wanted to give or that you don’t know you’re giving up. It is legal, but just barely. And maybe soon it won’t be anymore: many American states (from California to Washington) are thinking of laws that prohibit these dark and convoluted paths and even in Europe it is being discussed.

Also because the problem concerns the Internet, but it was not born with the Internet, as those who between the late nineties and early 2000s know well who found themselves paying for a subscription to some download of logos and ringtones for the phone just because he had searched for and downloaded a single song.

How to try to escape the dark side of the web

It is a problem that will have at least twenty years, if not even 30, but which we have not yet managed to solve, because alone it is difficult to figure it out. In the United States, however, it is a problem that is pushing more and more legislators to act: in California, the Consumer Privacy Act now expressly prohibits sites from hindering the exercise of any consumer right through pre-filled boxes that authorize the transfer of their personal data, more than a certain number of pop-ups, very long texts that one is forced to declare to have read even if no one would ever have the time to read them and also through an excessively complex and confused language.

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Likewise, at the federal level, the Senate has been re-submitted a bill called Detour Act (born in 2019, it’s this one) which aims precisely to counter the tactics through which the giants of the Internet try to collect as much data as possible from people without informing them that they are doing it.

Beyond the laws, what we can do is above all use common sense, as we have written several times when talking about these topics: we must remember that the X to close the banner is there somewhere even if they have colored it gray and put it on a gray background, which there is no unmissable opportunity that expires in 3 minutes and we can take all the time we want to decide, that we can easily do without personalized ads and that we do not need another account. Again: that if that object we wanted to buy online is no longer available (because obviously “it has just finished”) it is not the case that we should be tempted by similar products that are offered to us and that if we really need another trial subscription, better put a reminder on the agenda on the expiration date. On the contrary: better to put it a couple of days before, to avoid any “activation of the paid service starts at 00.01 on the last day of the trial period, taking as reference the Singapore time zone“. Which can happen and maybe it’s even written somewhere, usually on the Terms & Conditions pages that we always accept but rarely read.

Why yes: online we must remember take a good look at where we click. And that the easiest and fastest way is not always the best one.

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