Beyond 4 million dollars in just 24 hours: this is the money raised by the former American president, Donald Trump, in donations made after his indictment was confirmed (here all the news on this).
The figure was disclosed by the staff who are handling the Trump campaign for the presidential race 2024 in the USAwho also explained that over 25% of the donations came from people who had never donated to the former president before and also that around 16,000 people volunteered to work on the campaign in just one day.
In short: as was widely foreseeable, the former president’s legal troubles are having a sort of boomerang effect on his electorate and (very likely) they will end up helping him in his run-up to the White House. At least economically.
In depth
Why using the same password is dangerous and 5 password managers to fix it
by Emanuele Capone
Donald Trump and the use of dark patterns
Trump can count on this, his popularity and on an undeniable ability to speak to crowdsbut also on some trick well known to those who frequent the Internet and design sites, whose existence his own staff he could not deny already in the 2020 election campaign.
We are talking about dark patterns, which (simplified) are one combination of bad web-design and tricks specifically designed to get people to do online what they really didn’t want to do: in Trump’s case, give him money regularly, every month or even every week, as if they were paying for a subscription to something.
Three years ago, a New York Times investigation unveiled these unfair practices and revealed that in 2020 alone, the WinRed platform (which was and still is the one used to donate money to Trump) had to do so repay approximately $122 million to Republican supporters, that is, more or less 10% of all those received by the party during that electoral campaign. For comparison, the Democrats’ ActBlue platform had to pay back just over $20 million.
Evidently the lesson received then taught the former president’s staff something: by accessing the site through which it is possible to donate money (which is this) it is clear that some changes have been made: the boxes for making a recurring, monthly or weekly donation are no longer pre-filled and it is clearer (although not very clear) how people’s sensitive data is treated. And yet, there are still some things that are not rightsuch as the fact that one of the amounts (the $47 one) flashes and is more evident than the others and also that that same amount becomes the default if you decide to make a monthly donation, with the money automatically withdrawn from the end of April.
What did Trump do in 2020
This is however nothing compared to what happened 3 years ago, and that it can clearly be reviewed by accessing the Internet Archive’s WayBack Machine: connecting to WinRed, after having chosen the amount, the box Donate this money every month it was already crossed out, with the consent already granted without asking anything from whoever had to grant it. Not to donate money every month it was necessary to intervene and manually deactivate the optioninstead of (as would have been more correct) having to activate it manually to choose to donate money every month.
According to the indictment, the use of this trick would be started in March 2020 and it would go on until the month of November, even with a sort of escalation:
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in primaverathe pre-filled box just said Donate this money every month;
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a June was added the possibility (also pre-accepted) of Make an additional donation on Trump’s birthday;
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a September was added the possibility (also pre-accepted) of Automatically donate another $100 on day 29 and especially on Donate this money every month was transformed into Donate this money every week;
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a October two boxes were created, written with extensive use of capital letters and patriotic terms, which they called “real Americans” to action: Both already accepted, they gave the green light to a weekly donation until Election Day and also an additional $100 donation on the 9th day of the month.
youtube: how dark patterns work
Trump is back, sad as an Aznavour song
by Riccardo Luna
What are dark patterns
These are all examples of deceptive design and dark patterns, i.e. (literally) misleading design and obscure and unclear paths which lead those who surf online to do things they most likely would not want to do. They are forced paths and represent a sort of dark side of the Net, as he called them back in 2010 programmer Harry Brignull, who also created a website to talk about it.
Some example among many:
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are the sites where the Accept and Reject options they are not presented with equal importance (usually the first is colorful and well evident and the second is more nuanced and hidden);
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are the banner which is practically impossible to close except by clicking on it;
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is the subscription to the Wall Street Journal that it is very easy to activate but very difficult to deactivate;
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it’s the phones Xiaomi who during the configuration phase try in every way to get you to create an account and therefore to collect your data;
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And Instagram which asks if you want personalized ads and pushes you to accept them, together with accepting the possibility of being tracked and profiled while using the app;
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And LinkedIn that 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;
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and the trial period of something that renews automatically and without remembering it and starts charging you;
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are the pharmacies that collected i data of vaccinated persons and then used them to flood them with advertising;
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they are the (fake) countdown which push us to act quickly and without thinking in order not to miss who knows what unmissable opportunity;
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are the banners that they say “This site would like to send you notifications” that appear immediately after the cookie pop-ups;
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and they are the same pop-up sui cookie that push us to accept everything because rejecting everything is too complex.
The unlike phishing and the other types of computer scams now known and known is clear: this is not an email asking for credit card data or a site that copies that of the post office or the bank to steal something; here we are dealing with sites made on purpose badly to make people make mistakes and make them spend money or give away something they didn’t want to give away or above all they don’t know they are giving away. It’s legal, but just barely. And Trump’s staff knows it too.
@capoema