Tell HN: Dark Pattern from YouTube Movies and TV
I don&#x27;t carry a streaming video subscription anywhere, and so I mostly watch free YouTube, or I go to the theater and pay for a film. A while back, YouTube began promoting its films &quot;Free with Ads&quot; and I watched many of those, and they are unevenly awful or slightly tolerable. But lately I&#x27;ve also been renting singlet films from YouTube and it&#x27;s been a smooth experience, with no ads of course.<p>Today I was logged into my church account on my phone, and notied a 5-year-old film that I would love, so I jumped at the chance to plunk down $3.99 for an HD rental. It was also offered for purchase, and AFAICT, there was no free option at that point.<p>So I went through the purchase process, and realized I was in the wrong account just at the end, because I don&#x27;t store payment methods on that one. So I switched to my main and that&#x27;s when <i>things got weird</i>.<p>As soon as I looked up the same exact film in my main account, I noticed it was touted &quot;Free with Ads&quot; and no rental&#x2F;purchase option. So I was thrilled, but also appalled that they would&#x27;ve let me spend money on it without mentioning that option, you know?<p>So I started it on my phone and switched to my notebook, where my church account was still logged in (where I&#x27;d initially found it for-pay) and <i>mirabile dictu</i>, it&#x27;s also &quot;Free with Ads&quot; here!<p>So here&#x27;s my theory on what happened, based on salesmanship tactics and the sort of things other apps have done to me: I think they detected my willingness to watch, my backing out of payment, and so they immediately sweetened the deal so that I&#x27;d watch anyway.<p>Now some of you would rather pay $4 than watch a bunch of advertisements, and that&#x27;s fair. But it seems that YouTube&#x27;s playing A&#x2F;B testing with our willingness to do such a thing. Par for the course, am I right?