Maybe you’ve experienced this before. You use an app or service, like Uber, and you already spend money on it, they make millions on fees so it’s not free. But it really wants to pull more money off of you and creates these add ons, like “Uber One”, a subscription that gives you discounts or whatever. So it pops up in every single interaction you have with the app. Literally on open, on checkout, on browsing, 100% of the experience is you actively declining this nag. And it’s also subtle. On checkout it pops up as if it were the actual checkout form, so you have to always be on the lookout for the trap.

It actively makes a necessary product worse, and they know you won’t just delete the app because you need it. Maybe you’re traveling and need transportation, or food, etc.

So they made a deliberate choice not to respect your choice, and I’m not sure why this is allowed.

Uber is probably the worst offender, I revoked its notification privileges years ago because you can’t turn off ads and keep order notifications. So I killed both and prefer just watching the app or getting a call from deliveries.

It’s a very real power imbalance from a provider that already takes your money. Does anyone know of any efforts to regulate this anywhere? I really would love to donate to it. I would give a lot more that the Uber One subscription to it.