r/AssholeDesign

These apps are notorious for abusing the notification badge to get people back to using the app. Since I put them in the "abuser prison", my doomscrolling habit has gone down massively. https://redd.it/1w5udq5 @AssholeDesign

If you track an item on Patagonia, they send you this weekly pain in the ass email to make you think it's available, but it isn't https://redd.it/1w4ffof @AssholeDesign

AI customer support as UX design choice for lack of accountability I know this might be a naive question, but I had a rather unpleasant experience using Wolt, and the experience in itself is nothing that out of ordinary, but what really made me scratch my head is how customer support handled it. Via text, and then via e-mail. They presented as "first you are talking to a bot" then if you want something it switches you to a person. But that person is just a "name". And they responded in full sentences with emojis, etc. The support person was not rude, they were just fucking out there. Like they are daft and don't understand the reason why someone can be annoyed and were like gaslighting me through that? "Oh it's so horrible you feel that way, but there is no need to do it, it's all procedure" type of thing. That is what made me escalate to the support email, since the "person" didn't want to give me their customer-support id, an e-mail, and plain said there is no avenue of escalation, because it will all come back to her eventually. That was so odd. Because that e-mail does exist, that is why and how I escalated. The person was adamant, that there is no way to escalate, in a super gaslighty, quirky way. When the truth of that was a click away. And... the same thing happened via e-mail. Just a name, no surname, absolute refusal, like it's programmed in, to 1. gaslight you via "i don't know why you would be frustrated" type of thing 2. complete incomprehension of why I would need or want any id, and gaslighting me, consistent, over many, many email echanges, that no company on earth gives their support agents id numbers, which I know is a lie. The responding "supervisor" was again just a weird female name and exactly the same voice. What is going on? And all these responses were written like AI, and argued with you in a way to an AI would - quoting law and shit like that, and being "quirky". "I wouldn't put myself on a minefield like that by suggesting something illegal 😄" - is a response. from an official complaint. Pray emoji always in the same, preultimate paragraph, etc. I haven't had a run-in with any customer support in years and years. But was that... AI or was that a real person? Are they allowed to pretend to be people, under a name and all? I just... it was so unnerving. But just as well it could be "assholes" in some corprate design script. What a weird experience. I just don't understand what that buys them - it's such a psycopathic experience. So my question utlimately is: is it AI pretending to be people, or people literally behaving like psychopaths - and what purpose does it serve the company to design that funnel like that. Are they testing and reusing that AI data, because ultimately I think the reasoning was to buy time before a refund, but form an engineering, or even psychological perspective, ANYTHING is better than gaslighting your client. Even just "agent not available" is better. What a ride. Edit: come to think of it, it seems like they CANNOT use AI to impersonate people, via EU law where I am, but still it's just a person clicking AI responses - that is what it feels like. Correct reading? But if so, then again, WHY, what does that accomplish. So it could be one Steve handling 100 fake female names as stand ins for support people, just clicking "yes" on an LLM output? And he has no legal obligation to tell me it's AI-assisted? Then what use are those laws, lol. Or is it really just customer support being ropotised but fully human? https://redd.it/1w1i52j @AssholeDesign

Minimum 20% tip and you don’t bring me the bill. https://redd.it/1w09s7s @AssholeDesign

Dolly Parton’s Instagram page the day after her death https://redd.it/1vyqtva @AssholeDesign

New: Community Validation System Hey everyone. We're adding a voting system to help filter posts. From now on, every post gets an auto-comment asking you to validate if it's actually asshole design. Upvote = YES, it's asshole design Downvote = NO, it doesn't belong Posts that get consistently downvoted will be reviewed by mods. Simple as that. Thanks, Mod team https://redd.it/1vyth69 @AssholeDesign

Google Play Store bundles ad notifications with payments to discourage users from turning them off https://redd.it/1vyc0gq @AssholeDesign

I’d be surprised if this wasn’t in here already https://redd.it/1vxr6ul @AssholeDesign

5 USD vs 55 USD https://preview.redd.it/e2qjcjjd1alh1.png?width=672&format=png&auto=webp&s=bae05f880eb722e128766feb9bcdc3a799ea4981 Edit (clicked post by accident) So this was in Indonesia restaurant. It was supposed to be 990.000 (55 USD) instead of 99,000 (5 USD) https://redd.it/1vww2l4 @AssholeDesign

The up and down buttons on the front of my roller door are actually to adjust the roller force and limits. The actual button to activate the door is that small unlabelled button on the bottom. https://redd.it/1vwr5mz @AssholeDesign

States "supreme cotton" but has zero cotton https://redd.it/1vwn00s @AssholeDesign

Reddit no longer shows the most subbed community when you search for it https://redd.it/1vu24z6 @AssholeDesign

It was a free trial plan... https://redd.it/1vu9bdz @AssholeDesign

.....thank you for the discount man, thank you so much https://redd.it/1vtbjsh @AssholeDesign

I thought this was fitting. https://redd.it/1vt2v0s @AssholeDesign

Meta forces you to use WhatsApp instead of SMS/MMS like literally every service on earth https://redd.it/1vt13cr @AssholeDesign

Google sends AI ads to their phones, removes "Turn off" button https://redd.it/1vsnb45 @AssholeDesign

Anyone else notice these "spend limit" dark patterns in AI/API products? Been digging into how usage limits work on some AI platforms and found something that feels pretty sketchy: 1. Default monthly spend limit used to be $0, hit your usage cap and you just wait for the reset (4hrs/weekly). 2. They added a "monthly spend limit" feature so you could opt in to pay for extra usage instead of waiting. 3. Then they rolled me into a promo: 2x usage + $100 "free" credit, both prominently shown right on the usage tracking screen. 4. To make that credit spendable, they also silently bumped my monthly spend limit from $0 to $2,000 (!!!). That part wasn't shown anywhere near as prominently, if a reasonable person glancing at the screen wouldn't catch it, it shouldn't be buried in fine print. I only noticed after burning through $17 of the "free" $100, when I went looking for why it said I was drawing on "API spend." I've since seen a few posts on FB/Reddit from people with surprise charges in the $40 to $50 range, adding up to $2k+, because they assumed they were still capped at $0 like before. Anyone else run into this? Curious if silently bumping spend limits during a promo is common practice, or if this is an especially bad case. https://redd.it/1vscchi @AssholeDesign