alt Hacker NewsThe Copilot button that comes on new laptops is the Darkest Pattern I have ever seen. UI exploitation that has jumped the software / hardware gap.
A student will be showing me something on their laptop, their thumb accidentally grazes it because it's larger than the modifier keys and positioned so this happens as often as possible. The computer stops all other activity and shifts all focus to the Copilot window. Unprompted, the student always says something like "God, I hate that so much."
If it was so useful they wouldn't have to trick you into using it.
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I'm having a hard time believing any of this, and am tempted to think this might be in bad faith. It's true it's a bit ambitious on their part that they replaced the right side key, but it isn't larger than normal and it's not positioned any differently than normal keys. Working with hundreds of laptops and humans, several ham fisted, on a daily basis I've not seen this at all.
Further, a dark pattern is where you are led towards a specific outcome but are pulled insidiously towards another. This doesn't really fall into that definition.
> Unprompted, the student always says something like "God, I hate that so much."
... Dare I ask how Copilot typically responds to that? (They're doing voice detection now, right?)
> If it was so useful they wouldn't have to trick you into using it.
They delude themselves that they're doing no such thing. Of course the feature is so useful that you'd want to be able to access it as easily as possible in any context.