The New York Times criticizes dark patterns, but fails to criticize themselves

With respect, I work closely with editors for a couple of major Canadian publication.

The number of them who understand the subscription and unsubscribe process of any of their media properties and UX patterns enough to rule on the subject for one of their writers is probably near 0.

It's not because they don't care, or wouldn't take to concern; it's because it's a business matter and a big blind spot. They have no ruling power over it, and just generally expect subscriptions to be a resolved business matter since it has long been.

It's easy for us "tech" people to see these kinds of things; it's obvious to a lot of us because our days are consumed by it. That is not at all true for most people.

Thankfully, even with blaring blind spots, editors tend to be open for discussion—hell, they started the discussion.

I think before anyone goes off the rails, they should take a look at the NYT comments section on this article where they can see the top comments on both the All and Reader Picks tabs. There are a number of comments pointing directly back at the NYT about this issue. A lot of those comment sections, like HN, are moderated by humans: https://qr.ae/pGncF5

To me, it reads that this particular writer came upon a subject that began to concern them, did some research and put together a piece to open up a discussion. It's not a final ruling, and it's not complete (it's just an opinion after all).

To me, that seems healthy, not intellectually dishonest.

Editorial board is not charge of the business of the newspaper. They are only in charge of editorial policy. The board doesn’t even speak for the newsroom.

NYT has huge institutional wall between editorial decisions and the business to keep them separate.

Here are the people running the company: https://www.nytco.com/company/people/

Is it possible that person opposes the practice but is a minority opinion on the board? They might be restricted from talking ill of the paper and are using other examples to make thier point.

A better analogy would be if you told the world that your friend should stop drinking.

I disagree. Hypocrisy allegations are expressing an important insight: "Obviously, moralizing about X isn't helpful because you know it's wrong, and you still do it", and further, "maybe you should use your special position as someone tempted to X to provide insight on what would stop you".

In your example, you're drinking yourself to death despite knowing it's stupid, and probably despite others telling you not to. Why would you think lecturing your friend helps?

Your reaction should be, "hey, what would stop me from drinking? Maybe I should try that and propose it for my friend too?"

In the NYT example, they should know why they're using the dark patterns, and what would get them to stop, and should be proposing that.

Yup, it's generally bad to use text posts to add commentary on a link. In fact HN has always disallowed this. From the FAQ (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html):

How do I make a link in a text submission?

You can't. This is to prevent people from submitting a link with their comments in a privileged position at the top of the page. If you want to submit a link with comments, just submit it, then add a regular comment.

The same issue comes up with titles. I tell people all the time: if you want to say what you think is important about an article, that's fine, but do it by adding a comment to the thread. Then your view will be on a level playing field with everyone else's: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

In this case, though, I made an exception because the post isn't recommending the article the way submissions usually do, but rather the opposite. It seems a bit unfair to make it link to it in the standard way. Don't worry, it's not going to become a pattern (dark or otherwise).