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Comment by Jach

19 hours ago

This is untrue. Chrome's "acceptance rates" for proceeding through its bad SSL cert warnings used to be pretty high, but with a redesign they basically flipped the numbers so most people didn't proceed to connect to the site. Similarly with cookie banners, where making it more difficult to say no (by e.g. moving a decline button to a second interaction layer) meaningfully raises acceptance rates; if users were just blindly accepting everything, then there'd be no reason to make it harder to say no. Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) prompt has users overwhelmingly answering no even years after introduction (though of course opt-in is increasing). A study on permission prompts in Android found that the main factor in first-use denial rates was whether users thought the app needed the permission it was requesting or not, showing some actual comprehension of what they're being asked. Another found higher denial rates if the frequency of the prompt was on every access instead of once, rather than apathetic blanket acceptance.

Design prompts for potentially dangerous actions so refusal is easy and what's being asked is legible, and people will refuse plenty.