do you ever think about how all these dark patterns and sneaky tracking techniques actually, in the long run, make things worse for even the company implementing them?

like i’m thinking about how i hesitate to even open whatever random marketing emails i get from things i’ve bought now, even if they seem genuinely interesting, because i worry about there being a tracker jpg that will let them know i opened the email and am possibly a good target for future emails of that type.

i don’t even know if that’s still a thing people do! but it was at one point and now there’s a potential marketing vector which is just trashed, which means they have to do more and more invasive shit to try and get me to pay attention, which i then work around, and it’s like water spiraling the drain