Is it legally fraud of a ad SDK uses these kinda of tricks? I encounter these kinds of tricks in many of the games my daughter plays on the iPad and hate it immensely, but it seems everybody gets away with it ...
Are there any laws that should prevent these kinds of dark patterns?
There are virtually no good games on Apple Arcade. Had it for a year, nothing but goofy cell-shaded 6 year old child's games with maybe three or four titles like Jetpack Joyride or Crossy Road to piggy back off. I can't imagine how an adult can enjoy what's in the Apple Arcade and I really gave it the benefit of the doubt.
Especially because I only typically let them use it on the Apple TV and not a phone or iPad. They get to use a physical controller (DS4) and we can talk about their game as they play. So it’s less mindless and we can keep an eye on what they’re exposed to in game.
I would imagine that if something is deemed fraud, it's the ad-space buyer that is deemed the victim, as they're paying for clicks that aren't genuine interest, and not the user/viewer.
IANAL etc, but I thought it would be good to add the distinction.
It's not a dark pattern, because it doesn't really benefit anyone. Just destroys the signal by drowning it in noise so advertising becomes just a little bit dumber.
It benefits the app creator, and whoever is behind the ad serving to the detriment of the person doing the advertising. They get charged each time someone clicks that add.
> They get charged each time someone clicks that add.
Well, no. Not really. The client wants to buy an actionable contact with a real person at the end of the deal. The app creator can try selling counterfeit goods, but this trick only works once and the next time the client will demand payment on the basis of something other than clicks. (And this process has already happened many years ago; nobody charges per click in 2022.)
OP didn't directly say such dark patterns are fraudulent. They said AppLovin was committing fraudulent activity and then that Unity uses dark patterns.
Strange thing, I tried it on my FireTV to block youtube ads, but it didn't work. I wouldn't be surprised if the FireTV monkies around with user settings. The other explanation could be that youtube uses the same hostname for videos and ads, so the DNS blocking can't distinguish.
I used a pi-hole, but wanted it to work outside my home as well. NextDNS uses many of the same blocklists, and I happily pay $20/year for it. Also has apps for devices that roam from the house.
They try to make it super easy: https://pi-hole.net/ and I have no recollection of encountering any issues.
OTOH I am a software engineer working with Linux and network related stuff.
The issues comes later when some pages may break. When that happens you need to stop bashing your computer and add some URLs to the Pi-hole whitelist (or skip those parts of the web...). In my experience there has been few issues. Some enterprisey stuff my wife needed for work depended on some oracle tracking URLs that were blocked if I remember correctly.
Are there any laws that should prevent these kinds of dark patterns?