And it's not just that. They use dark patterns to inflate their ratings.

When I get done with a Teams call, I'm often asked to rate the call. If I pick 2 stars, I'm asked for written feedback on why it's low. If I pick 4 stars, I'm not.

Given how often they ask this, many will select 4-5 stars to dismiss the window.

It’s not that they don’t realize, they just don’t care. The people making the decision to throw up a feedback request have nothing to gain from not doing it. I’m sure they get bombarded too and they don’t like it either, but the fact that it’s pervasive is all the more reason to keep doing it, since it effectively gives them cover.

On top of that, they also don't seem to realize that they're one of now many apps also asking you for feedback.

It's like when a guy on the street asks you for money. Like you haven't already been asked by everyone else on the block, including the guy standing right next to him.

> It's just for vibes so we can make sure people are having a good experience.

Are you sure that people are having a good experience ?

(after some random time) Are you sure that people are having a good experience ?

(after some random time) Are you sure that people are having a good experience ?

(after some random time) Are you sure that people are having a good experience ?

(after some random time) Are you sure that people are having a good experience ?

Now think about this from a user's perspective:

We asked for Claude coz we really wanted it (as devs). Our security and legal guys evaluated it and the data usage agreements and such, which took ages and they stated that we can use it as long as we never never ever give any kind of bug report or feedback because that might retain data. This was all prior to this new feedback prompt being added to Claude Code.

We were happy. We could use Claude Code, finally!

Then suddenly, about once per day we are getting these prompts and there is NO option to disable them. The prompt just randomly appears. I might be typing part of my next prompt, which can very definitely include numbers from 1 upwards, e.g. because I'm making a todo list and boom I've given feedback. I've inadvertently done the thing we were never never ever supposed to do.

Do you really think our first thought is to double check if maybe the data usage agreement has been changed / hopefully says that this particular random new survey thing is somehow not included in "feedback"?

No, we panic and are mad at Claude Code/Anthropic. Heck if you noticed that you inadvertently gave feedback you might make a disclosure to the security team that will now go and evaluate how bad this was. Hopefully they'd then find your updated data usage agreement.

It would have been so easy to just include an option to opt out, which just set the equivalent of the env var you now provide into the settings itself. In fact, I see the first comment a few days after the bug was filed already asked for that and was thumbs'd up by many people. And you ignored it and all we got was a manual env var or settings entry that we also need to first find out even exists.

What model?

Ah yes the

"Never ask me again"

(asks again the next day)

This means that, possibly, I can sue if my data is misused: it does not prevent its misuse. It doesn’t offer any protection if the law changes, or any real protection against constant TOS changes, etc.

Depends on where you are.

In the US, privacy policies change every week. And they don't gather consent - they just say "you're using our thing? Okay you consent". They'll send you an email with their new privacy policy. Which you don't read, because it's awful to read. And even if you do read it, it doesn't matter, because it's completely fake. The policy doesn't tell you how they actually use your data. It just says they can use any data for any purpose.

That would be meaningful if there were ever any enforcement.

Do you honestly expect a company like Anthropic to take data privacy laws seriously? I do not.

And we can be 100% certain your data is safe because nobody ever breaks the law. /s

How would you even know your data is being used in a way you didn’t authorize?

Boris from the Claude Code team here.

You can set CLAUDE_CODE_DISABLE_FEEDBACK_SURVEY either in your env, or in your settings.json. Either one works.

Dogfooding

Claude Code v2.0.35 — No exaggeration I've had it popup 4x today already.

The endless misapplications of net promotor score are hilarious. My ISP does the same thing despite being the only one available.

The purpose of the tool is to infer customer loyalty. What's the point of that in a captive market? I suppose whatever 3rd party is facilitating the survey gets paid and that's something.

I always answer no to these type of situations, under the slight hope that maybe enough people will say "no" that it forces the county or city to get bids for the contract and investigate why people don't like the service, and try to do better.

Very occasionally these types of arrangements end up with an enthusiastically high performing company that does the right thing, but usually it's dumpster fires all the way down.

Asking the likelihood I would recommend a service to my friends is a sure fire way to get a 0.

Has anyone in the history of mankind ever clicked "yes" to a website enabling desktop notifications? I feel like browsers should just adopt an "automatically say no to this bs" setting.

> During a damn incident I was trying to deal with

I feel bad for you but... this is also kind of hilariously absurd/unaware of them.

The only time you must provide your income is as part of a credit approval.

Every other time they ask it's voluntary on your part, and you should decline. They just use the information for advertising at that point.

Depending on whether it's a review of the item or the seller, that sounds like a good reason to rate it as one star, "item did not arrive". They did ask for that…

Did you know there's a new Gantt chart? Did you know there's a new Gantt chart? Did you know there's a new Gantt chart? Did you know there's a new Gantt chart? Did you know there's a new Gantt chart? Did you know there's a new Gantt chart? Did you know there's a new Gantt chart? -Wrike

No. What's mandated by law is to not track users for reasons not core to delivering your service OR disclose that you are doing so.

The opposite: it's mandated that you not do data collection and tracking for reasons except those essential for the company to provide the product or service, absent informed consent. (And this is purely for tracking: cookies used for maintaining preferences or other state are fine.)

The banners are a fig leaf for behavior that violates the spirit of the GDPR, creating an aggravation where the simplest way to dismiss them is by agreeing.

Any site that doesn't offer a button to reject the tracking (with no more stops than angreeing) and still function as expected without the tracking, is in violation of the law.

Only if you use cookies; I think not everyone will need to use cookies. I think if you use cookies to login, then only the login form should hopefully need to mention the cookies. (However, there are better ways to do user authentication, such as basic HTTP auth or X.509 auth; neither of which requires cookies.)

I read their comments as knowing that.

Imagine a world where you don't need to click on anything because cookies are no longer being used for large scale tracking.

I find it interesting how even if I accept cookies many sites still continue to ask

you don't have to ask for cookies if you don't use them