66. People expect online interactions to follow social rules

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66. People expect online interactions to follow social rules

There are rules for social interactions that you do and don't even notice. Some rules for social interactions are:

eye contact

appropriate conversation

do not ignore someone

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What if you walked up to someone and said "Hi how have you been?" and they just completely ignored you? It would make you uncomfortable. You expect the same rules to be followed for online interactions. We don't realize how often we follow the social rules and the internet does not.

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For example:

The website below, "The Organizing for America" website does not follow rules of social interaction. This is pointed out in the book and is a great example. You notice to view the rest of the website you must enter your email address and zip code. No one wants to give out their email to all of these websites to then get spam mail and doing so also makes some people weary.

You don't notice it until further investigating that there is a blue button below "Learn More" that says "Skip signup". Making this button hard to read is not only misleading but also makes your website seem untrustworthy. Imagine this as a physical social interaction; this is why people expect online interactions to follow social rules.