In my opinion, “Maybe Later” buttons are actually useful if implemented for the user's benefit. For example, maybe I do want to hear about OneDrive but I don't have time now. It's a reasonable middle ground between Yes and No.
But the problem is that modern tech companies are using it as a dark pattern to completely eliminate the No option. Sadly, I think this just might need to be regulated out. I don't see any reason why there shouldn' be a regulation that a “Maybe Later” button can't appear in a prompt as the only alternative to Yes, there needs to be a No/Never option as well.
Exactly. I wouldn't mind having three options: "Yes", "Maybe Later", and "No". It's the missing third option that sucks.
Like in Android: Do you want to back up your photos to the cloud? "Yes" or "Maybe later" which means being asked every week. Also, the checkbox is selected by default, and if you close the dialog by accidentally clicking outside of it (maybe because you were already going to click on something else, and the dialog opened in the last millisecond) that by Google standards counts as consent.
Of course, turning on the backup of photos in clouds only requires a single click (or misclick), but turning it off requires following a long tutorial very carefully...
Besides serving as a dark pattern, it also relieves devs from having ti store and check a user preference. You know, mutable state is bad, including user preferences. ;)
