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Dark Patterns are designed to confuse and enroll
- sp332 10y agoNot just the web either. This morning Cortana turned green and said "Oh hey!" in my taskbar. I clicked it and it gave me the regular interface - there was no alert or anything, they just wanted to boost their Cortana interaction numbers for the day. That's wasting my time and making it less likely that I will pay attention if there is an actual alert later.
- Dzugaru 10y agoShe was just trying to be friendly...
- sp332 10y agoYeah maybe it's an uncanny valley thing. But if it's going to start a conversation it should be prepared to carry one. And if it's going to demand my attention with a blinky green light, it should have something to say.
- JusticeJuice 10y agoThey tried that with clippy to make people like it more. It was hated.
- ivraatiems 10y agoI can't stand Cortana. I honestly, genuinely don't want to talk to my computer. I realize I might be in the minority on that, but I actually type fast enough and know what I'm doing enough not to need to ask an "assistant" to do it for me. Unless and until my computer is Samantha from Her, I don't need to talk to it. What's worse, Cortana has ruined Windows search. Searching from the Start Menu is way less expansive and useful in 10 than was in Windows 7. (I never used 8, so I can't comment there.) It's like it's punishing me for not using something that breaks how I want to work anyway.
- sp332 10y agoSo, just type then? I use Cortana to set reminders occasionally, but I can't remember the last time I used the voice interface. My PC at home doesn't even have a microphone.
- ivraatiems 10y agoOh yeah, I do. The problem is that Cortana has supplanted basic search functionality. As far as I can tell, when you type a search in the Start menu you're still going through Cortana, technically (that's why she's always running even when she's turned off from listening to you). Cortana has access to a limited subset of your computer. She can't search things outside your C:\Users\[your username] directory. Regular Windows Search doesn't have that limitation, but to get to regular search you have to explicitly go looking for it now. So while I used to be able to search for a folder on my D:\ drive by hitting start and typing its name, now I have to either go to the actual Windows Search, or navigate to the folder manually. Even if that folder is indexed in Windows Search, and I have full permissions on it.
- perspectivep 10y agoYou're upset that search got rebranded to Cortana? It can definitely search your entire PC. I just typed the name of a script I have sitting on my D: drive and pressed enter and it opened it.
- ivraatiems 10y agoIt can't. I have a Super User post [1] that describes the problem in detail. Windows Search and Cortana appear to be two separate things. If what I describe in my post is working on your computer, we should talk... I need to find a solution to this issue and Microsoft Support couldn't help. Can you tell me - do you have Cortana's voice stuff enabled? Do you have her "learning" about you enabled in settings? Did you upgrade to W10 or do a fresh install? [1] http://superuser.com/questions/1105529/cant-search-folders-outside-of-c-users-you-from-the-windows-10-start-menu http://superuser.com/questions/1105529/cant-search-folders-o...
- mtgx 10y agoPretty much all privacy-related settings in Windows 10 use dark patterns. And they've just made it much harder to disable Cortana in the upcoming Anniversary Update.
- shostack 10y agoHarder, or impossible? My understanding was they were forcing it down your throat with no way to disable it.
- ryanlm 10y agoIt seems like your first problem is you're using Windows 10. You agreed to let them do what they want with THEIR operating system.
- tedunangst 10y agoI've found nearly every operating system I use tends to change and do what "they" want.
- sp332 10y agoI think their end goal is to make money. And they're not going to do that if people don't like their products.
- cookiecaper 10y agoPractically speaking, people only need to like products enough to be able to tolerate them, even if they're gritting their teeth in anger the whole time they use them. Many people end up buying things they hate because they don't really have any better options (e.g. virtually every telco, cable company, or ISP). Microsoft would have to intentionally make Windows completely broken, meaning so broken it's very difficult to get even basic applications to run and stay running, before the switching costs would be justified (that is, before people would stop buying it). In a theoretical world, consumers are free to simply buy whatever they like, and their purchases directly reflect their intent to reward the company that made the product they're buying. In the real world, there is lock-in, there are exclusive vendors, there is employer mandate and inflexible custom processes with dependencies, there are other forces that make it so you almost have to buy certain things. Windows is definitely one of those things that many users feel they practically have to buy, whether they like it or not. Every vendor of computer products (hardware or software) is trying to achieve this lock-in effect, because it means a lot of easy money, a much more stable and less sensitive income stream.
- EGreg 10y agoThe site itself has a dark css theme. Made reading about "dark patterns" that much scarier. It's actually an interesting phenomenon -- how the experience is changed by the site you read it on.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nommm-nommm 10y agoThose extra fees at the very end infuriate me the most - it makes comparison shopping impossible. Thats including not giving me a shipping estimate until after I enter my shipping address and payment info. I want to know what I am going to pay before entering my payment details!! Hotel "resort fees" and cable or Internet subscriptions are the worst offenders, I honestly can't believe either is legal.
- heywire 10y agoAs someone currently paying a $22/day parking fee at a hotel, I know exactly what you mean. However, in my case it was a booking through Hotwire, so I didn't even know the hotel name in advance.
- nommm-nommm 10y ago22 dollars is absolutely ridiculous for parking (except maybe in NYC...) but at least you can opt out of parking by not bringing a car. "Resort fees" are not optional thus should be included with the cost of the room. Same with booking/processing fees when buying tickets.
- Freak_NL 10y agoIt actually is illegal in some parts of the world; the EU at least. These kind of hidden fees (for travel, hotels, etc.) are illegal now exactly because you should be able to compare prices, and offenders are getting reprimanded and fined for it.
- pjc50 10y ago> it makes comparison shopping impossible Yes, that's the intention :(
- JTon 10y agoI'm happy to see mainstream technews bringing this topic to a wider audience. As I'm sure most HN regulars are aware, we've had many high ranking posts on this topic For those wanting to go right to the source: http://darkpatterns.org/ http://darkpatterns.org/
- blendo 10y agoThings were pretty cool until 1994. Then Canter and Siegel unleashed one of the first commercial dark patterns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Siegel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurence_Canter_and_Martha_Sie... It's been a race to the bottom ever since. Dave Egger's fine and breezy novel "The Circle" illustrates the ethical issues quite nicely.
- LeonM 10y agoWhat about those 'free' WiFi access points that require you to login with Facebook for 'prevention of abuse', and then abuse your Facebook account by posting you were there.
- noxToken 10y agoDo you have an example of that? That can't be a thing.
- edwhitesell 10y agoIt's essentially another dark pattern. In accordance with the use policy of the Facebook APIs you can't require a like in exchange for something. If you see that, definitely report the offender to Facebook. Source: I used to be involved with a WiFi company that offered Facebook "login". Edit: clarified my involvement
- throwanem 10y ago> In accordance with the use policy of the Facebook APIs you can't require a like in exchange for something. Unless you're Facebook, I guess: https://www.facebook.com/business/facebook-wifi https://www.facebook.com/business/facebook-wifi
- edwhitesell 10y agoSure, they can make/break their own rules. It's been a while since I've looked at this in detail, but my understanding is the "Like" aspect of it is optional. On that page: >After checking in, people will be asked if they also want to like your Page so you can continue to connect with them on Facebook. Of course, if using Facebook WiFi, you do check-in to the location which triggers a host of other "features" within your Facebook account and experience. Similar to if you check-in to a location with the standard Facebook App. I can see the argument that it's an extension of that experience, while providing WiFi service in exchange for it.
- p49k 10y ago
- mknocker 10y agoSome of these cases are not only dark patterns, they constitute was it legally known as fraud. If you deceive someone in order to gain a financial advantage, it is fraud. The problem is that going against those gigantic companies is very difficult.
- FireBeyond 10y agoAnd then others aren't dark patterns. One of the first examples, British Airways, is pretty unfairly called out. The article says that they imply "cheapest at the top". No, the flights aren't shown "cheapest at the top", and they never imply they are. They're sorted in chronological order. There is a summary item that says the lowest fare for a booking class that day, but that's all.
- ViViDboarder 10y agoThe author used it as an example of something that may just be an unintuitive UI.
- fullshark 10y ago" British Airways lists flights that are the second-lowest price as the lowest," That sentence makes it sound like they deliberately always put the 2nd lowest price as the lowest every time. It was pretty misleading or poorly written.
- yaelwrites 10y agoSee http://darkpatterns.org/british-airways-distract-from-cheapest-option/ http://darkpatterns.org/british-airways-distract-from-cheape....
- FireBeyond 10y agoI think that's still really stretching. "In fact, it's only the lowest price in that ticket class". If I saw those boxes across the board, like in their example image, it doesn't take a second thought, it's "obvious" (to me anyway), that those are the "lowest, per class".
- noxToken 10y agoAVG had (possibly still does) a dark pattern with their free AV software, and I fell for it once. I was in the middle of a game when the stupid ad for Web TuneUp[0] appeared from my task bar over the screen. The linked image is exactly how it appeared with the auto-confirm box pre-checked. In a rush to dismiss the ad to get back to my match, I accidentally clicked the OK button instead of the tiny decline. Of course, uninstalling that travesty was a nightmare. [0]: http://www.ghacks.net/2016/01/01/avg-putting-millions-of-chrome-users-at-risk/ http://www.ghacks.net/2016/01/01/avg-putting-millions-of-chr...
- someone7x 10y agoThe thing about dark patterns is that feels like an abuse of the commons. Because of scummy practices like this I am absolutely less willing to explore a site that requests my email, or buy something from a random site (I just see if it's on amazon and buy it there). For example, a few days ago there was a Show HN about PlateJoy, which sounded really interesting. But, the only way I could learn about it was to enter my email and take a quiz. Now enters the part where the antics of countless other bad actors takes its toll on an otherwise innocent website; I decide it isn't worth the risk and move a long.
- wldcordeiro 10y agoYep, AllTrails recently went with a dark-pattern, want to see any info on the trail? Sign-up. If you don't you'll get a brief flash of the detail page before redirecting to a sign-up form.
- lpolovets 10y agoIs that a dark pattern, or poor ux?
- kordless 10y agoDoes it really matter?
- HashHishBang 10y agoYes? That is the entire point of this discussion. That just strikes me as a sign-up for more info. Granted I haven't signed up there so who knows if there are nefarious pre-checked boxes and massive ToS agreements, but signup for access to the site doesn't seem malicious.
- kordless 10y agoI really shouldn't ask leading questions, because they are technically equivalent to blaming statements. What I meant was that "it does NOT matter" whether it's a UX bug or an intentional pattern. The effects can be the same. If a company doesn't have a lot of money to produce a good UX because they spent it all on trips up to Tahoe for a "workcation", and people rely on that software, it's the same damn thing no matter how you look at it. i.e. a lack of intent is just as bad as ill intent, in some cases.
- joeblau 10y agoI'm wondering if there would be any value in an Anti-Dark Pattern plugin? Basically a browser plugin that un-does all of the dark patterns companies use to try and trick people and give you a straight result.
- grenoire 10y agoThe amount of work put into it may not necessarily be worth it the gains, given how many different websites there are with varying implementations of these patterns.
- noxToken 10y agoMake it open source, and the community will probably maintain it. I'm sure that if a list of sites were given, fixes for the dark patterns would be submitted regularly.
- acdha 10y ago> Make it open source, and the community will probably maintain it … or fill the issue tracker with troubleshooting requests, demands that someone else code something they think needs to exist, long rants about whether something should or should not be included, etc. Open source maintenance is far from free.
- kardos 10y agoYou don't have to be a BDFL, you can delegate maintenance work to community recruits as it scales up.
- acdha 10y agoIt's nice when that works out but it's unfortunately not uncommon to have projects which don't attract volunteers, attract volunteers who have time/interest in fixing one particular thing but not maintaining it smoothly over time, or which simply cycle through people as the cycle of enthusiasm->overload->burnout->resignation repeats. As a community we tend to neglect this side of things since it's neither a fun technical problem nor something a one-time effort can fix, but it deprives the open-source world of too many good developers.
- SNvD7vEJ 10y agoAdobe flash update notification always have the McAfee Antivirus trial installer pre-selected by default. Pisses me off every time.
- dublinben 10y agoUninstall Adobe Flash. You're better off without it anyway. If for any reason you still might need it, it's included in Chrome.
- bitL 10y agoThat means you already have Chrome or Google Toolbar. McAfee is only second on the list ;-)
- oblio 10y agoReader has the same thing :(
- cptskippy 10y agoI uninstalled Reader when in started forcing UI toolbars to be open an visible every time a PDF was opened even after I'd explicitly hidden them. I haven't looked back either. I have yet to encounter a PDF that doesn't render correctly in FireFox's built in PDF.JS. I know Reader has additional features but I've honestly never used them. You can easily set FireFox as your default PDF view and you're off to the races. My only gripe is the PDF icon is now FireFox's icon.
- Endy 10y agoI can show you several form-fillable PDF files which FF does not merely break, but absolutely destroys. Then again, I'm not interested in my Web browser invading my offline activity.
- scholia 10y agoIf on Windows, install Unchecky https://unchecky.com/ https://unchecky.com/ It unselects everything by default...
- andrewclunn 10y agoThe audio for his voice is so quiet.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- benologist 10y agoDark patterns need to start winning FTC attention, period. If it's somehow not already criminal to cunt people about, lie and mislead and steal from them on web pages that needs to change too.
- yedpodtrzitko 10y agoThe worst thing I've seen is G2A Shield - it takes 10 steps to deactivate it, and each step has the "cancel" button much more dominant than the "continue" button, see: http://imgur.com/a/PUwPC http://imgur.com/a/PUwPC
- maccard 10y agoI can't recommend using G2A on any level. While there may be some reputable "grey market" sellers that take advantage of pricing in different regions etc, g2a seem to be far shadier [0]. (specifically the keys are being bought with stolen credit cards, and the original seller gets hit with chargebacks) [0] - http://tinybuild.com/g2a-sold-450k-worth-of-our-game-keys http://tinybuild.com/g2a-sold-450k-worth-of-our-game-keys
- simfoo 10y agoHoly shit this is ridiculous
- jonlucc 10y agoThis looks remarkably similar to Audible's unsubscribe flow. I was a member, but I've had less time to listen and increased my podcast count, so I decided to cancel and pick it back up in a year or so. They ask a million times if you're sure and then offer another million other options (suspend the account for a few months, after which they will automatically charge you again). After you get through that, including a screen warning that you will lose unused credits, they offer a plan that will let you keep the credits you've already paid for by paying them another, smaller sum (I think $10 a year). I will definitely think hard before reactivating.
- bad_user 10y agoWhat really pissed me off about Audible is that they offered me a special offer after initiating the cancellation process, in a fully automated process. Maybe other people like that, but this basically tells me that their good customers pay more than they have to, because they are fools that don't complain, possibly subsidizing the grumpy ones. And I find this to be totally unacceptable. For anybody interested in an Audible alternative, check this out: http://downpour.com http://downpour.com That's DRM-free, high quality audio books at comparable prices.
- gthtjtkt 10y agoExperienced this recently with Hello Fresh. The 'Cancel Subscription' button was so hard to find that I had to spend 10 minutes Googling it (the placement had changed over time and was always difficult to find, so a lot of the search results were no longer relevant). You had to click a button to reveal the cancellation link, and it was a tiny line of grey text on a beige background. Then, to make it better, they started calling me every day after I canceled my subscription. I was going to recommend them to all my friends and family, but instead I did the opposite -- I told everyone to avoid them and only mentioned the negative aspects of their service.
- rybosome 10y agoThat was my experience as well. I wanted to cancel because the interface for pausing deliveries was so painful to use that my wife and I often failed or forgot to pause weeks which were too busy to receive a delivery, thus wasting large amounts of money. After cancelling they hounded me with phone calls for weeks. We have since signed up for a competing service (Green Chef), and I have no interest in going back.
- hanley 10y agoThe Green Chef cancellation isn't easy either. You have to email them and request a cancellation link. FWIW, I got terrible food poisoning from one of Green Chef's meals. Always make sure the food is still cold when you receive it, I thought it was "cold enough" but I was wrong.
- maxxxxx 10y agoAOL was notorious for almost being impossible to cancel. I remember when I had Netflix for a while and decided to cancel it was really easy to do so. Although I canceled that alone gave me a positive impression of Netflix.
- Bartweiss 10y agoNetflix has always been classy about that - canceling is genuinely easy, and I believe you can cancel rollover on your free trial as soon as you get it. After you leave, it's like one email and then a followup with another free trial 6-12 months later. I guess selling an actually-good product with few competitors has its advantages.
- amelius 10y ago> Though perhaps the worst class of dark pattern is forced continuity, the common practice of collecting credit card details for a free trial and then automatically billing users for a paid service without an adequate reminder. The fact that this is even possible makes me feel like I'm in the middle ages.
- ethanbond 10y agoCheck out privacy.com! Easy burner CC numbers.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoOld idea. There's banks and cc companies that currently and previously have offered this. It never caught on because there's not a market for it.
- ethanbond 10y agoThere's at least a market of one, the person to whom I replied. Thanks for the snark though. And none of my banks offer this that I know of? If they do, the UX certainly isn't anything like this.
- mikeash 10y agoI don't think it's snark, it's just a factual statement that this isn't new. They were pretty common about ten years ago, but I haven't seen any recently. I used to use them a lot. My favorite feature was that you not only got a one-time number, but you could set a limit for it so you couldn't be overcharged. Great for ordering stuff from shady web sites. Well, it was my favorite feature until I did that with a shady web site and got overcharged. I called my bank to ask WTF, and they said they automatically padded the limit by 10% because people are idiots and forget to account for shipping charges and such. I did get my money back after fighting with the scammers for a while. Threatening them with a chargeback tends to bring them to their senses.
- 10y ago
- CM30 10y agoIf you're in the UK, ordering a pizza from a chain gives you forms with a ton of these patterns. Like the incredibly misleading 'tick the boxes below if you don't want to receive an email/text message with future promotions' thing. Or the awkward auto coupon set up, which seems like it was designed to minimise the amount of money people were saving through codes. It's as if they realised "hang on, lots of people are using 30-40% off codes" so stuck a cheap 5% off one in my default. The user then has to deliberately remove the auto applied one to get the better offer, which is something many people won't bother to do. Or maybe I'm just overly suspicious, who knows. Either way, they make the sites rather awkward to use.
- unfortunateface 10y agoIf you're talking about the one starting with a D and ending in ominos - Put all fake data in except for address and pay cash on delivery. In my experience even thisisafakeemail@example.com and 00000 555 555 for phone number works a treat.
- Grue3 10y agoHere's my most recent dark pattern fail. I tried to use Uber for the first time yesterday (in Moscow). The car wouldn't come for way too long, so I clicked cancel and thought that was it. I even selected a reason for cancelling. As I was walking home, a driver called me saying that he had arrived. I said that I had cancelled the trip a long time ago. Then the app showed that my trip cost 0 and asked to rate the driver, which I did. When I came home, I discovered that they sneakily took money for that trip! I complained to the support and they said it's working as intended, but they refunded me... in bonus points that can only be used to pay for Uber, which I never intended to use again after this "experience".
- otterley 10y agoWrite them back and tell them you don't want credits, and they'll refund your money.
- nommm-nommm 10y agoIts a dark pattern that you have to ask specifically to get your money back in the form of currency and not credit. I was actually really surprised about this too when I had to get a trip refund from Uber.
- partiallypro 10y agoStamps.com is so scammy. You sign up for a free trial, then get enrolled without asking you into their payment plan. Then when you go to cancel, you can't. You have to call. But guess what? It has weird hours. When you finally do call during their hours it's a machine that you're talking to, not a person. Ok, so you have hours of when I can cancel...clearly not because you have shift hours, since I'm talking to a machine. So why do you have specified hours? Stamps.com billed me for 8 months before I noticed they were billing me. I only noticed it because I was doing my taxes. The billing size was just small enough to fly under my radar, but just big enough to hurt a bit. I feel that chose that pricing for that reason. Anyhow, I saw they were in this story, so I felt I would expand upon their "dark patterns."
- mikeash 10y agoI always assume that any "free trial" where they have my payment information is going to automatically roll over into a paid subscription, and avoid the whole thing unless I already want to pay for the service.
- ipsin 10y agoThis is kind of like "overdraft protection" used to be before they cracked down on it (somewhat). If you're savvy or have had it happen before, you know to avoid it, but otherwise it's a financial landmine ("profit center") waiting to be stepped on.
- Bartweiss 10y agoI have yet to work out whether "limited hours for an automated system" is a dark pattern, or sheer stupidity. The most horrifying variant I've seen recently was a government website that kept 9am-5pm hours. No human interaction or real-time events anywhere, but logins were locked after business hours. I'm guessing they didn't want to arrange special downtime periods for changes, and the only alternative they could think of was 16 hours/day of scheduled downtime. It's a bad day when registered mail would be easier than using the automated system.
- 10y ago
- chimprich 10y agoOne pattern I've seen recently that's been increasingly prevalent (but I haven't seen discussed anywhere) is of a form where a site gives you two options in a dialog box along the lines of: Would you like to sign up to our newsletter? o [[[ OK!! ]]] o No I'm an idiot and I don't want to save money or hear about the latest job offers that may change my life (Exaggerated slightly.) I'm not sure this if this technically counts as a dark pattern as it's fairly transparent but I find it is very annoying because it is an attempt to force a user to state an opinion they probably don't hold if they don't want to sign up for whatever service. I assume it does work or it wouldn't spread so widely but exploiting people's reluctance to criticise themselves seems quite unpleasant: I imagine this affects people with the weakest self-esteem the most.
- prplhaz4 10y agoFrom a previous HN discussion...IMO, obnoxious and genius. http://confirmshaming.tumblr.com/ http://confirmshaming.tumblr.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11855787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11855787
- Bartweiss 10y agoI'd be more willing to call it genius if it weren't so popular with sites that can't deliver. Forcing people to click "I don't want to get rich" when your site is pushing crappy stock tips just seems like a way to make users hate you.
- Bartweiss 10y agoI would argue that it's a dark pattern if that's the only way past the form. A lot of sites using that technique also let you click an X button or click the darkened non-form area to continue. If that's supported, I always choose it as a tiny protest (in hopes that someone actually profiles how click-outs are happening). If you make users click something obnoxious and self-deprecating to continue, then I'd certainly call that a dark pattern. It's like an incredibly mild version of the cult tactic where you shame people for skepticism.
- 10y ago
- gilgongo 10y agoHow does Harry Brignull get his dark patterns site covered so regularly? About once a year for the past decade, somebody does an article about it. Weird. Anyway. I'm a designer and my work has even featured on his site (after he did some freelancing with us - cheeky begger). His implication that people like me sit around trying to making life harder for customers is complete bollocks. We don't. Businesses just don't. It's bad business and nobody would willing do it. Usually (and I grant their might be a tiny number of exceptions) they have to do things crappily because of constraints beyond their control. It may seem malicious to the likes of a freelance design-and-run merchant like Brignull, but it's not. It can also just be clueless visual designers wanting to make things pretty at the expense of being usable. But mostly it's just hidden constraints. But hey who cares. It's good rant material.
- Bartweiss 10y agoI did notice that the most common 'trick question' is a setup where "accept our emails" and "accept third-party emails" have opposite checkbox behavior, and it's the same behavior system in every example. My first thought was that it's probably a quirk in some shared service/template, or else regulatory weirdness. Hanlon's Razor and all that. But the claim that no one is intentionally annoying/scamming customers is a bit of a joke. Good businesses don't, and mistakes happen, but a lot of the entries on that site are obviously, consistently screwing their customers (RyanAir, anyone?) There are, in fact, entire businesses that exist to screw unsuspecting customers with rollover billing, data sales, and opt-outs. Among other things, if you're extracting value from customers once each and they don't know your company name, there isn't any consequence to mistreating them. Broadly, I see three things on that site. There are failures of design and constraint, but there are also dark patterns (where you're basically sincere, but manipulating people with things like opt-outs), and a fair amount of straight-up abuse (where you have victims instead of customers).
- gilgongo 10y agoA very small number of people may intentionally sit down to design systems that purposefully trick users into doing things they don't want to do. However, to lump that in as he does with a load of other things that are basically not being done from choice is silly. Yes, they are not 100% good things, but they are not actively malicious either. Intent. Culpability..
- Animats 10y agoThis offers an opportunity - a browser plug-in that brings up a warning whenever a known page with a dark pattern is accessed. That would be a useful feature to add to an ad-blocker. I've been thinking of writing a simple add-on just to get rid of that annoying "Get to Google Faster" box Google puts on every search result if Google isn't your default search engine. (Google is my default search engine, but because I have their tracking blocked, their web site doesn't know this.) Companies that do this sort of crap may not win much by it in the long run. One of the reasons for Amazon's success is easy order cancellation. That's what makes one-click ordering work. Their innovation was not that you can order with one click; it's that you can easily undo a one-click order. That makes it a safe feature for consumers. Most businesses still don't get this.
- jimrandomh 10y agoPeople should use the credit card dispute process more often. If a company has made it unreasonably difficult to cancel, or charged money that you didn't actually agree to pay (because they hid the notice too well), that's exactly what chargebacks are for.
- bluehawk 10y agoAnd the best part is that if enough people issue chargebacks, the credit card companies might threaten to stop doing business with them.
- deejbee 10y agoI tried that with a so called credit checking agency in the UK called "Credit Expert". These [scumbags] deserve a Dark Pattern gold star. To see your credit score you have to sign up with a credit card for a subscription. They know full well that everyone wants to just make sure that their credit score is ok, not be charged a monthly rate. They tell you it will cost X a month so you try to cancel within the given time. You have to call a phone number- can't do it online. That's also deliberate. You have to wait x minutes on the phone until you get to their cancellations department. I tell them I want to cancel. They say I 'signed up' and cancelled a year before so they are going to charge me the first month anyway. I am forced to accept and I call my bank a perform a chargeback. 2 months later the chargeback is reversed and I'm charged the full amount because the bank apparently investigated and deemed it a valid transaction.
- hobaak 10y agoI can chip in my experience for hour of code event. I volunteered to help run some sessions. Most of the things that we did was to give a bunch of website out of Hour of Code website. We made sure that the usage of coding exercise doesn't have to make the users register. Alas, in spite of instructions, many students and parents still were not able to skip the page asking for registration. Of course, some sites were more deliberate to place registration as if without it, nothing is going to happen. They say it is growth tactic. I say it is abusive one.
- thereact 10y agoSome good examples of intentionally misleading web design patterns here. As a counter, for those looking to create GOOD UI and UX or want to try and avoid unintentionally bad designs, I wholeheartedly recommend this video on UI tenets and traps: https://vimeo.com/168472466 https://vimeo.com/168472466
- ccvannorman 10y agoIs there such a thing as Yelp for websites where they are scored for their UX with DarkPattern being a scored attribute? I would love to check a new website against this list, and I would also spend my expensive time to add to this list to report dark pattern websites as they upset me enough to take action.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- greggman 10y agoNot sure if this is a dark pattern but on Airbnb the "report listing" link disappears the moment you scroll. Searching for it I couldn't find it.
- angry-hacker 10y agoI feel like arstech way of splitting an article to two pages is also a dark pattern. Or very annoying at best.
- JadeNB 10y agoI love Siracusa's Mac OS reviews, but it was a pain to try to queue one of those up for offline reading (26 pages or more!).