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Dark Patterns – User Interfaces Designed to Trick People [video]

639 points by alexpoulsen 10y ago

shostack 10y ago
While I'm familiar with the site already, I'd love to have an RSS feed of newly added submissions. Unfortunately, when I click on Recently Added I get a list with pattern definition links that all 404, and no link to the actual submission.
- eroiusghs 10y ago
  That and a api where you could `GET darkpatterns.org/patterns/www.linkedin.com` and get a list. Would be great for building a nice browser plugin with.
  - shostack 10y ago
    That would be amazing. An educational plugin that could pop up notifications at relevant times to inform and warn users of known dark patterns would be very powerful.
serg_chernata 10y ago
There's no search but I'm curious if LinkedIn is included. I never took screenshots, unfortunately, but I feel like they've had close to 5 in my own experience alone.
- redwards510 10y ago
  I was going to say, you could read this site, or you could just go to LinkedIn. It's an case study in obnoxious dark patterns.
  - BatFastard 10y ago
    But you learn more this way, linked in is just frustrating! A company that tries to be clear on everything is Google, but I still find they morph so rapidly that their documentation is often 2 or 3 generations behind.
- bduerst 10y ago
  LinkedIn is one of the most common examples when talking about dark patterns, their most famous being the number of ways they tried to get you to invite your gmail contacts.
  - illumin8 10y ago
    Airbnb also wants access to your entire Google contacts or Facebook friends list if you want to use the mobile app. Let's just say that I refuse to use their mobile app and only use the desktop/browser version for this reason. You want permission to access my entire contacts/social network? No thanks.
    - slig 10y ago
      > You want permission to access my entire contacts/social network? No thanks. Too bad dozens of your contacts did not care about it and they have your data anyway.
  - TallGuyShort 10y ago
    I'm just realizing why the manager of the local Grease Monkey once endorsed me for "parallel algorithms".
  - gnicholas 10y ago
    Just reinstalled Skype and can see that they're trying to get access to my contacts also. They tell you to set up access so you can use the app. First up is microphone, and you click allow. Second is camera, and you click allow. Third is contacts, and you click—wait a minute, why do you need this? Disallow. Don't know what they would do if they got my contacts (hopefully not spam them like LinkedIn), and don't intend to find out.
    - CPLX 10y ago
      Well considering that Skype is mainly a way to, you know, contact people it doesn't seem actually insane to consider it.
- rajathagasthya 10y ago
  Previous discussion on LinkedIn dark patterns: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11063178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11063178 And the linked article to it: https://medium.com/@danrschlosser/linkedin-dark-patterns-3ae726fe1462#.rvcsaqbgm https://medium.com/@danrschlosser/linkedin-dark-patterns-3ae...
  - serg_chernata 10y ago
    I've seen those as an HN lurker. I just like the idea of a central repository like this one.
- sethbannon 10y ago
  Here's the one of the most egregious examples of LinkedIn's dark UX. The transition from "I'm accepting incoming invites" to "I'm inviting people to connect or join LinkedIn" is intentionally subtle: https://goo.gl/photos/ncnTiMWeSBJfg3rZ6 https://goo.gl/photos/ncnTiMWeSBJfg3rZ6
  - Animats 10y ago
    That link itself is a dark pattern. It tries to get you to sign into Google; you can't see the photos otherwise.
    - jakub_g 10y ago
      works fine for me in incognito tab
    - micaeked 10y ago
      Not sure what you're seeing. I opened the link in an incognito window (therefore, no google signin), and everything works fine without signing in: http://i.imgur.com/ZKhACZM.png http://i.imgur.com/ZKhACZM.png Also tried a different browser with a clean slate, no issues. Maybe the link was edited?
    - notatoad 10y ago
      If it were truly the case that you couldn't see it without signing in, that would not be a dark pattern - there's nothing misleading about that, it's just a policy you don't like. using the buzzword of the moment to criticize something you don't like, without considering whether it really applies, is how phrases lose all their meaning. (of course, that's not true here and you don't have to sign in)
      - a3_nm 10y ago
        The distinction is subtle, because there is a common dark pattern where websites try to trick you into creating an account to access public content, even though you don't actually need to. I'm thinking of Dropbox, which does this when you try to access a link that someone shared with you by email https://a3nm.net/share/2016-12-07_548165.png https://a3nm.net/share/2016-12-07_548165.png This is a dark pattern because it's trying to make me believe that I should create an account when obviously I just want to get the file that my friend sent me. The link to download the file directly is at the bottom of the message.
aamederen 10y ago
This kind of "hall of shame" websites are interesting to me. However, most of the regular users do not know nor care about this stuff. Well, in a semi-ideal world, there would be a comprehensive "hall of shame" database containing the information about the tricks, problems, dark patterns, etc. for all websites. Then, some helper apps or browser extensions could warn us about these issues while a regular user is browsing. One of the problems with this idea is that it gives a huge authority to the owner of that database and there would be lots of questions about its neutrality.
- Cafey 10y ago
  In an ideal world we could detect those patterns programmatically but as you hinted, there is the question of "when is it considered a dark pattern and when is it only clever marketing?".
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    The answer is actually clear - it's always "dark pattern" from the POV of the user, and it's always "clever marketing" from the POV of the business applying it. Each side draws the line so far in the direction of the other that there isn't any easy compromise.
- xster 10y ago
  One concrete thing I think can be done right now is to make a Chrome extension that audits the current website on the number of dark patterns and visibly surfaces a score for the website so people can flee from them like the plague/websites-with-the-broken-ssl-padlocks. Vote with our wallet.
BatFastard 10y ago
Spirit airlines is a user of dark patterns. But its almost like a game on their site trying to avoid all of the up-sells! I may stay away from LA Fitness just because of this article.
- mrgreenfur 10y ago
  The fun part of spirit is that it doesn't end on the site, you have to dodge the dark patterns on the flight too!
  - dawnerd 10y ago
    At least they're pretty honest with it. Every time I walk by their counter at the airport I laugh at the sign because it's like, no frills but you'll pay for everything! In a way I kind of like that model - just not on an airplane.
    - mrgreenfur 10y ago
      I kind of disagree, I want it to be that way in theory, but in reality it is rather predatory. A no frills flight for low budget where you pay for everything (and debatably more than an equal seat on another airline) and then they pressure-cook the passengers for a high interest credit card. Their pitch went on forever, way way longer than the usual "signup and get extra miles". I watched a bunch of folks sign up on the flight and it made me feel really badly; the same way that check-cashing places scam their, mostly not-affulent, customers. These folks are even more vulnerable to these kinds of dark-patterns.
- exolymph 10y ago
  Spirit Airlines is an interesting case, though, because like someone else said, they're very up-front about this. Is it still a dark pattern if the company admits it and essentially warns the user?
  - eric_h 10y ago
    The unmissable warnings don't really happen until you get to the terminal though. Admittedly, I have not used spirit for some time. But the signs that say "we don't really want you to have to pay $100 for the carryon you forgot to pay for on the website, but you didn't pay for it, so tough shit" don't seem terribly genuine. I will never fly spirit again, though. They just straight up cancelled a flight of mine an hour and a half before the flight for literally no reason, I got no notification via email/text or phone until I went to the airport to check my baggage (another thing I hate doing, but I was traveling for a pool tournament and you can't carry pool cues on a plane...). I had to book a last minute flight with another airline and my total airfare ended up being almost double what I paid for spirit.
Theodores 10y ago
> they are not mistakes, they are carefully crafted with a solid understanding of human psychology, and they do not have the user’s interests in mind I dispute this. I work with someone who is a marketing person and very much drawn to dark pattern rubbish. Most recent incident is a good example - a sales promotion where something is added to the cart if the customer buys a certain product. I pointed out that this was a 'dark pattern' and made sure my boss knew that such an idea is illegal in the E.U. For me the illegality is not something that scares me, I doubt I will go to jail for writing the code, however, using a 'dark pattern' is a problem for me. I like to think that I am a customer focused person, my marketing clown certainly is not. In fact he cares not one iota about any of the customers, his world view is selfish. So, I point out the illegal aspect, next thing is that he wants the items given away. I don't see how that makes our products look good and I have no idea how to make money out of making a product and then shipping it to them for free. So again I am not sold on the priority of the project. Returning to the 'selfish' aspect, my marketing clown does not code or appreciate the effort involved in making the auto-add work. I can do the code for that and think I could get the MVP of it done in a day, with some testing after that. Then there is the thinking through of the unintended consequences - I imagine that we would get plenty of customer service emails if there was a problem with the offer. The UX is also not thought out. I am sure that I could spend all day getting the message to the customer sorted on the website and emails, but if I didn't do that then the whole thing would certainly be 'dark pattern'. There is nothing clever about my selfish marketing clown and his naive ways. However, he gets a performance bonus based on 'customer acquisition' metrics that the rest of us don't get. He has an interest to not care about anything other than his Google Analytics nonsense, customers, rest of the team, the company making money matters not. Although anecdotal, this is how 'dark patterns' happen - marketing clowns, their selfish ways, their inability to understand the problem space (because they don't do code or customers) and workplace bullying make these things persist.
- JadeNB 10y ago
  Your experience seems to support, not refute, the idea that these are conscious decisions (albeit at a marketing, rather than coding, level, which I think is probably what the original meant) rather than inadvertent bugs.
AdmiralAsshat 10y ago
Previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12180072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12180072
cs702 10y ago
Great video and great website. My only nitpick: the author wants the industry to agree on a "code of ethics." Unfortunately, such exhortations strike me as naive. They are unlikely to work, because the truly bad actors will continue to use dark patterns regardless, putting pressure on all other actors to follow suit. The key challenge is not in getting the good actors to do the right thing, but in preventing the bad actors from doing the wrong thing. Meanwhile, even sophisticated consumers like HN members pay a cognitive or financial cost to deal with dark patterns every day, which are prevalent throughout the web. Everyone I know is sick and tired of this crap. The only viable solution I can think of is regulation in the form of a consumer-protection agency, working with the industry, that can fine bad actors up the wazoo. Does anyone here have a better suggestion?
- soared 10y ago
  I agree and that goal sounds similar to the goal of Kill Analytics [1]. "The industry" doesn't even exist as an entity. Gov regulation seems like the only viable way to fix it. But on the other hand, Google AdSense has done a lot to improve advertising online. Popups and bad ads used to be waaay worse than they are now (not that they are okay now). So maybe we do just need a few big players to step up and change things. [1] https://hello-kill.github.io/ https://hello-kill.github.io/
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > So maybe we do just need a few big players to step up and change things. The question again is, how to make those big players do something that will lose them money.
    - soared 10y ago
      Do it in a way that earns them more money. Sounds difficult but that is what adsense did. If legit ux practices earn more, companies will use them. Potential scenario: someone makes a browser plugin that blocks dark patterns as if they were ads, so companies who use them don't see any traction with them. Or 50 years out when everyone is computer literate, users are aware of dark patterns and punish companies who use them by not buying their products.
deleted 10y ago
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module0000 10y ago
There is no "works for everyone" method to stop this. You can vote with your wallet, and support vendors that act ethically, or act in whatever way you are OK with. When this type of UI disappears from the internet, then you will know that the majority of consumers agree with your viewpoint. Until then, people keep buying those insurance upgrades, and not caring(if they cared, we wouldn't be in this situation). If it all seems glib, that's because it is glib. People are taking advantage of other people, just below the threshold where those victims care enough to do something about it. This is the world we live in. I'm not sure how to end this on a positive note.
- emodendroket 10y ago
  > When this type of UI disappears from the internet, then you will know that the majority of consumers agree with your viewpoint. Until then, people keep buying those insurance upgrades, and not caring(if they cared, we wouldn't be in this situation). In a situation where you are legally compelled to buy insurance and essentially all providers do this that's completely wrong.
  - module0000 10y ago
    Huh? What type of insurance are you talking about? I'm talking about airline flight insurance, like in the article.
    - emodendroket 10y ago
      OK, so I got that wrong. The airline industry is hardly an example of robust competition either.
covercash 10y ago
Would gofundme's entire brand and business model be considered a dark pattern? They go out of their way to make it feel like a nonprofit, promote campaigns for issues that already have actual nonprofit status/direct donation pages, and do their best to hide their fees (which, last I checked, were actually higher for legitimate nonprofits than for regular campaigns).
- woogiewonka 10y ago
  All of the fundraising platforms do this. They charge a fee and some go as far as "recommending" a donation amount to the platform.
  - covercash 10y ago
    I'd like to see them make their platform fees clear at check out instead of hiding them in a FAQ or About Us page.
johansch 10y ago
My pet peeve: If you add a credit card to the Uber app there is no way to remove it without replacing it with another valid payment method. If you google solutions to this you get third party recommendations to plead with their customer service to have it removed. Seriously? This customer-hostile approach really needs to be killed.
- Animats 10y ago
  Use 1111 2222 3333 4444, the credit card test number. This is valid at the check digit level, but known to all banks as a test number to be rejected.
  - johansch 10y ago
    Thanks for the tip, that may be useful in the future! I ended up using my bank's "virtual credit card" service to create a virtual CC with a balance of 1 SEK to get rid of my Uber account. Anyway, I think this is shameful of them. I would be ashamed of this practice if I worked for them. There is no excuse. You can't blindly blame it on A/B evaluations and what ended up making the company the most money. It's simply unethical.
    - ryandrake 10y ago
      > I would be ashamed of this practice if I worked for them. There's no shame because there are no consequences. "Oh, you were the guy at Company X that wrote that annoying Dark Pattern Y, huh? Can you walk me through the ethics of that?" - Said no interviewer ever.
      - johansch 10y ago
        I was just discussing this with a former co-worker. [Here in Europe.] Also: I'm pretty certain that if you had a history of using dark patterns.. that would be seen as basically fraudulent behavior here. Investors would stay far away. We both shared our distaste for a typical american way of accomplishing personal financial success - fake it til you make it, etc etc. Maybe this is a part of what sets SV apart from Europe - and why SV keeps winning :). Fraud works.
cle 10y ago
One pattern that I consider "dark", but don't see in this list, is using loaded options on a dialog box. One that I often see in apps is like: Rate our app! <OK> <Not Yet> Those really get under my skin because the developer is clearly trying to play a psychological trick on me, but it's so brazen and obvious that it just pisses me off. And bigger companies do it too (e.g. Google).
- Waterluvian 10y ago
  Yeah I hate that. Beyond what you said, it also suggests to me, "Not Yet must mean that it will annoy me again and again." Even if that's not true, I may never visit the page again if my perception is that it's gearing up to annoy me. I will often see: OK, NOT YET, DON'T SHOW AGAIN. Which I think is fine.
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    Yeah, and I don't expect that anyone tricked into / accidentally clicking "rate now" is going to leave anything but a zero-star review complaining about how the app tries to trick them and has annoying nag screens. I've written a few of those myself, then chuckled to myself since the developer was so short-sighted. If more people did that, they'd probably lay off with the "rate my app" pop-ups. If I REALLY love an app, I'll go find the developer on twitter and thank them, and write some nice reviews.
- mvid 10y ago
  Tinder is the worst I have seen, they require you to pick between 1-5 stars to get the dialog to go away at all. Guess who always gets one star.
  - jkaptur 10y ago
    Wait, if they're requiring you to pick 1-5 stars to get the dialog to go away, it must be a custom dialog built by them, right? I bet they take your one star and just hide the dialog, but take people who rate it as 5 stars to the "real" app store rating page.
Animats 10y ago
After the first time this appeared on HN, I quit LinkedIn and deleted my profile. They still sent me "xxx wants to connect with you". I'm really getting tired of turning down Amazon Prime on Amazon. I use Amazon less because of this. There are about three extra pages of Amazon Prime ads to click through for every purchase.
- gnicholas 10y ago
  Somewhat related—Amazon Prime Video now shows ads at the beginning of videos. This wasn't part of the deal when we signed up, and it's pretty deceptive to just start doing this to customers. I didn't see it in the agreement (actually went back and looked for something that would cover ads), and it's not clear what limits, if any, they think there are. That is, could they just decide to show as many ads as Hulu and say "yeah, we said you could have access to this catalog. we didn't say it would be ad-free".
  - eric_h 10y ago
    I opted for the ad-free Hulu subscription, and that, for the most part, is great. They do have a few programs on there that are not eligible, but then they say up front "due to streaming rights, we have to show you ads, but it's just one before and one after". That, at least is better than the ad-laden Hulu before they offered that option, where any prolonged bout of streaming would show you the same ad over and over and over.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    Video services need to be disrupted in a way that sticks (not like Amazon adding ads after selling everyone on an ad-free service). The only service I use with any regularity now is Netflix since it has no ads, but even they sometimes have problems with finding the show you actually want to watch. I was on vacation recently and the room had DirecTV. I tried searching for a program and all the search results were for channels not subscribed. Several of the channels in the guide list were presented as if subscribed, but then when a show would start, would prompt to charge $6 to continue watching and the show would stop after a few minutes. Finally, I found a channel that was subscribed and not PPV, and when an ad came on 30 seconds later, I tried to turn off the DirecTV box. Here's the DirecTV dark pattern: there was a "Please Wait..." message on the screen while the ad played instead of just turning off the output! How can anybody actually be making money from TV ads when they are so obnoxious? I'm pretty sick of corporations double-dipping in every industry. Video services charge you for watching, and then sell you to advertisers. Supermarkets charge you for products, and then sell you to manufacturers. ISPs charge you for bandwidth, and then try force video services to pay as well. Where's the exit to this hall of mirrors?
EduardoBautista 10y ago
This definitely reminds me of the process of deactivating your Facebook account. You really have to read what's on the screen in order to choose the right options.
gene-h 10y ago
I am surprised there is nothing about comcast on there.
spennant 10y ago
Has anyone tried to ignore iOS updates recently?
- ksk 10y ago
  Those popups got so annoying that I had to block Apple's update servers. No popups ever since..
- nodesocket 10y ago
  These are product updates and often times contain security and stability fixes, nobody is trying to trick you here. Apple is proactively trying to keep their users up to date, I see no problems with this.
  - uabstraction 10y ago
    This is just PR speak to cover for the false dichotomy that you must accept new features (and regressively slower OS upgrades) to receive security updates - or be vulnerable. In reality, Apple could easily back-port security fixes. They are abusing security to force undesired changes to functionality. Edit: Take a look at how any Stable/LTS Linux disto handles this. If a bunch of hackers can do it on such a diverse software stack, surely the company with the largest cash reserves in the world can figure out how to do it on a software/hardware stack they control completely.
  - spennant 10y ago
    I'm not talking about minor releases here... Avoiding an upgrade to a major release (iOS 10) triggers an unavoidable antipattern: Every 24 hours iOS asks if you want to upgrade now or remind you later... but that's not the worst part... At times it will show what looks like the lock screen but if you enter your passcode the OS will auto-upgrade the next time you are plugged into power and on WiFi. If you aren't paying attention, you think you are simply unlocking your phone instead of authorizing the upgrade. I have no problem patch releases, but I find that major releases over time eventually bogs down older hardware.
- eroiusghs 10y ago
chrisdone 10y ago
Buying tickets with RyanAir is stressful due to these kind of practices. They're less aggressive than in the past, when I wouldn't even continue because I just had zero trust in the company, but they're still sly. A sneaky one I saw recently is something like: [ ] Subscribe to newsletter about our services by unchecking this box. (It doesn't matter whether the box is initially checked or not, the user will be tricked into the desired behavior.) I don't remember the exact phrasing, and it was much more shrewd than my own, but it relied on a boolean flipping of the value of the checkbox towards the end of the field label. Any user seeding the start of the sentence will leave it in its current state.
- angry-hacker 10y ago
  Tell me about it. A few years ago RyanAir's website was much worse. It's actually usable now! I was somehow able to buy a freaking bag with my ticket. I'm surprised they didn't somehow trick me to buy their lottery too. And I'm tech savvy...
- luckyt 10y ago
  Why bother with a checkbox at all at this point? Can't they send everyone the newsletter and not bother with a checkbox?
  - nommm-nommm 10y ago
    Probably their way of getting around government regulations.
angry-hacker 10y ago
My question is how well these dark patterns work? People who have or must have implemented them, do you have any data? For an example join newsletter pop ups you get on websites. I assume everyone pisses off and closes them, or do they?
- Nadya 10y ago
  I've had the opportunity to speak to quite a few people who use the modal popups for newsletters and the like. They do get used. A lot more than you might imagine - and often enough times to warrant pissing off some small portion of your users. This may vary on the audience and my anecdata is where N = 5~ devs.
- tsunamifury 10y ago
  The problem is that they do work within the defintion that the growth hackers are working with. They do not measure the people it drives away and never return. Think of it as similar to the mall kiosk people -- they dont care if you are offended, you probably would never have bought their product anyways. Also similar to spammers who now send emails that are so stupid that you think no one would ever click them -- except the small number of people who are so naive that they do -- which is what they are trying to select for. Which points to age old problem of any public network: spam.
- woogiewonka 10y ago
  I worked for a large e-commerce store. We implemented pop-up email newsletter opt in and saw 4x growth in our mailing list. Pop-ups work, they suck from UX perspective but work nevertheless.
gnicholas 10y ago
An oft-overlooked aspect of dark patterns is the impact on accessibility. Ever received a spam email, hunted for the unsubscribe link, and found it in light grey, against a white background? Imagine how much worse that is for someone with low vision. Ditto for pop-up ads with a tiny grey X in the corner. Many of the dark patterns described in the video rely on hiding/obfuscating opt-outs and these have an even bigger impact on people with visual/processing disabilities.
whoisjuan 10y ago
I wrote an article about this. Basically explaining the difference between designed inconveniences and deceptive patterns: https://medium.com/art-marketing/designed-inconveniences-ux-patterns-that-cant-be-taught-998eae9c4546#.shen3k6ck https://medium.com/art-marketing/designed-inconveniences-ux-...
mangeletti 10y ago
Another dark pattern (used to gain more positive ratings in apps) is: Do you love our app? Yes No | | | | ______ ______ Opens Does AppStore Nothing It's a bit like saying, "Do you love candidate X?", and then giving instructions for voting only to those who answer "yes".
- st3v3r 10y ago
  At the same time, if someone has indicated that they want to give my app a bad review, am I obligated to take them to the review point so they can do it?
  - mangeletti 10y ago
    I don't think that any of these dark patterns represent the breaking of obligations by any party. Dark patterns don't represent anything truly sinister, and in most cases they are perfectly legal. They are just bad UX because they're dishonest about their intent.
zpallin 10y ago
This presentation is great. I think a good next step on the path toward ending unethical UX could be in creating an international ethics review board for it. I know it sounds silly, but this is how a lot of decisions are agreed upon by many large organizations, and help encourage involvement and following the rules. See W3, ICANN, ESRB, IETF, etc. The "BUXE", or Board for User eXperience Ethics (just my name idea) could be founded by a group of consenting UX designers, companies, and organizations. Together they would vote on and establish UX design principles that would be up for review every year or so. The BUXE will accept fees for reviewing a website's adherence to their ethics and would give ratings to them based on how well they follow the guidelines. The resulting site can then publish their BUXE rating on their site. Individual developers could be given honor status if they are particularly vocal or involved in ensuring the development of ethical UX that could be accolades for them to brag about (something important to developers). It's a good resume booster, anyway. Plenty of other ideas.
- woogiewonka 10y ago
  This is great, I'd be 100% behind this.
Hydraulix989 10y ago
I submitted quite a few of these.
jcomis 10y ago
How about this one in the new uber app: If you disable location services (which recently switched to either "always" or "never", no longer offering "only when open") you can't use your history or saved favorite places to set a location, you have to manually type it out. Couldn't believe they would be so shady just to get location services activated.
z3t4 10y ago
I think labor unions would be the best option. Put their employers into strike, DOS their website, and contact the press. No one will feel bad about the scammers.
nodesocket 10y ago
Pricing pages are another type of U/I that could be label black hat. Personally, I think the typical pricing "tricks" like anchoring, bundling, freemium are fine and part of running a business.
shostack 10y ago
Is there a category for grouping notifications such that spammy notifications are lumped in with other important ones you might want to receive? Google Photos is a big culprit unfortunately with their photo backup. They keep pinging a notification to get me to remove local versions that are backed up in the cloud. I don't want to do that. The only way to remove the notification seems to be disabling all app notifications. Worse, when you go into settings, they have a variety of settings that all take you into a deeper level of settings when you click them. Except "Free up device storage." Clicking that does not take you to a deeper level as expected (despite looking like a nav tree item), but instead actually does the one thing I didn't want to do, with no confirmation dialogue.
- antocv 10y ago
  Do you even actually have "important" notifications you might want to receive? Is any automated system more important than your focus? What I have is, disallow or delete the app or "service" as soon as I receive a "notification" from it, only my wife and family is allowed to light up the led on my phone.
deleted 10y ago
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BillinghamJ 10y ago
An awful lot of the content on this website shows naivety/lack of understanding of the website, and in a few cases, displays information which is simply untrue.
- uw_rob 10y ago
  Think you could be more specific ?
  - BillinghamJ 10y ago
    Yep. http://darkpatterns.org/maxcdn-com-may-2013/ http://darkpatterns.org/maxcdn-com-may-2013/ - the $10 arises because the option for including edge servers in Asia is selected http://darkpatterns.org/british-airways-distract-from-cheapest-option/ http://darkpatterns.org/british-airways-distract-from-cheape... - I'm pretty skeptical that this had any malicious intent. It is showing the cheapest option in the column. Often the customer will already know which class they want to fly in, so it helps them to be able to skim down a column looking for the cheapest option. http://darkpatterns.org/papa-johns-iphone-app-november-2011/ http://darkpatterns.org/papa-johns-iphone-app-november-2011/ - I think this is seriously reaching. Every single pizza chain (both online & in-store) work this way. They do a lot to point you in the direction of their offers page too. http://darkpatterns.org/directline-com-july-2010/ http://darkpatterns.org/directline-com-july-2010/ - Hilarious. If this website had any idea how much negative impact price comparison sites have had on car insurance in the UK, they'd be praising Direct Line for not lowering themselves to the tactics of all the other insurers (offering an incredibly unprofitable first year rate, then massively increasing pricing when you renew) I'm sure there are more - these are the most clear ones after skimming through about half of the categories.
    - SilkRoadie 10y ago
      I mostly agree with what you have pointed out. The one exception is the British Airways site. That page is very confusing. At best is awful UI. At worst it was created to trick the user into purchasing a more expensive ticket.
oferzelig 10y ago
I'm not sure why this appears here on HN and received so many votes. Despite being a good site, it has been last updated in 2013: http://darkpatterns.org/whats-new/ http://darkpatterns.org/whats-new/ I sent them 2 dark patterns in the past which they didn't put; in an email I received long time after inquiring about it one of the developers said they're under the pump and will get to it sometime. And they don't.
- CM30 10y ago
  Technically, it was last updated in November 2015 (at least if the date here is correct): http://darkpatterns.org/trick-questions/ http://darkpatterns.org/trick-questions/ Good luck figuring that out though, since the what's new page hasn't been working in pretty much forever and the only way to see if something has been changed is to check each category individually. And yeah, it doesn't update much. I remember sending in my own examples before, and those never got added either. Kind of wish there was a site about this with a more regular update schedule or something.
saberworks 10y ago
Does it count if there's no user interface? Amazon has my email address, I've been a customer since the late-nineties. They keep inventing new email lists and signing me up for them. Each time I get a new "newsletter" it says something like, "You got this message because you're subscribed to the 'Tablet News' newsletter." I click the unsubscribe link to remove myself from it. Along with the unsubscribe link there's a link to my subscriptions. When I go there, it only shows the ones I want (the specific authors I'm following). I want to unsubscribe not only from this latest list you just signed me up for, but also from all future lists you may want to sign me up for. I really don't want to get any unsolicited marketing email from you. Really. I don't want it. Please let me out. Also stop letting marketplace sellers email me begging for feedback after every marketplace item I accidentally order. I try my best to not order marketplace seller items anymore but when I accidentally do (or buy a gift for someone that is only offered this way) I always end up getting emails from these guys. Are you sharing my email address with them? Does unsubscribing or responding to them share my email address with them? I have no idea. There is never anything useful and it's impossible to unsubscribe from all past and future marketplace emails which is really annoying. Come on, amazon, I really want to love you and continue shopping there but it's getting to the point that I'd rather go to wal-mart! (ok not really)
- bottled_poe 10y ago
  Not just Amazon, I am constantly clicking through those unsubscribe links but just get auto-signed up for new lists. Fuck you Amazon and anyone else that does this. I'll buy your junk when and if I need to. Leave me alone and stop wasting my life.
  - 0x0 10y ago
    Report them at https://www.spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml https://www.spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml
    - Karunamon 10y ago
      Please don't. All you're doing is polluting the data at Spamcop and violating their terms anyways. https://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/125.html https://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/125.html Bulk email can be split into two categories: Opt-in and Opt-out. Opt-in is email that an individual requested or agreed to receive. Many legitimate mailers use opt-in methods for marketing. Individuals are responsible for reading and understanding a company's privacy policies and acceptable use policies (if applicable) before submitting an email address. If a privacy or acceptable use policy clearly states that signing up for the service results in receiving marketing or commercial email, then the individual has "opted-in" to receive email and that email is not spam. A company emailing you when you have given them your permission to email you, but about certain topics you decide you don't like is not spam.
campuscodi 10y ago
This is the 45th time I see this site in HN... How do people not know about it until now?
b1daly 10y ago
I've been pondering the recent trend in pop up ads where if you try and dismiss it by clicking the tiny, hard to find, checkbox, and you miss, it will cause it to move. This forces you to actually pay attention, to a degree, to the ad, rather than habitually dismiss it. These are usually found in ads, or notices like the New York Times puts up notifying you there are only so many free articles left. I think of this as a gray pattern usually, as it is designed to keep the source of revenue going to fund the sight you are currently reading. It's a surprisingly effective innovation.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  uBlock Origin. I don't allow any ads. I'll donate to a Pateron or buy your T-shirts or a book if I like your content, but fuck ads.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Some of us always hit back on those pages. No way am I going to read your ad. Try too hard like that, and I will leave the page rather than ever look at it to find the close button.
a_c 10y ago
Does darkpatterns.org support api query? There ought to be one available so that various tools can be built. For instance, a browser plugin to warn users upon visiting dark pattern websites
- artursapek 10y ago
  Take it further - introduce a "darkness rating" like Google's old pagerank value. I wish Google would punish websites for doing this stuff.
  - calesce 10y ago
    They started punishing those mobile web "install our native app" interstitials about a year ago, hope there's more stuff like that coming.
xbryanx 10y ago
Where do we draw the line between "dark patterns" and "smart design?" I feel like the Hacker News community could be advocating for a persuasive pricing page design one day and decrying its dark design pattern the next. The obviously evil patterns are easy to avoid, but it's difficult to distinguish between appropriately persuasive and inappropriately manipulative in the grey-middle.
Tempest1981 10y ago
Here is another unsubscribe dark pattern: http://imgur.com/a/lLZAE http://imgur.com/a/lLZAE * Do I check the item if I want to unsubscribe from it? * Or do I uncheck the items I don't wish to receive? 50-50 chance -- which I'm sure they love. Clicking "Update" gives no feedback either, just reloads the page.
- wingerlang 10y ago
  To me it looks like the checked ones are the ones to unsubscribe from.
  - kagamine 10y ago
    The button text should read "unsubscribe" in that case, not "update", and the header text "Subscriptions". It could be a lot clearer.
- kagamine 10y ago
  That was interesting. My reaction was "is this actually a dark pattern, or just designed by a complete idiot?" Because the user trying subscribe and the user trying to UNsubscribe both have a problem in understanding what is going on there. Somebody should get an award for that.
superacid 10y ago
Found this gem while looking through the comments on YT. How is this even legal? http://imgur.com/a/m66DA http://imgur.com/a/m66DA
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- eroiusghs 10y ago
  Thank you for sharing - now I know never to ever use G2A Shield.
  - MawNicker 10y ago
    Actionable.
mgalka 10y ago
That Ryanair example is outrageous, and not at all surprising
solaarphunk 10y ago
Quora does a ton of this in their email newsletters to try and reactivate you! Want to unsubscribe? Okay! We'll just make up a new "round up" newsletter and re-subscribe you. So desperate to stay alive I guess...
lectrice 10y ago
Isn't part of the problem that "conversion rates" and "engagement" now trump just about every other metric? Anyone know good ways to quantify annoyance rate and off-puttedness?
ozgung 10y ago
Maybe it's not an issue about the designers. Maybe the problem is that most marketing people are "black hat" by design.
Graham24 10y ago
and at the top of the list of Bait and Switch is "Microsoft: Windows 10 Upgrade". That's what got me, after the hundredth time it had appeared I clicked the X instead of . It the tactics of criminals.
api 10y ago
Is the use of a tech shift or form factor change as an opportunity to redefine the product so as to reduce customer freedom or introduce surveillance a dark pattern? I've thought of this with the mobile revolution. You could never have introduced total device lock down and ubiquitous telemetry so easily in the PC era. There would have been an outcry. But change the form factor...

639 points by alexpoulsen 10y ago

While I'm familiar with the site already, I'd love to have an RSS feed of newly added submissions. Unfortunately, when I click on Recently Added I get a list with pattern definition links that all 404, and no link to the actual submission.

eroiusghs 10y ago
That and a api where you could `GET darkpatterns.org/patterns/www.linkedin.com` and get a list. Would be great for building a nice browser plugin with.
- shostack 10y ago
  That would be amazing. An educational plugin that could pop up notifications at relevant times to inform and warn users of known dark patterns would be very powerful.

serg_chernata 10y ago

There's no search but I'm curious if LinkedIn is included. I never took screenshots, unfortunately, but I feel like they've had close to 5 in my own experience alone.

redwards510 10y ago
I was going to say, you could read this site, or you could just go to LinkedIn. It's an case study in obnoxious dark patterns.
- BatFastard 10y ago
  But you learn more this way, linked in is just frustrating! A company that tries to be clear on everything is Google, but I still find they morph so rapidly that their documentation is often 2 or 3 generations behind.
bduerst 10y ago
LinkedIn is one of the most common examples when talking about dark patterns, their most famous being the number of ways they tried to get you to invite your gmail contacts.
- illumin8 10y ago
  Airbnb also wants access to your entire Google contacts or Facebook friends list if you want to use the mobile app. Let's just say that I refuse to use their mobile app and only use the desktop/browser version for this reason. You want permission to access my entire contacts/social network? No thanks.
  - slig 10y ago
    > You want permission to access my entire contacts/social network? No thanks. Too bad dozens of your contacts did not care about it and they have your data anyway.
- TallGuyShort 10y ago
  I'm just realizing why the manager of the local Grease Monkey once endorsed me for "parallel algorithms".
- gnicholas 10y ago
  Just reinstalled Skype and can see that they're trying to get access to my contacts also. They tell you to set up access so you can use the app. First up is microphone, and you click allow. Second is camera, and you click allow. Third is contacts, and you click—wait a minute, why do you need this? Disallow. Don't know what they would do if they got my contacts (hopefully not spam them like LinkedIn), and don't intend to find out.
  - CPLX 10y ago
    Well considering that Skype is mainly a way to, you know, contact people it doesn't seem actually insane to consider it.
rajathagasthya 10y ago
Previous discussion on LinkedIn dark patterns: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11063178 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11063178 And the linked article to it: https://medium.com/@danrschlosser/linkedin-dark-patterns-3ae726fe1462#.rvcsaqbgm https://medium.com/@danrschlosser/linkedin-dark-patterns-3ae...
- serg_chernata 10y ago
  I've seen those as an HN lurker. I just like the idea of a central repository like this one.
sethbannon 10y ago
Here's the one of the most egregious examples of LinkedIn's dark UX. The transition from "I'm accepting incoming invites" to "I'm inviting people to connect or join LinkedIn" is intentionally subtle: https://goo.gl/photos/ncnTiMWeSBJfg3rZ6 https://goo.gl/photos/ncnTiMWeSBJfg3rZ6
- Animats 10y ago
  That link itself is a dark pattern. It tries to get you to sign into Google; you can't see the photos otherwise.
  - jakub_g 10y ago
    works fine for me in incognito tab
  - micaeked 10y ago
    Not sure what you're seeing. I opened the link in an incognito window (therefore, no google signin), and everything works fine without signing in: http://i.imgur.com/ZKhACZM.png http://i.imgur.com/ZKhACZM.png Also tried a different browser with a clean slate, no issues. Maybe the link was edited?
  - notatoad 10y ago
    If it were truly the case that you couldn't see it without signing in, that would not be a dark pattern - there's nothing misleading about that, it's just a policy you don't like. using the buzzword of the moment to criticize something you don't like, without considering whether it really applies, is how phrases lose all their meaning. (of course, that's not true here and you don't have to sign in)
    - a3_nm 10y ago
      The distinction is subtle, because there is a common dark pattern where websites try to trick you into creating an account to access public content, even though you don't actually need to. I'm thinking of Dropbox, which does this when you try to access a link that someone shared with you by email https://a3nm.net/share/2016-12-07_548165.png https://a3nm.net/share/2016-12-07_548165.png This is a dark pattern because it's trying to make me believe that I should create an account when obviously I just want to get the file that my friend sent me. The link to download the file directly is at the bottom of the message.

aamederen 10y ago

This kind of "hall of shame" websites are interesting to me. However, most of the regular users do not know nor care about this stuff. Well, in a semi-ideal world, there would be a comprehensive "hall of shame" database containing the information about the tricks, problems, dark patterns, etc. for all websites. Then, some helper apps or browser extensions could warn us about these issues while a regular user is browsing. One of the problems with this idea is that it gives a huge authority to the owner of that database and there would be lots of questions about its neutrality.

Cafey 10y ago
In an ideal world we could detect those patterns programmatically but as you hinted, there is the question of "when is it considered a dark pattern and when is it only clever marketing?".
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  The answer is actually clear - it's always "dark pattern" from the POV of the user, and it's always "clever marketing" from the POV of the business applying it. Each side draws the line so far in the direction of the other that there isn't any easy compromise.
xster 10y ago
One concrete thing I think can be done right now is to make a Chrome extension that audits the current website on the number of dark patterns and visibly surfaces a score for the website so people can flee from them like the plague/websites-with-the-broken-ssl-padlocks. Vote with our wallet.

BatFastard 10y ago

Spirit airlines is a user of dark patterns. But its almost like a game on their site trying to avoid all of the up-sells! I may stay away from LA Fitness just because of this article.

mrgreenfur 10y ago
The fun part of spirit is that it doesn't end on the site, you have to dodge the dark patterns on the flight too!
- dawnerd 10y ago
  At least they're pretty honest with it. Every time I walk by their counter at the airport I laugh at the sign because it's like, no frills but you'll pay for everything! In a way I kind of like that model - just not on an airplane.
  - mrgreenfur 10y ago
    I kind of disagree, I want it to be that way in theory, but in reality it is rather predatory. A no frills flight for low budget where you pay for everything (and debatably more than an equal seat on another airline) and then they pressure-cook the passengers for a high interest credit card. Their pitch went on forever, way way longer than the usual "signup and get extra miles". I watched a bunch of folks sign up on the flight and it made me feel really badly; the same way that check-cashing places scam their, mostly not-affulent, customers. These folks are even more vulnerable to these kinds of dark-patterns.
exolymph 10y ago
Spirit Airlines is an interesting case, though, because like someone else said, they're very up-front about this. Is it still a dark pattern if the company admits it and essentially warns the user?
- eric_h 10y ago
  The unmissable warnings don't really happen until you get to the terminal though. Admittedly, I have not used spirit for some time. But the signs that say "we don't really want you to have to pay $100 for the carryon you forgot to pay for on the website, but you didn't pay for it, so tough shit" don't seem terribly genuine. I will never fly spirit again, though. They just straight up cancelled a flight of mine an hour and a half before the flight for literally no reason, I got no notification via email/text or phone until I went to the airport to check my baggage (another thing I hate doing, but I was traveling for a pool tournament and you can't carry pool cues on a plane...). I had to book a last minute flight with another airline and my total airfare ended up being almost double what I paid for spirit.

Theodores 10y ago

> they are not mistakes, they are carefully crafted with a solid understanding of human psychology, and they do not have the user’s interests in mind I dispute this. I work with someone who is a marketing person and very much drawn to dark pattern rubbish. Most recent incident is a good example - a sales promotion where something is added to the cart if the customer buys a certain product. I pointed out that this was a 'dark pattern' and made sure my boss knew that such an idea is illegal in the E.U. For me the illegality is not something that scares me, I doubt I will go to jail for writing the code, however, using a 'dark pattern' is a problem for me. I like to think that I am a customer focused person, my marketing clown certainly is not. In fact he cares not one iota about any of the customers, his world view is selfish. So, I point out the illegal aspect, next thing is that he wants the items given away. I don't see how that makes our products look good and I have no idea how to make money out of making a product and then shipping it to them for free. So again I am not sold on the priority of the project. Returning to the 'selfish' aspect, my marketing clown does not code or appreciate the effort involved in making the auto-add work. I can do the code for that and think I could get the MVP of it done in a day, with some testing after that. Then there is the thinking through of the unintended consequences - I imagine that we would get plenty of customer service emails if there was a problem with the offer. The UX is also not thought out. I am sure that I could spend all day getting the message to the customer sorted on the website and emails, but if I didn't do that then the whole thing would certainly be 'dark pattern'. There is nothing clever about my selfish marketing clown and his naive ways. However, he gets a performance bonus based on 'customer acquisition' metrics that the rest of us don't get. He has an interest to not care about anything other than his Google Analytics nonsense, customers, rest of the team, the company making money matters not. Although anecdotal, this is how 'dark patterns' happen - marketing clowns, their selfish ways, their inability to understand the problem space (because they don't do code or customers) and workplace bullying make these things persist.

JadeNB 10y ago
Your experience seems to support, not refute, the idea that these are conscious decisions (albeit at a marketing, rather than coding, level, which I think is probably what the original meant) rather than inadvertent bugs.

AdmiralAsshat 10y ago

Previous discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12180072 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12180072

cs702 10y ago

Great video and great website. My only nitpick: the author wants the industry to agree on a "code of ethics." Unfortunately, such exhortations strike me as naive. They are unlikely to work, because the truly bad actors will continue to use dark patterns regardless, putting pressure on all other actors to follow suit. The key challenge is not in getting the good actors to do the right thing, but in preventing the bad actors from doing the wrong thing. Meanwhile, even sophisticated consumers like HN members pay a cognitive or financial cost to deal with dark patterns every day, which are prevalent throughout the web. Everyone I know is sick and tired of this crap. The only viable solution I can think of is regulation in the form of a consumer-protection agency, working with the industry, that can fine bad actors up the wazoo. Does anyone here have a better suggestion?

soared 10y ago
I agree and that goal sounds similar to the goal of Kill Analytics [1]. "The industry" doesn't even exist as an entity. Gov regulation seems like the only viable way to fix it. But on the other hand, Google AdSense has done a lot to improve advertising online. Popups and bad ads used to be waaay worse than they are now (not that they are okay now). So maybe we do just need a few big players to step up and change things. [1] https://hello-kill.github.io/ https://hello-kill.github.io/
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > So maybe we do just need a few big players to step up and change things. The question again is, how to make those big players do something that will lose them money.
  - soared 10y ago
    Do it in a way that earns them more money. Sounds difficult but that is what adsense did. If legit ux practices earn more, companies will use them. Potential scenario: someone makes a browser plugin that blocks dark patterns as if they were ads, so companies who use them don't see any traction with them. Or 50 years out when everyone is computer literate, users are aware of dark patterns and punish companies who use them by not buying their products.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

module0000 10y ago

There is no "works for everyone" method to stop this. You can vote with your wallet, and support vendors that act ethically, or act in whatever way you are OK with. When this type of UI disappears from the internet, then you will know that the majority of consumers agree with your viewpoint. Until then, people keep buying those insurance upgrades, and not caring(if they cared, we wouldn't be in this situation). If it all seems glib, that's because it is glib. People are taking advantage of other people, just below the threshold where those victims care enough to do something about it. This is the world we live in. I'm not sure how to end this on a positive note.

emodendroket 10y ago
> When this type of UI disappears from the internet, then you will know that the majority of consumers agree with your viewpoint. Until then, people keep buying those insurance upgrades, and not caring(if they cared, we wouldn't be in this situation). In a situation where you are legally compelled to buy insurance and essentially all providers do this that's completely wrong.
- module0000 10y ago
  Huh? What type of insurance are you talking about? I'm talking about airline flight insurance, like in the article.
  - emodendroket 10y ago
    OK, so I got that wrong. The airline industry is hardly an example of robust competition either.

covercash 10y ago

Would gofundme's entire brand and business model be considered a dark pattern? They go out of their way to make it feel like a nonprofit, promote campaigns for issues that already have actual nonprofit status/direct donation pages, and do their best to hide their fees (which, last I checked, were actually higher for legitimate nonprofits than for regular campaigns).

woogiewonka 10y ago
All of the fundraising platforms do this. They charge a fee and some go as far as "recommending" a donation amount to the platform.
- covercash 10y ago
  I'd like to see them make their platform fees clear at check out instead of hiding them in a FAQ or About Us page.

johansch 10y ago

My pet peeve: If you add a credit card to the Uber app there is no way to remove it without replacing it with another valid payment method. If you google solutions to this you get third party recommendations to plead with their customer service to have it removed. Seriously? This customer-hostile approach really needs to be killed.

Animats 10y ago
Use 1111 2222 3333 4444, the credit card test number. This is valid at the check digit level, but known to all banks as a test number to be rejected.
- johansch 10y ago
  Thanks for the tip, that may be useful in the future! I ended up using my bank's "virtual credit card" service to create a virtual CC with a balance of 1 SEK to get rid of my Uber account. Anyway, I think this is shameful of them. I would be ashamed of this practice if I worked for them. There is no excuse. You can't blindly blame it on A/B evaluations and what ended up making the company the most money. It's simply unethical.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    > I would be ashamed of this practice if I worked for them. There's no shame because there are no consequences. "Oh, you were the guy at Company X that wrote that annoying Dark Pattern Y, huh? Can you walk me through the ethics of that?" - Said no interviewer ever.
    - johansch 10y ago
      I was just discussing this with a former co-worker. [Here in Europe.] Also: I'm pretty certain that if you had a history of using dark patterns.. that would be seen as basically fraudulent behavior here. Investors would stay far away. We both shared our distaste for a typical american way of accomplishing personal financial success - fake it til you make it, etc etc. Maybe this is a part of what sets SV apart from Europe - and why SV keeps winning :). Fraud works.

cle 10y ago

One pattern that I consider "dark", but don't see in this list, is using loaded options on a dialog box. One that I often see in apps is like: Rate our app! <OK> <Not Yet> Those really get under my skin because the developer is clearly trying to play a psychological trick on me, but it's so brazen and obvious that it just pisses me off. And bigger companies do it too (e.g. Google).

Waterluvian 10y ago
Yeah I hate that. Beyond what you said, it also suggests to me, "Not Yet must mean that it will annoy me again and again." Even if that's not true, I may never visit the page again if my perception is that it's gearing up to annoy me. I will often see: OK, NOT YET, DON'T SHOW AGAIN. Which I think is fine.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  Yeah, and I don't expect that anyone tricked into / accidentally clicking "rate now" is going to leave anything but a zero-star review complaining about how the app tries to trick them and has annoying nag screens. I've written a few of those myself, then chuckled to myself since the developer was so short-sighted. If more people did that, they'd probably lay off with the "rate my app" pop-ups. If I REALLY love an app, I'll go find the developer on twitter and thank them, and write some nice reviews.
mvid 10y ago
Tinder is the worst I have seen, they require you to pick between 1-5 stars to get the dialog to go away at all. Guess who always gets one star.
- jkaptur 10y ago
  Wait, if they're requiring you to pick 1-5 stars to get the dialog to go away, it must be a custom dialog built by them, right? I bet they take your one star and just hide the dialog, but take people who rate it as 5 stars to the "real" app store rating page.

Animats 10y ago

After the first time this appeared on HN, I quit LinkedIn and deleted my profile. They still sent me "xxx wants to connect with you". I'm really getting tired of turning down Amazon Prime on Amazon. I use Amazon less because of this. There are about three extra pages of Amazon Prime ads to click through for every purchase.

gnicholas 10y ago
Somewhat related—Amazon Prime Video now shows ads at the beginning of videos. This wasn't part of the deal when we signed up, and it's pretty deceptive to just start doing this to customers. I didn't see it in the agreement (actually went back and looked for something that would cover ads), and it's not clear what limits, if any, they think there are. That is, could they just decide to show as many ads as Hulu and say "yeah, we said you could have access to this catalog. we didn't say it would be ad-free".
- eric_h 10y ago
  I opted for the ad-free Hulu subscription, and that, for the most part, is great. They do have a few programs on there that are not eligible, but then they say up front "due to streaming rights, we have to show you ads, but it's just one before and one after". That, at least is better than the ad-laden Hulu before they offered that option, where any prolonged bout of streaming would show you the same ad over and over and over.
- nitrogen 10y ago
  Video services need to be disrupted in a way that sticks (not like Amazon adding ads after selling everyone on an ad-free service). The only service I use with any regularity now is Netflix since it has no ads, but even they sometimes have problems with finding the show you actually want to watch. I was on vacation recently and the room had DirecTV. I tried searching for a program and all the search results were for channels not subscribed. Several of the channels in the guide list were presented as if subscribed, but then when a show would start, would prompt to charge $6 to continue watching and the show would stop after a few minutes. Finally, I found a channel that was subscribed and not PPV, and when an ad came on 30 seconds later, I tried to turn off the DirecTV box. Here's the DirecTV dark pattern: there was a "Please Wait..." message on the screen while the ad played instead of just turning off the output! How can anybody actually be making money from TV ads when they are so obnoxious? I'm pretty sick of corporations double-dipping in every industry. Video services charge you for watching, and then sell you to advertisers. Supermarkets charge you for products, and then sell you to manufacturers. ISPs charge you for bandwidth, and then try force video services to pay as well. Where's the exit to this hall of mirrors?

EduardoBautista 10y ago

This definitely reminds me of the process of deactivating your Facebook account. You really have to read what's on the screen in order to choose the right options.

gene-h 10y ago

I am surprised there is nothing about comcast on there.

spennant 10y ago

Has anyone tried to ignore iOS updates recently?

ksk 10y ago
Those popups got so annoying that I had to block Apple's update servers. No popups ever since..
nodesocket 10y ago
These are product updates and often times contain security and stability fixes, nobody is trying to trick you here. Apple is proactively trying to keep their users up to date, I see no problems with this.
- uabstraction 10y ago
  This is just PR speak to cover for the false dichotomy that you must accept new features (and regressively slower OS upgrades) to receive security updates - or be vulnerable. In reality, Apple could easily back-port security fixes. They are abusing security to force undesired changes to functionality. Edit: Take a look at how any Stable/LTS Linux disto handles this. If a bunch of hackers can do it on such a diverse software stack, surely the company with the largest cash reserves in the world can figure out how to do it on a software/hardware stack they control completely.
- spennant 10y ago
  I'm not talking about minor releases here... Avoiding an upgrade to a major release (iOS 10) triggers an unavoidable antipattern: Every 24 hours iOS asks if you want to upgrade now or remind you later... but that's not the worst part... At times it will show what looks like the lock screen but if you enter your passcode the OS will auto-upgrade the next time you are plugged into power and on WiFi. If you aren't paying attention, you think you are simply unlocking your phone instead of authorizing the upgrade. I have no problem patch releases, but I find that major releases over time eventually bogs down older hardware.
eroiusghs 10y ago

chrisdone 10y ago

Buying tickets with RyanAir is stressful due to these kind of practices. They're less aggressive than in the past, when I wouldn't even continue because I just had zero trust in the company, but they're still sly. A sneaky one I saw recently is something like: [ ] Subscribe to newsletter about our services by unchecking this box. (It doesn't matter whether the box is initially checked or not, the user will be tricked into the desired behavior.) I don't remember the exact phrasing, and it was much more shrewd than my own, but it relied on a boolean flipping of the value of the checkbox towards the end of the field label. Any user seeding the start of the sentence will leave it in its current state.

angry-hacker 10y ago
Tell me about it. A few years ago RyanAir's website was much worse. It's actually usable now! I was somehow able to buy a freaking bag with my ticket. I'm surprised they didn't somehow trick me to buy their lottery too. And I'm tech savvy...
luckyt 10y ago
Why bother with a checkbox at all at this point? Can't they send everyone the newsletter and not bother with a checkbox?
- nommm-nommm 10y ago
  Probably their way of getting around government regulations.

angry-hacker 10y ago

My question is how well these dark patterns work? People who have or must have implemented them, do you have any data? For an example join newsletter pop ups you get on websites. I assume everyone pisses off and closes them, or do they?

Nadya 10y ago
I've had the opportunity to speak to quite a few people who use the modal popups for newsletters and the like. They do get used. A lot more than you might imagine - and often enough times to warrant pissing off some small portion of your users. This may vary on the audience and my anecdata is where N = 5~ devs.
tsunamifury 10y ago
The problem is that they do work within the defintion that the growth hackers are working with. They do not measure the people it drives away and never return. Think of it as similar to the mall kiosk people -- they dont care if you are offended, you probably would never have bought their product anyways. Also similar to spammers who now send emails that are so stupid that you think no one would ever click them -- except the small number of people who are so naive that they do -- which is what they are trying to select for. Which points to age old problem of any public network: spam.
woogiewonka 10y ago
I worked for a large e-commerce store. We implemented pop-up email newsletter opt in and saw 4x growth in our mailing list. Pop-ups work, they suck from UX perspective but work nevertheless.

gnicholas 10y ago

An oft-overlooked aspect of dark patterns is the impact on accessibility. Ever received a spam email, hunted for the unsubscribe link, and found it in light grey, against a white background? Imagine how much worse that is for someone with low vision. Ditto for pop-up ads with a tiny grey X in the corner. Many of the dark patterns described in the video rely on hiding/obfuscating opt-outs and these have an even bigger impact on people with visual/processing disabilities.

whoisjuan 10y ago

I wrote an article about this. Basically explaining the difference between designed inconveniences and deceptive patterns: https://medium.com/art-marketing/designed-inconveniences-ux-patterns-that-cant-be-taught-998eae9c4546#.shen3k6ck https://medium.com/art-marketing/designed-inconveniences-ux-...

mangeletti 10y ago

Another dark pattern (used to gain more positive ratings in apps) is: Do you love our app? Yes No | | | | ______ ______ Opens Does AppStore Nothing It's a bit like saying, "Do you love candidate X?", and then giving instructions for voting only to those who answer "yes".

st3v3r 10y ago
At the same time, if someone has indicated that they want to give my app a bad review, am I obligated to take them to the review point so they can do it?
- mangeletti 10y ago
  I don't think that any of these dark patterns represent the breaking of obligations by any party. Dark patterns don't represent anything truly sinister, and in most cases they are perfectly legal. They are just bad UX because they're dishonest about their intent.

zpallin 10y ago

This presentation is great. I think a good next step on the path toward ending unethical UX could be in creating an international ethics review board for it. I know it sounds silly, but this is how a lot of decisions are agreed upon by many large organizations, and help encourage involvement and following the rules. See W3, ICANN, ESRB, IETF, etc. The "BUXE", or Board for User eXperience Ethics (just my name idea) could be founded by a group of consenting UX designers, companies, and organizations. Together they would vote on and establish UX design principles that would be up for review every year or so. The BUXE will accept fees for reviewing a website's adherence to their ethics and would give ratings to them based on how well they follow the guidelines. The resulting site can then publish their BUXE rating on their site. Individual developers could be given honor status if they are particularly vocal or involved in ensuring the development of ethical UX that could be accolades for them to brag about (something important to developers). It's a good resume booster, anyway. Plenty of other ideas.

woogiewonka 10y ago
This is great, I'd be 100% behind this.

Hydraulix989 10y ago

I submitted quite a few of these.

jcomis 10y ago

How about this one in the new uber app: If you disable location services (which recently switched to either "always" or "never", no longer offering "only when open") you can't use your history or saved favorite places to set a location, you have to manually type it out. Couldn't believe they would be so shady just to get location services activated.

z3t4 10y ago

I think labor unions would be the best option. Put their employers into strike, DOS their website, and contact the press. No one will feel bad about the scammers.

nodesocket 10y ago

Pricing pages are another type of U/I that could be label black hat. Personally, I think the typical pricing "tricks" like anchoring, bundling, freemium are fine and part of running a business.

shostack 10y ago

Is there a category for grouping notifications such that spammy notifications are lumped in with other important ones you might want to receive? Google Photos is a big culprit unfortunately with their photo backup. They keep pinging a notification to get me to remove local versions that are backed up in the cloud. I don't want to do that. The only way to remove the notification seems to be disabling all app notifications. Worse, when you go into settings, they have a variety of settings that all take you into a deeper level of settings when you click them. Except "Free up device storage." Clicking that does not take you to a deeper level as expected (despite looking like a nav tree item), but instead actually does the one thing I didn't want to do, with no confirmation dialogue.

antocv 10y ago
Do you even actually have "important" notifications you might want to receive? Is any automated system more important than your focus? What I have is, disallow or delete the app or "service" as soon as I receive a "notification" from it, only my wife and family is allowed to light up the led on my phone.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

BillinghamJ 10y ago

An awful lot of the content on this website shows naivety/lack of understanding of the website, and in a few cases, displays information which is simply untrue.

uw_rob 10y ago
Think you could be more specific ?
- BillinghamJ 10y ago
  Yep. http://darkpatterns.org/maxcdn-com-may-2013/ http://darkpatterns.org/maxcdn-com-may-2013/ - the $10 arises because the option for including edge servers in Asia is selected http://darkpatterns.org/british-airways-distract-from-cheapest-option/ http://darkpatterns.org/british-airways-distract-from-cheape... - I'm pretty skeptical that this had any malicious intent. It is showing the cheapest option in the column. Often the customer will already know which class they want to fly in, so it helps them to be able to skim down a column looking for the cheapest option. http://darkpatterns.org/papa-johns-iphone-app-november-2011/ http://darkpatterns.org/papa-johns-iphone-app-november-2011/ - I think this is seriously reaching. Every single pizza chain (both online & in-store) work this way. They do a lot to point you in the direction of their offers page too. http://darkpatterns.org/directline-com-july-2010/ http://darkpatterns.org/directline-com-july-2010/ - Hilarious. If this website had any idea how much negative impact price comparison sites have had on car insurance in the UK, they'd be praising Direct Line for not lowering themselves to the tactics of all the other insurers (offering an incredibly unprofitable first year rate, then massively increasing pricing when you renew) I'm sure there are more - these are the most clear ones after skimming through about half of the categories.
  - SilkRoadie 10y ago
    I mostly agree with what you have pointed out. The one exception is the British Airways site. That page is very confusing. At best is awful UI. At worst it was created to trick the user into purchasing a more expensive ticket.

oferzelig 10y ago

I'm not sure why this appears here on HN and received so many votes. Despite being a good site, it has been last updated in 2013: http://darkpatterns.org/whats-new/ http://darkpatterns.org/whats-new/ I sent them 2 dark patterns in the past which they didn't put; in an email I received long time after inquiring about it one of the developers said they're under the pump and will get to it sometime. And they don't.

CM30 10y ago
Technically, it was last updated in November 2015 (at least if the date here is correct): http://darkpatterns.org/trick-questions/ http://darkpatterns.org/trick-questions/ Good luck figuring that out though, since the what's new page hasn't been working in pretty much forever and the only way to see if something has been changed is to check each category individually. And yeah, it doesn't update much. I remember sending in my own examples before, and those never got added either. Kind of wish there was a site about this with a more regular update schedule or something.

saberworks 10y ago

Does it count if there's no user interface? Amazon has my email address, I've been a customer since the late-nineties. They keep inventing new email lists and signing me up for them. Each time I get a new "newsletter" it says something like, "You got this message because you're subscribed to the 'Tablet News' newsletter." I click the unsubscribe link to remove myself from it. Along with the unsubscribe link there's a link to my subscriptions. When I go there, it only shows the ones I want (the specific authors I'm following). I want to unsubscribe not only from this latest list you just signed me up for, but also from all future lists you may want to sign me up for. I really don't want to get any unsolicited marketing email from you. Really. I don't want it. Please let me out. Also stop letting marketplace sellers email me begging for feedback after every marketplace item I accidentally order. I try my best to not order marketplace seller items anymore but when I accidentally do (or buy a gift for someone that is only offered this way) I always end up getting emails from these guys. Are you sharing my email address with them? Does unsubscribing or responding to them share my email address with them? I have no idea. There is never anything useful and it's impossible to unsubscribe from all past and future marketplace emails which is really annoying. Come on, amazon, I really want to love you and continue shopping there but it's getting to the point that I'd rather go to wal-mart! (ok not really)

bottled_poe 10y ago
Not just Amazon, I am constantly clicking through those unsubscribe links but just get auto-signed up for new lists. Fuck you Amazon and anyone else that does this. I'll buy your junk when and if I need to. Leave me alone and stop wasting my life.
- 0x0 10y ago
  Report them at https://www.spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml https://www.spamcop.net/anonsignup.shtml
  - Karunamon 10y ago
    Please don't. All you're doing is polluting the data at Spamcop and violating their terms anyways. https://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/125.html https://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/125.html Bulk email can be split into two categories: Opt-in and Opt-out. Opt-in is email that an individual requested or agreed to receive. Many legitimate mailers use opt-in methods for marketing. Individuals are responsible for reading and understanding a company's privacy policies and acceptable use policies (if applicable) before submitting an email address. If a privacy or acceptable use policy clearly states that signing up for the service results in receiving marketing or commercial email, then the individual has "opted-in" to receive email and that email is not spam. A company emailing you when you have given them your permission to email you, but about certain topics you decide you don't like is not spam.

campuscodi 10y ago

This is the 45th time I see this site in HN... How do people not know about it until now?

b1daly 10y ago

I've been pondering the recent trend in pop up ads where if you try and dismiss it by clicking the tiny, hard to find, checkbox, and you miss, it will cause it to move. This forces you to actually pay attention, to a degree, to the ad, rather than habitually dismiss it. These are usually found in ads, or notices like the New York Times puts up notifying you there are only so many free articles left. I think of this as a gray pattern usually, as it is designed to keep the source of revenue going to fund the sight you are currently reading. It's a surprisingly effective innovation.

djsumdog 10y ago
uBlock Origin. I don't allow any ads. I'll donate to a Pateron or buy your T-shirts or a book if I like your content, but fuck ads.
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Some of us always hit back on those pages. No way am I going to read your ad. Try too hard like that, and I will leave the page rather than ever look at it to find the close button.

a_c 10y ago

Does darkpatterns.org support api query? There ought to be one available so that various tools can be built. For instance, a browser plugin to warn users upon visiting dark pattern websites

artursapek 10y ago
Take it further - introduce a "darkness rating" like Google's old pagerank value. I wish Google would punish websites for doing this stuff.
- calesce 10y ago
  They started punishing those mobile web "install our native app" interstitials about a year ago, hope there's more stuff like that coming.

xbryanx 10y ago

Where do we draw the line between "dark patterns" and "smart design?" I feel like the Hacker News community could be advocating for a persuasive pricing page design one day and decrying its dark design pattern the next. The obviously evil patterns are easy to avoid, but it's difficult to distinguish between appropriately persuasive and inappropriately manipulative in the grey-middle.

Tempest1981 10y ago

Here is another unsubscribe dark pattern: http://imgur.com/a/lLZAE http://imgur.com/a/lLZAE * Do I check the item if I want to unsubscribe from it? * Or do I uncheck the items I don't wish to receive? 50-50 chance -- which I'm sure they love. Clicking "Update" gives no feedback either, just reloads the page.

wingerlang 10y ago
To me it looks like the checked ones are the ones to unsubscribe from.
- kagamine 10y ago
  The button text should read "unsubscribe" in that case, not "update", and the header text "Subscriptions". It could be a lot clearer.
kagamine 10y ago
That was interesting. My reaction was "is this actually a dark pattern, or just designed by a complete idiot?" Because the user trying subscribe and the user trying to UNsubscribe both have a problem in understanding what is going on there. Somebody should get an award for that.

superacid 10y ago

Found this gem while looking through the comments on YT. How is this even legal? http://imgur.com/a/m66DA http://imgur.com/a/m66DA

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
eroiusghs 10y ago
Thank you for sharing - now I know never to ever use G2A Shield.
- MawNicker 10y ago
  Actionable.

mgalka 10y ago

That Ryanair example is outrageous, and not at all surprising

solaarphunk 10y ago

Quora does a ton of this in their email newsletters to try and reactivate you! Want to unsubscribe? Okay! We'll just make up a new "round up" newsletter and re-subscribe you. So desperate to stay alive I guess...

lectrice 10y ago

Isn't part of the problem that "conversion rates" and "engagement" now trump just about every other metric? Anyone know good ways to quantify annoyance rate and off-puttedness?

ozgung 10y ago

Maybe it's not an issue about the designers. Maybe the problem is that most marketing people are "black hat" by design.

Graham24 10y ago

and at the top of the list of Bait and Switch is "Microsoft: Windows 10 Upgrade". That's what got me, after the hundredth time it had appeared I clicked the X instead of . It the tactics of criminals.

api 10y ago

Is the use of a tech shift or form factor change as an opportunity to redefine the product so as to reduce customer freedom or introduce surveillance a dark pattern? I've thought of this with the mobile revolution. You could never have introduced total device lock down and ubiquitous telemetry so easily in the PC era. There would have been an outcry. But change the form factor...