3 ms·

Dark Patterns: good for business?

18 points by swombat 16y ago

jacquesm 16y ago
It all depends... 'dark' patterns are used a lot by gambling sites for instance, they don't care how they get to the customer, as long as they get to them. So they'll pay to dollar for really bad stuff such as site take-overs, pop-unders and so on. All the stuff we hate. But it works wonders for them, they have the figures to prove it. Once you cross over in to things like gambling then the additional penalty of using a 'dark' pattern seems a minor one. It's a line that you can set for yourself and decide to not cross and play nice, or if you are very money motivated you can explicitly decide to cross it. But once you do, what's next? The lines between 'nice' and 'not so nice' are pretty vague, but the one between 'legal' and 'not legal' is a much clearer one and I fear that people that no longer distinguish between 'nice' and 'not so nice' will eventually be unable to distinguish between 'legal' and 'illegal'. It all seems to be related to a sense of entitlement, and the people that I see practicing 'dark' patterns to further their business interests all suffer from this to a greater or lesser extent. If you look at how people like Bill Gates and others made huge fortunes on the back of business practices that are not exactly ethical are perceived you could easily fall i nto the perception that as long as you make enough money you'll be forgiven, but that should not be the whole story.
- swombat 16y ago
  A lot of businesses operate at the border of legality. Ryanair is a good example, as you have pointed out on IRC (see http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0302/ryanair.html http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0302/ryanair.html). I'm not making a judgement as to whether you personally should build a business that uses dark patterns, my point is that in some lines of business, dark patterns are a critical survival factor, and if you try to be too "good" in those types of business you will get trampled by someone who's willing to squeeze every penny.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
I remember coming across a scam a couple of months ago. I won't describe it in detail but let's just say that it was an easy way to pick up a $10 recurring charge from an unsuspecting visitor to a web site. It was so sneaky it almost got me, and I'm a web programmer and pretty skeptical guy. I imagine it would get most people. Once I figured it out I was amazed at the ingenuity. I would never do that, but hell, I have to admit it was tempting. If you had a 1% conversion rate, and then you used other dark patterns to drive 100K users to the site? It could run into a million or more dollars easily. I'm not a perfect angel. I just don't want to live with being the type of person that had to do that. I'd rather be poorer and have less emotional baggage. After all, in life you end up doing a lot of stuff you don't like anyway. No point adding to it yourself just for a few bucks. As long as you're able to eat, live, grow, and survive, the extra money isn't worth the guilt. So yes, I can understand why some folks do this. Hell, I know people that do things like this. I've just decided I'm not one of them. Ethics, morality, and the law aside, I think this is a personal choice about who you are more than anything else. Having said all of that, remember that it's easy to say things like I just said. Makes you look good. Makes you feel all moral and superior. Many times it's a lot harder to actually live it. I can say it basically because it's just inaction on my part. If somebody set it all up and asked me to push the big red button and nobody would know it was me? Not as easy.
- Mz 16y ago
  Ethics, morality, and the law aside, I think this is a personal choice about who you are more than anything else. I think it also reflects on fundamental competence. "Quick and dirty" answers seem to me to be favored by people who don't have the wherewithal to do things right and are unable and/or unwilling to develop it. It's the only means for some people to "get ahead". So, to me, "ethics" is also an indicator of competence, which might be one of the best arguments I can come up with for eschewing folks with shady ethics and preferring to do business with folks who are very above-board/white-hat: If they have to resort to such measures to make their money, what other corners are they cutting because they aren't able to do things right? $0.02
- swombat 16y ago
  I completely agree and, for the record, I am not interested in creating anything that I consider a scam. However, this article is not so much about scams and more about slightly shady tactics. Letting people pick up a $10 recurring charge without their knowledge (à la Zynga advertising) is very different from opting them into your mailing list by default. Zynga makes a perfect example of one of those businesses that really abuse dark patterns, btw. And they are surviving the reputational damage just fine, since most of their users don't seem to care about their reputation, or aren't savvy enough to figure it out.
hugh3 16y ago
Who cares whether they're good for business? If you only have one life to live, would you rather go through it being a good person and slightly less rich, or a complete annoying jerk and slightly more rich?
- enjo 16y ago
  While I don't disagree, isn't there some moral value in creating a business that employs folks who can feed their family? Morality is a really tricky thing.
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Not if you do it by being evil. I'm pretty convinced that "don't be evil" works fine as a strategy for business and life.

18 points by swombat 16y ago

It all depends... 'dark' patterns are used a lot by gambling sites for instance, they don't care how they get to the customer, as long as they get to them. So they'll pay to dollar for really bad stuff such as site take-overs, pop-unders and so on. All the stuff we hate. But it works wonders for them, they have the figures to prove it. Once you cross over in to things like gambling then the additional penalty of using a 'dark' pattern seems a minor one. It's a line that you can set for yourself and decide to not cross and play nice, or if you are very money motivated you can explicitly decide to cross it. But once you do, what's next? The lines between 'nice' and 'not so nice' are pretty vague, but the one between 'legal' and 'not legal' is a much clearer one and I fear that people that no longer distinguish between 'nice' and 'not so nice' will eventually be unable to distinguish between 'legal' and 'illegal'. It all seems to be related to a sense of entitlement, and the people that I see practicing 'dark' patterns to further their business interests all suffer from this to a greater or lesser extent. If you look at how people like Bill Gates and others made huge fortunes on the back of business practices that are not exactly ethical are perceived you could easily fall i nto the perception that as long as you make enough money you'll be forgiven, but that should not be the whole story.

swombat 16y ago
A lot of businesses operate at the border of legality. Ryanair is a good example, as you have pointed out on IRC (see http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0302/ryanair.html http://www.rte.ie/news/2005/0302/ryanair.html). I'm not making a judgement as to whether you personally should build a business that uses dark patterns, my point is that in some lines of business, dark patterns are a critical survival factor, and if you try to be too "good" in those types of business you will get trampled by someone who's willing to squeeze every penny.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

I remember coming across a scam a couple of months ago. I won't describe it in detail but let's just say that it was an easy way to pick up a $10 recurring charge from an unsuspecting visitor to a web site. It was so sneaky it almost got me, and I'm a web programmer and pretty skeptical guy. I imagine it would get most people. Once I figured it out I was amazed at the ingenuity. I would never do that, but hell, I have to admit it was tempting. If you had a 1% conversion rate, and then you used other dark patterns to drive 100K users to the site? It could run into a million or more dollars easily. I'm not a perfect angel. I just don't want to live with being the type of person that had to do that. I'd rather be poorer and have less emotional baggage. After all, in life you end up doing a lot of stuff you don't like anyway. No point adding to it yourself just for a few bucks. As long as you're able to eat, live, grow, and survive, the extra money isn't worth the guilt. So yes, I can understand why some folks do this. Hell, I know people that do things like this. I've just decided I'm not one of them. Ethics, morality, and the law aside, I think this is a personal choice about who you are more than anything else. Having said all of that, remember that it's easy to say things like I just said. Makes you look good. Makes you feel all moral and superior. Many times it's a lot harder to actually live it. I can say it basically because it's just inaction on my part. If somebody set it all up and asked me to push the big red button and nobody would know it was me? Not as easy.

Mz 16y ago
Ethics, morality, and the law aside, I think this is a personal choice about who you are more than anything else. I think it also reflects on fundamental competence. "Quick and dirty" answers seem to me to be favored by people who don't have the wherewithal to do things right and are unable and/or unwilling to develop it. It's the only means for some people to "get ahead". So, to me, "ethics" is also an indicator of competence, which might be one of the best arguments I can come up with for eschewing folks with shady ethics and preferring to do business with folks who are very above-board/white-hat: If they have to resort to such measures to make their money, what other corners are they cutting because they aren't able to do things right? $0.02
swombat 16y ago
I completely agree and, for the record, I am not interested in creating anything that I consider a scam. However, this article is not so much about scams and more about slightly shady tactics. Letting people pick up a $10 recurring charge without their knowledge (à la Zynga advertising) is very different from opting them into your mailing list by default. Zynga makes a perfect example of one of those businesses that really abuse dark patterns, btw. And they are surviving the reputational damage just fine, since most of their users don't seem to care about their reputation, or aren't savvy enough to figure it out.

hugh3 16y ago

Who cares whether they're good for business? If you only have one life to live, would you rather go through it being a good person and slightly less rich, or a complete annoying jerk and slightly more rich?

enjo 16y ago
While I don't disagree, isn't there some moral value in creating a business that employs folks who can feed their family? Morality is a really tricky thing.
- hugh3 16y ago
  Not if you do it by being evil. I'm pretty convinced that "don't be evil" works fine as a strategy for business and life.