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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 char

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.
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago
  I think it's a slippery slope. I like to think of it this way: I want to do everything to make a "perfect" site. It loads quickly, it's easy to use, it's clear in its intent, it does one thing and does it well. As I put together the site, I try to keep it as clean and simple as possible. No surprises for the user. These are just good design principles, dark patterns aside. There's also this huge "don't be evil" new-age kind of feel-good philosophy that folks use, but to me it's much more practical than that: I want as good a site as possible. Once you start trying to engineer the user, even if it's in their best interests, to me the design suffers. And I'm not sure there is a natural stopping point once you start down this road. At least I can't find one. My personal feeling is that that there is going to be a huge backlash against sites manipulating users. Not sure what form it will take, but it's coming.
- j2d2j2d2 16y ago
  Different sectors of the startup world frequently behave like the casinos of Wall St. If we act like this is OK, we'll have to wait for the economy to really convince us otherwise before we agree that this behavior is not helpful to the economy.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  A lot of kids fall for the 'text this number to y' scam, which turns out to be a subscription to some $2 / tick text messaging service. I think that's way across the line but it actually is legal in plenty of places. How do you feel about such an operation ?
harrybr 16y ago
Daniel, I'm sure the Dark Patterns Wiki community (http://darkpatterns.org http://darkpatterns.org) would love to read the details of the $10 recurring charge pattern you mentioned. So far there have been a few very satisfying examples where companies have responded to being named-and-shamed, and have taken dark patterns out of their UIs in response...
- gojomo 16y ago
  Are you interested in documenting offline dark patterns as well, for example those used in direct-mail or print/television advertising? And, when a pattern refines or combines existing patterns, how do you prefer them be entered? For example, 'Hidden Costs' and 'Price Comparison Prevention' are often combined, lowering a advertised price or interest rate by moving charges into other later or less-prominently-displayed fees.
webwright 16y ago
Out of curiosity, what do you think of the pattern where a SaaS provider says, "Give us your credit card and you'll automatically be charged after a free trial" vs. "Don't give us your credit card, you can upgrade any time"? The former might be okay if the SaaS provider sent an 11th hour email saying, "Hey, last day of the trial. Charging starts tomorrow!"... but most don't. What percentage of SaaS trial users forget to cancel? That's always fallen into my "slightly shady" camp, but I can say with some authority that it's a huge needle-mover in terms of revenue.

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.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago
I think it's a slippery slope. I like to think of it this way: I want to do everything to make a "perfect" site. It loads quickly, it's easy to use, it's clear in its intent, it does one thing and does it well. As I put together the site, I try to keep it as clean and simple as possible. No surprises for the user. These are just good design principles, dark patterns aside. There's also this huge "don't be evil" new-age kind of feel-good philosophy that folks use, but to me it's much more practical than that: I want as good a site as possible. Once you start trying to engineer the user, even if it's in their best interests, to me the design suffers. And I'm not sure there is a natural stopping point once you start down this road. At least I can't find one. My personal feeling is that that there is going to be a huge backlash against sites manipulating users. Not sure what form it will take, but it's coming.
j2d2j2d2 16y ago
Different sectors of the startup world frequently behave like the casinos of Wall St. If we act like this is OK, we'll have to wait for the economy to really convince us otherwise before we agree that this behavior is not helpful to the economy.
jacquesm 16y ago
A lot of kids fall for the 'text this number to y' scam, which turns out to be a subscription to some $2 / tick text messaging service. I think that's way across the line but it actually is legal in plenty of places. How do you feel about such an operation ?

harrybr 16y ago

Daniel, I'm sure the Dark Patterns Wiki community (http://darkpatterns.org http://darkpatterns.org) would love to read the details of the $10 recurring charge pattern you mentioned. So far there have been a few very satisfying examples where companies have responded to being named-and-shamed, and have taken dark patterns out of their UIs in response...

gojomo 16y ago
Are you interested in documenting offline dark patterns as well, for example those used in direct-mail or print/television advertising? And, when a pattern refines or combines existing patterns, how do you prefer them be entered? For example, 'Hidden Costs' and 'Price Comparison Prevention' are often combined, lowering a advertised price or interest rate by moving charges into other later or less-prominently-displayed fees.

webwright 16y ago

Out of curiosity, what do you think of the pattern where a SaaS provider says, "Give us your credit card and you'll automatically be charged after a free trial" vs. "Don't give us your credit card, you can upgrade any time"? The former might be okay if the SaaS provider sent an 11th hour email saying, "Hey, last day of the trial. Charging starts tomorrow!"... but most don't. What percentage of SaaS trial users forget to cancel? That's always fallen into my "slightly shady" camp, but I can say with some authority that it's a huge needle-mover in terms of revenue.