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

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.