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Dark Patterns at Scale: Findings from a Crawl of 11K Shopping Websites
- jtchang 7y agoIf you really want to see some dark patterns go try booking a flight on United.com.
- xiaowenhuman 7y agoI am software engineer , you can contact me if you want crawl something from website .Email:737756485@qq.com
- aivisol 7y agoI was going to write something similar about some (many!) European (budget, but who can draw a line these days) airlines: I can get crazy finding those small, grey links labelled "No, I do not want to add checked bag", "No, I will not buy insurance from you", "And I do not need your car rental, airport transfer, hotel reservation, just let me buy that plane ticket!"...
- doitLP 7y agoAgreed. It’s fine if you’re sharp and tech-savvy but there’s a reason I am the family travel agent...my dad with his poor eyesight and short temper breezes through tricks like that and ends up paying unnecessarily.
- xiaowenhuman 7y agoI am software engineer , you can contact me if you want crawl something from website .Email:737756485@qq.com reply
- dstick 7y agoUrgency, social proof and scarcity are dark patterns? Isn’t that online marketing 101?
- sharmi 7y agoIt is marketing 101. These are things that have been talked about in "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion" by Robert Cialdini. The examples used in the book to illustrate these concepts are from across the 20th century.
- ehnto 7y agoUrgency and scarcity is so often manufactured that I can definitely see this in the dark pattern side of things. As well, whether or not there really is only 3 left, they chose to add the messaging as high impact alert messaging and it's definitely intended to be coercive. All marketing is intended to be coercive of course, but I think you land in dark pattern territory when your coercion is no longer related to the value propositions of your product. Saying "You need this TV because it has great definition!" is just selling your product. But saying "You need this TV because TIM bought one, we only have three left and this deal runs out in 9 minutes!" is just plain old bullying someone into buying, regardless of what the item was. Often enough too, TIM didn't buy one, there is a backorder of 1000 units being delivered this week, and the deal will just start again after the current ticker finishes.
- xmprt 7y agoCorrection. The deal will start as soon as they refresh the page. These guys aren't smart enough to keep track of the timer state across visits.
- Spooky23 7y agoI get where you’re coming from, but I think legitimate scarcity or urgency is ok. If there truly are 3 items left, that is a legit fact that matters. And it’s context that I had in retail. Likewise, sales do run out. That said, online retailers don’t seem to need to meet any true in advertising standard, and they are mostly full of shit.
- metters 7y agoThere is no more legitimate scarcity or urgency anymore. This also was discussed here yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20269376 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20269376
- amitport 7y agoI Could not find this one mentioned: some lodging sites add obligatory costs (e.g., "All prices (expressed in Euros) exclude € 27.50 reservation fee, obligatory: € 7.95 p.p. bed linen per person per stay, € 6.95 p.p. cot linen, tourist tax € 1.85 ") some countries requires that everything obligatory is included in the main price, or at least displayed with the same font, size, and placement. this pattern should be generally illegal IMHO.
- Majestic121 7y agoI think this could qualify as Sneaking > Hidden Cost. You can see the example given is similar to yours : a fee for 'handling and care' of the flowers
- taneq 7y agoSounds like Malaysia and their damn "++" pricing. (Plus GST, plus some other sales tax, end result is around 20-25% extra on the charge). Well either that or I was fleeced.
- sails 7y agoBooking.com allows accomodation to add some BS fee that are an additional ~75% the cost of the displayed price, at 1/8th the font size.
- sroussey 7y agoI hate that too, but sometimes it separates out for tax purposes.
- VvR-Ox 7y agoYes of course! In a capitalist market where the one main goal is to earn as much profit as you can people use everything legal on a big scale because they won't have a chance to beat competition otherwise. The really big ones even invent new "dark patterns" and more than enough are also willing to do stuff which is illegal as long as they can cover their tracks or think they can. It's a flaw in the whole system because incentives lead people to morally questionable decisions. It doesn't advance humanity or something like that - a free market is free so no one stops the evil geniuses to get the max. out of it.
- VvR-Ox 7y agoOh I forgot - many of the ppl responsible for implementing these patterns are here to vote stuff like this down.
- dillonmckay 7y agoGuilty!
- VvR-Ox 7y agoHaha at least you are honest ;-)
- dspillett 7y ago> Countdown Timer This, and its equivalent "stock level countdown", has become an instant red flag for me. If I see one I cancel all interest in ordering that product from that company. I don't think I've seen one that is genuine (opening the page in another browser and seeing the count reset to a value, or seeing a fresh countdown started on a visit not long after the previous one ended) and I don't appreciate being lied to. And these things are lies: not misdirection, exaggeration, or any other softer word, they are outright lies and I refuse to trust companies/individuals that tell them so won't be handing over my payment details. > Sneaking & Hidden Costs I'm perfectly happy to make a little effort, even to pay a little extra, to find other sources for what I'm buying when I see this happen. Unfortunately I think I'm in a minority here and such trickery is getting more prevalent (so harder to avoid) for that reason. > Even viewing products requires signing up and creating and account. That is where my old friend Mr Fake McFakeFake who lives at Faketown, Fakeshire, FA1 1AF, plays his part. Or of course just walking away on the basis that if your offer was that good you would openly display it.
- blue_devil 7y agoI upvote this comment for the alter ego flamboyance.
- MR4D 7y agoHeh - mine is similar but with a different “F” word. :)
- swalsh 7y ago> I don't think I've seen one that is genuine The eCommerce site I used to work at was 100% genuine, though might have been a few minutes delayed as we had a bunch of caching layers due to our scale.
- dspillett 7y agoThe less in-your-face ones I might trust. The low stock notice on Amazon, the "X of this early offer left" on KS, and so forth. It is the in-your-face, ticking down occasionally (or even regularly) as you look, ones, that are an automatic turn off. I don't even check those these days because every time when I used to they were obviously not real.
- k__ 7y ago"Sneaking & Hidden Costs" The traveling industry is the worst here. In 2016 I tried to book a holiday. I wanted it to have an okay price, good food, and a beach. I didn't even have a specific country in mind. Took me weeks to find something. I quickly noticed why we have so many traveling agencies in Germany. The longer you click through a buying process on such sites the more your price goes up, sometimes you pay more than double than what was advertised on page one.
- martin_a 7y agoI have all my browsers set to delete all cookies on exit. Works wonders on things like these.
- m463 7y agoI wonder if fingerprinting will replace this.
- synlatexc 7y agoThis is called drip pricing. It's illegal in many countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drip_pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drip_pricing
- hackermailman 7y agoIn the immigrant diaspora, another reason why you see so many travel agencies is they will also quietly loan you the money for a trip, for people who need emergency flights for funerals back home or a wedding/something else. This is why if you've ever walked through say a 'Chinatown' in a western city, and have seen a dozen travel agencies stacked on top of each other all selling the same thing, they're competing with various favorable loan rates.
- ptah 7y agoI can't help but think these dark pattern catalogues will make them proliferate faster
- rchaud 7y agoThe information could also proliferate among the public, so they they won't succumb to these tricks as often.
- leowoo91 7y agoAmong all, showing low stock warning (if plenty) is more than a dark pattern, because that's direct misinformation I think.
- doitLP 7y agoNot necessarily. When our warehouse is low on stock, we are truly low on stock and usually never reorder due to the seasonality of the clothing industry. That said I agree it is a dark pattern in general.
- CWuestefeld 7y agoOn our site, we show inventory on hand (when the data's available, we don't always know). We didn't put it there to create urgency. The feature is there due to customer demand for it. Customers do not want to be surprised and disappointed when something turns out to be back ordered. They've made it very clear that they want this transparency. Perhaps some sites misrepresent this (or just make it up). But the fact that inventory information is shown isn't in itself a dark pattern.
- kzzzznot 7y agoDon't a lot of these fall under 'false advertising'? Seems like each country's regulators are not doing as much to combat this online as they are in brick and mortar shops?
- supernovae 7y agoFor every site that annoys the crap out of you with these “dark patterns” there are probably 10x that don’t - that people don’t visit and don’t buy from. To fix the internet we have to fix our behavior and not PUT our money into systems that we find appalling.
- rchaud 7y agoIt's a trade-off. ~20 years ago, when aggregator sites like Priceline, Hotwire, Kayak and the like became mainstream, we stopped seeing the individual sellers, and started picking based on a table of prices. It seems inevitable that companies started gaming their pricing so they could appear on the top of the list.
- sixplusone 7y agoYes, but they may employ some of the patterns at certain times, or get bought and then apply them. You still have to be aware of what schemes to look out for.
- CptFribble 7y agoThese patterns get used because they work. It's game theory: if site A makes 10-50% more money because they do all this stuff, sites B-? are going to wind up doing it too. If you want to get rid of marketing dark patterns, the solution is simple: just make sure all humans remove emotion and feelings from every decision, and give them the time and money to find all possible alternative sources for the desired product or service. (/s)
- rchaud 7y agoWe could also recognize that businesses have an incentive to exploit human psychological impulses, and attempt to counteract that by providing the public with information about these methods so they can make more informed choices next time.
- tdb7893 7y agoNot to mention as a society we can also legislate against certainly patterns (having to show costs up front is a common example).
- twoquestions 7y agoCon artists make good money too, just because it's legal doesn't make it right.
- Tepix 7y ago> These patterns get used because they work. because they worked in the past.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoThere's an even simpler way: just make these patterns illegal. The universal solution to a coordination problem you mentioned above is an external party unilaterally punishing bad actors.
- supergauntlet 7y agoVery much this. Markets are OK at these things when there's symmetrical information, because it forces everyone to play nice. When one side gets to obscure facts like this and honestly just be downright deceitful, it's time to get out the paddle. Unfortunately I don't really have a lot of faith in the US government to do the right thing right now. Maybe the EU.
- doitLP 7y agoI see my own company on here. I work in a back office role and I’ve never used the main customer site, because it’s just not my demographic. After some honest looking I can say our company doesn’t just do one, but all of these. I think it’s time to move on...
- RocketSyntax 7y agoHow is it that every hotel seems to have "1 room left!" I'm a repeat user of your booking site, why would you treat me like a naive fool?
- mprev 7y agoI totally get what you're saying but maybe it's because you're a repeat user that they don't change this.
- SaladFork 7y agoRelevant discussion from yesterday too: "Consumers Are Becoming Wise to Your Nudge" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20284298 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20284298
- secure 7y agoMeta: I really like how the paper is summarized on the site.
- carapace 7y agoFlipping this around, who are your favorite sites that don't do this crap? For me I can list Digikey ( https://www.digikey.com/ https://www.digikey.com/ ), my recent experience ordering from them was flawless.
- dublin 7y agoThere are very few, if any at all, large companies that are honest with their customers on this stuff. I did a contract a couple of years ago with an online home rental company. I strongly suspect the "only X left in this area" and "viewed Y times" were often completely fictitious. (The latter could be easily gamed by including it in any search results page, anyway...) Since I was the PM for the product, I know for certain that 100% of the properties they featured in their weekly emails touting getaway destinations were already booked and never available. To my knowledge, they never promoted a property that was actually available the entire time I was there. And I strongly suspect there was something fishy about the advertised rates, too, since they were always ridiculously attractive properties that they knew couldn't be booked.
- m463 7y agoI think pop-overs and other interruptions should be considered a dark pattern. Probably the original dark pattern.
- jason_slack 7y agoSome other examples: Ticket Master, Wigs.com