I'm the person who coined the term. I was interested in design patterns and pattern libraries. I noticed that we had design patterns (good things to learn from)

I'm the person who coined the term. I was interested in design patterns and pattern libraries. I noticed that we had design patterns (good things to learn from), anti-patterns (things worth avoiding) but there wasn't an equivalent term for deceptive design practices. "Dark Patterns" was the title of a talk I gave in 2008. I'm not sure why everyone chose to use the term. The idea of it being intentionally obscure is quite wonderfully Hacker News-eseque.