What makes some dark design patterns possible is linear web workflows based on several pages of chained forms. At each step the user becomes more invested in th

What makes some dark design patterns possible is linear web workflows based on several pages of chained forms. At each step the user becomes more invested in the process. Egregious steps appear last when the user has a sunk cost. For some products it may take hours to work through the forms, saving and returning after finding or creating some data. If users were able to fast forward and see the whole workflow, and what will be asked for on later pages, many would not even start. Without a very good technical reason there should be a first page overview or summary of all information the process will require. Any contractual data should legally be offered up front. Of note, an audio-book publisher called Findaway really pissed me off. It took me many hours to fill in their workflow, and only on the last page was I able to read the actual contract. At the end, after a blank page IIRC, was a lonely clause assigning rights to Apple to use my voice recordings for training their machine learning. I emailed the company and told then this was unacceptable. They sheepishly suggested I could just sign the contract and then "opt out" of distributing with Apple. Needless to say that was the end of that conversation and my interest in Findaway. I had to take the hit of losing several hours of my time.