14 ms·

Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

151 points by willfarrell 14y ago

hakaaaaak 14y ago
There weren't many patterns presented, so here are a few of those and some more: Some evil UX patterns are: * Opt-in: Prepopulating option with more expensive or recurring payment. (example was a donation, but Amazon does this when not defaulting to free 5-7 day ground shipping after promising free shipping prior to putting it in cart! which is much worse since they are bait and switching) * Opt-in, part 2: Making changes subtle changes can be evil. By switching around buttons, etc. after having it work a certain way a long time and not changing the interface enough, you trigger muscle memory to do the wrong thing. Amazon has exploited this as well with the (not) free shipping option. * Difficult to quit/cancel: also mentioned in the OP's linked presentation. In addition to more steps or having to email, etc. they don't even give you a documented option, e.g. you have to email them so they will delete your account and they say that nowhere in the site. * Glossing over legal: Small text or less readable font to hide details is evil. * Hiding legal: putting legal disclaimers in an area of the site that is hard to get to is evil. * Unnecessary login: making the user login because they might want to retain info about something, when really the site owner is getting more benefit (selling email address or lead info, mining it themselves, etc.). * Asking for more than is needed for user to accomplish what they want: asking the user for more info than they need to provide in order to get lead info when they are not aware you will contact them is evil. * Unintended use of data: Worked for a telecom that had page to get phone# to look up service availability and then they would use that for lead info. * Easy to determine security questions: this is just stupid. Many are easy to find out and they do little more than make the uninformed user feel more secure. Examples: birthday, street you grew up on, etc. that can be learned even without social engineering. * Passwords: one of the most archaic and stupid constructs ever. Passwords encourage people to use the same password across sites, so if one is compromised, they all are. An autogenerated passkey and a more secure way to reset it with a new one if your passkey was lost or stolen would beat passwords anyday. SSO only compounds this idiotic UX we can't get rid of. (And we put abusable/hackable cameras in every laptop instead of adding retinal scanners or thumbprint readers in every laptop, which could be viable alternatives.)
- richo 14y ago
  Your password rant falls on it's ass immediately considering that we don't have any way to link your thumbprint to your identity for the remote peer. Using a service like twitter as online identity helps to some degree with having fewer passwords except that then cracking a twitter account gives you access to everything.
- rhizome 14y ago
  Passwords encourage people to use the same password across sites I've heard this said about difficult passwords, but I think this is putting too fine a point on it. Passwords don't encourage anything on their own, except perhaps a consciousness of the basics of security. It's akin to saying that pizza encourages eating it for every meal. I don't think we've yet seen a gene that selfish.
  - bnegreve 14y ago
    > It's akin to saying that pizza encourages eating it for every meal. I am also fine with passwords, but I really dislike useless parallels: Passwords have to be remembered and therefore having many different passwords cause inconvenience. How does this apply to pizza?
    - claudius 14y ago
      I don’t know 95% of my passwords. Opera does, though, and so does a little encrypted text file somewhere on my harddrive. And neither of the two mind if my passwords are all of the form GgSGlIXrPE1IrbhgWFBU. Of course, I only use one computer rather than five different laptops, three tablets and fifty-two smartphones, in which case I imagine it to be tedious to sync them (unless you trust Opera enough to use Opera Sync or some such thing).
      - bruceboughton 14y ago
        Off topic but 1Passsword is cross-platform, syncs via Dropbox and has browser extensions for auto-filling passwords.
anigbrowl 14y ago
+1 for Reynholm Industries in the slide deck.
Monkeyget 14y ago
Nice redesign! It took me a while to find the actual patterns. Shouldn't the list of patterns be visible on the home page or at least accessible from the menu?
greggman 14y ago
No it's not ethical. When I see it as I'm checking out I CANCEL MY ORDER AND LEAVE! I'm not going to do business with a company that is trying to scam me.
- ZoFreX 14y ago
  I've started doing this whenever a company pulls a bait and switch (pet hate of mine). I got an email offer saying a site was $9.95 for 1 year, limited time only... ok sure, big savings and I had been thinking about signing up. Click through and get £9.95. Not cool.
campuscodi 14y ago
I think this is the 6th time this link has been posted here. The site is 4 years old already.
- sbisker 14y ago
  I find that fact impressive, not disconcerting. (Perhaps disconcerting about the evolution of the internet.) It's not often you see a basically unchanged tech website over four years becoming more relevant to the HN community instead of less relevant.
- Foomandoonian 14y ago
  And I don't think the site has improved in any meaningful way. Someone should fork it and make something better. (Also, the headline should be 'Dark Patterns: Are They Ethical?' not 'Is It Ethical'.)
  - seanp2k2 14y ago
    Meh; it's just "begging the question" (the popular use of the phrase, not the pedantic "correct" use of the phrase [quotes because language evolves IMO] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question -- more info if you're interested)
- willfarrell 14y ago
  I thought I found it hear years ago when I was trying to remember it. But was unable to find it. I was surprised when HN let me repost it.
PeterisP 14y ago
Regulation can help. A good example is 3rd party marketing opt-out dark pattern. It is already legislated in a number of countries; and if a local business puts in an opt-out checkbox instead of opt-in ? Blam; this contact info is considered obtained without consent, please delete it and here is the invoice for your fine, thank you very much. Another pattern that can be eliminated is hidden costs - i.e., in EU, you have to advertise the full cost, including the tax and "mandatory convenience fees"; so for some costs you can't hide them away. And of course, the most effective tool is legally mandated rights for returns and cancellations - it gives actual teeth to angry customers, since if you succeed in tricking them, they can just cancel the deal [not neccessarily through a process that the company prescribes] and get full returns.
unclebucknasty 14y ago
Is it a dark pattern when companies like Dwolla walk you through a multi-step signup procees involving a significant amount of info and an email verification, then ask for ultra-sensitive info like SSN only at the very end? Clearly this is done to prevent some abandonment that would occur upon seeing the SSN on the first step of the process. Their idea is that you are already so invested by the end that you are more likely to give up that sensitive info. But, whether it is technically a "dark pattern" or not, it feels really, really slimy.
- benburton 14y ago
  Feels a bit like lowballing.
  - unclebucknasty 14y ago
    It does. And it definitely sends the message that it's all about them: "We don't really care about your trite security concerns. We just want you in our database."
- seanp2k2 14y ago
  I like the one that Flickr (Yahoo) is now using where you can "log in with Facebook!" only to have it take you to a page where you still must have a Yahoo ID to continue. I took some screenshots of the process: http://imgur.com/a/TPdYb http://imgur.com/a/TPdYb Yahoo ID registration requires your DOB, full name, gender (of which only M/F are options), and postal code. Mobile phone / alt e-mail are the only non-required fields in the screenshots I linked.
  - unclebucknasty 14y ago
    Yeah, I guess it's easier to fit "log in with Facebook" on a button than it is to fit "let us hijack your FB feed, then sign in with Yahoo".
ck2 14y ago
If you wouldn't do it to your mother, it's not ethical. So, most marketing isn't ethical at all. But that doesn't stop most marketing.
- raverbashing 14y ago
  It's a good measure, but I'd say most marketing is ethical Several are sleazy yes, but I wouldn't say it's most of them
  - ck2 14y ago
    Sleazy is a subset of non-ethical, not an intersection. If you wouldn't want to see it done to your mom, it's unethical. It can also be sleazy but it starts with not ethical. You cannot do something sleazy that is ethical. You might be thinking of illegal. You can be sleazy and legal. You can also be legal and unethical. (Thanks to some lawmakers and enforcers who are also unethical and sleazy.)
- Mahn 14y ago
  This. Most marketing is all about getting the click, the sign up or the sale, regardless whether what's being marketed is good or the best option for the possible customer. That's not something I'd avise to do to my mother.
- dizzystar 14y ago
  Not allowed to down-vote, but this is using a very large brush to paint a ton of people the same color as bad apples. Most marketing around you is perfectly ethical with no desire to trick you into buying things you don't want. Most sales people you meat are perfectly ethical. There are, of course, some idiots, but that is about as productive and narrow-minded as saying that since some small percentage of programmers are misogynist, all programmers are.
  - Fargren 14y ago
    As an aside: down-vote on HN isn't for disagreement. It's should be used when you think a post doesn't add to the discussion. The fact that you are giving an interesting counterpoint, I think, shows that the post isn't worthy of a down-vote.
rubbingalcohol 14y ago
Requiring the user to watch a Flash video is a dark pattern.
- camus 14y ago
  requiring anything from the user is already.
josscrowcroft 14y ago
For a shining example of dark patterns, simply try to book a flight on Ryanair without accidentally opting in to their upsell products. Try to continue without insurance? Massive popup. "Last year X,000 people lost $$$... can you really take the risk?" And two buttons. One big green one, "Continue with insurance" and one, tiny, non-button text link saying "No thanks, I'll take the risk." That's one example. There are dozens.
- camus 14y ago
  I dont have much money , but i'll never fly with these punks. I did it once in 2002 to go to Eire , thought the plane would crash.
  - dabeeeenster 14y ago
    Much as I hate Ryanair, they have never had a serious accident in their entire history, and they have a LOT of planes...
    - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
      Charlie: Ray, all airlines have crashed at one time or another, that doesn't mean that they are not safe. Raymond: Qantas. Qantas never crashed. Charlie: Qantas? Raymond: Never crashed. Charlie: Oh that's gonna do me a lot of good because Qantas doesn't fly to Los Angeles out of Cincinnati, you have to get to Melbourne! Melbourne, Australia in order to get the plane that flies to Los Angeles! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095953/quotes http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095953/quotes
    - jules 14y ago
      Ryanair does not only have dark patterns on its website, but also within the company. Two months ago there was a program on Dutch TV where a couple of Ryanair pilots anonymously stated that Ryanair flies with dangerously low fuel to keep costs down. Here is the video with english subtitles: http://reporter.kro.nl/seizoenen/2012/afleveringen/28-12-2012/extras/mayday_mayday_-_international_version http://reporter.kro.nl/seizoenen/2012/afleveringen/28-12-201... While this hasn't lead to an accident yet, it has lead to several mayday calls when planes had to fly to another airport due to weather conditions or had to wait in the air because the airport was busy. The airport had to let Ryanair land before its turn. If the other firms that had aircraft landing at the airport had been flying with similarly low fuel it would have been a crash. and part 2: http://reporter.kro.nl/seizoenen/2013/afleveringen/03-01-2013/extras/mayday_mayday_part_2_-_english_version http://reporter.kro.nl/seizoenen/2013/afleveringen/03-01-201... This part is partially about the fuel issue but also about other issues, such as pilots being pressured to fly while ill or very tired.
andrew_wc_brown 14y ago
The worst I've encountered recently was Mastercard. They call thanking you and your family for using their service. They say as a thank you they give for free, card protection services, by accepting their thank you/free gift your opting in for a reoccurring service that will charge you next month. Its the devil's wording.
- seanp2k2 14y ago
  As a general rule, almost nothing "FREE!" ever is in the strictest sense of the word.
anonhacker 14y ago
Thanks for posting this, I'm going do try writing a NLP bot that identifies some "dark patterns"
- willfarrell 14y ago
  Wound love to see it when it's done
sigzero 14y ago
Once you "trick" anyone to do anything, it is not longer ethical.
emehrkay 14y ago
Privacy Zuckering -- so perfect that it doesnt need an example.
morpher 14y ago
The slide cast doesn't show up in mobile safari. But, there is a link on the page to a list with detailed descriptions and examples: http://darkpatterns.org/what_is_a_dark_pattern/ http://darkpatterns.org/what_is_a_dark_pattern/
michaelfeathers 14y ago
It's interesting to talk about the ethics of this sort of thing because the rabbit hole is very deep. I think it was P.T. Barnum who can came up with the idea of making customers walk though the gift shop to exit his circus. I think of that every time I walk though an airport that does the same thing on entry or exit from its international flights area. That's an example of user interface design, isn't it? And, what about the process of automobile sales? For nearly a century buyers have gone through the ritual of negotiating with a sales person who goes to the back room for 15 minutes at a time to "talk the manager" only to slurp on a coffee cup. That's a user interface as well. I'm not defending the patterns in the presentation, but I don't see them as anything new. The medium is just different. Some businesses are just particularly shameless, and that's a problem.
- jhspaybar 14y ago
  As someone who spent 10 years selling cars, the salesman really is "talking to the manager". There is just incompetence and slow workers everywhere. Also, often times that manager has 5 salesmen in line wanting an offer to give their customers. Throw in folks who need the dealership to get financing, etc and it is just an inefficient bottleneck. Lots of companies have tried changing it, but it seems the old school method keeps being the best way to maximize profit.
  - milesf 14y ago
    It's a negotiating tactic called "higher authority" http://www.negotiationdynamics.com/Authlim.asp http://www.negotiationdynamics.com/Authlim.asp
- unclebucknasty 14y ago
  The well-placed gift shop is user interface design. The lying car salesman is just dishonesty. I think they are different. Taking it back to the subject medium: well placed ads or upsells are like the gift shop. They represent opportunities to make sales at the right time. Nothing wrong with that. But, deliberately opting people into a product by subtly checking a box or otherwise in a manner that you are hoping they don't notice or understand is just dishonest. It aims to deceive people, not sell a product. So, the proper anology is that the gift shop automatically debits your bank account as you walk through, while a worker slips an item in your bag. If you make it out of the airport without noticing, you're stuck with the bill.
drunkenmasta 14y ago
Will someone please recommend some (academic) books on the subject closest to "Dark patterns?"
- chrstphrhrt 14y ago
  Read this last summer: http://books.google.ca/books/about/Exploitation.html?id=2eyHV0r7J64C http://books.google.ca/books/about/Exploitation.html?id=2eyH... Thought it was good because it doesn't give a lot of attention to purely economic stuff.
ninetax 14y ago
I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way but I think this information would have been presented way better in a video or an article. I was hard to connect the meaning between some of the videos and I feel like there was some dialog I was missing. I hope the trend of just releasing slide shows in lieu of articles or videos does not become a trend.
- RougeFemme 14y ago
  I agree. This seemed to be a lazy or "less competent" way of presenting the material.
DanBC 14y ago
When your dark pattern attracts the attention of the FCC you know something's wrong. (http://transition.fcc.gov/transaction/aol-tw/exparte/nationwide3_exparte110600.pdf http://transition.fcc.gov/transaction/aol-tw/exparte/nationw...)
jaddison 14y ago
Perhaps this is obvious, but this affiliate marketing in a nutshell - that is, the heavy usage of "dark patterns".
fridental 14y ago
I'm very disturbed. The only reason you've got job and work for a company is that the company expects you can help it to make (more) money. The things you've mentioned do help boosting income, for some companies only in short-term, for other companies even in long-term. If your personal ethics are not OK with it, there are only two ethical things you can do about it. Either you design a UX that is equally efficient in terms of KPI, but conforms to your ethics, or you quit the job. Remaining employed, receiving your paycheck, but working against the company and waving ethics codes around or quietly sabotaging boss' decisions is NOT ethical.

151 points by willfarrell 14y ago

There weren't many patterns presented, so here are a few of those and some more: Some evil UX patterns are: * Opt-in: Prepopulating option with more expensive or recurring payment. (example was a donation, but Amazon does this when not defaulting to free 5-7 day ground shipping after promising free shipping prior to putting it in cart! which is much worse since they are bait and switching) * Opt-in, part 2: Making changes subtle changes can be evil. By switching around buttons, etc. after having it work a certain way a long time and not changing the interface enough, you trigger muscle memory to do the wrong thing. Amazon has exploited this as well with the (not) free shipping option. * Difficult to quit/cancel: also mentioned in the OP's linked presentation. In addition to more steps or having to email, etc. they don't even give you a documented option, e.g. you have to email them so they will delete your account and they say that nowhere in the site. * Glossing over legal: Small text or less readable font to hide details is evil. * Hiding legal: putting legal disclaimers in an area of the site that is hard to get to is evil. * Unnecessary login: making the user login because they might want to retain info about something, when really the site owner is getting more benefit (selling email address or lead info, mining it themselves, etc.). * Asking for more than is needed for user to accomplish what they want: asking the user for more info than they need to provide in order to get lead info when they are not aware you will contact them is evil. * Unintended use of data: Worked for a telecom that had page to get phone# to look up service availability and then they would use that for lead info. * Easy to determine security questions: this is just stupid. Many are easy to find out and they do little more than make the uninformed user feel more secure. Examples: birthday, street you grew up on, etc. that can be learned even without social engineering. * Passwords: one of the most archaic and stupid constructs ever. Passwords encourage people to use the same password across sites, so if one is compromised, they all are. An autogenerated passkey and a more secure way to reset it with a new one if your passkey was lost or stolen would beat passwords anyday. SSO only compounds this idiotic UX we can't get rid of. (And we put abusable/hackable cameras in every laptop instead of adding retinal scanners or thumbprint readers in every laptop, which could be viable alternatives.)

richo 14y ago
Your password rant falls on it's ass immediately considering that we don't have any way to link your thumbprint to your identity for the remote peer. Using a service like twitter as online identity helps to some degree with having fewer passwords except that then cracking a twitter account gives you access to everything.
rhizome 14y ago
Passwords encourage people to use the same password across sites I've heard this said about difficult passwords, but I think this is putting too fine a point on it. Passwords don't encourage anything on their own, except perhaps a consciousness of the basics of security. It's akin to saying that pizza encourages eating it for every meal. I don't think we've yet seen a gene that selfish.
- bnegreve 14y ago
  > It's akin to saying that pizza encourages eating it for every meal. I am also fine with passwords, but I really dislike useless parallels: Passwords have to be remembered and therefore having many different passwords cause inconvenience. How does this apply to pizza?
  - claudius 14y ago
    I don’t know 95% of my passwords. Opera does, though, and so does a little encrypted text file somewhere on my harddrive. And neither of the two mind if my passwords are all of the form GgSGlIXrPE1IrbhgWFBU. Of course, I only use one computer rather than five different laptops, three tablets and fifty-two smartphones, in which case I imagine it to be tedious to sync them (unless you trust Opera enough to use Opera Sync or some such thing).
    - bruceboughton 14y ago
      Off topic but 1Passsword is cross-platform, syncs via Dropbox and has browser extensions for auto-filling passwords.

anigbrowl 14y ago

+1 for Reynholm Industries in the slide deck.

Monkeyget 14y ago

Nice redesign! It took me a while to find the actual patterns. Shouldn't the list of patterns be visible on the home page or at least accessible from the menu?

greggman 14y ago

No it's not ethical. When I see it as I'm checking out I CANCEL MY ORDER AND LEAVE! I'm not going to do business with a company that is trying to scam me.

ZoFreX 14y ago
I've started doing this whenever a company pulls a bait and switch (pet hate of mine). I got an email offer saying a site was $9.95 for 1 year, limited time only... ok sure, big savings and I had been thinking about signing up. Click through and get £9.95. Not cool.

campuscodi 14y ago

I think this is the 6th time this link has been posted here. The site is 4 years old already.

sbisker 14y ago
I find that fact impressive, not disconcerting. (Perhaps disconcerting about the evolution of the internet.) It's not often you see a basically unchanged tech website over four years becoming more relevant to the HN community instead of less relevant.
Foomandoonian 14y ago
And I don't think the site has improved in any meaningful way. Someone should fork it and make something better. (Also, the headline should be 'Dark Patterns: Are They Ethical?' not 'Is It Ethical'.)
- seanp2k2 14y ago
  Meh; it's just "begging the question" (the popular use of the phrase, not the pedantic "correct" use of the phrase [quotes because language evolves IMO] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question -- more info if you're interested)
willfarrell 14y ago
I thought I found it hear years ago when I was trying to remember it. But was unable to find it. I was surprised when HN let me repost it.

PeterisP 14y ago

Regulation can help. A good example is 3rd party marketing opt-out dark pattern. It is already legislated in a number of countries; and if a local business puts in an opt-out checkbox instead of opt-in ? Blam; this contact info is considered obtained without consent, please delete it and here is the invoice for your fine, thank you very much. Another pattern that can be eliminated is hidden costs - i.e., in EU, you have to advertise the full cost, including the tax and "mandatory convenience fees"; so for some costs you can't hide them away. And of course, the most effective tool is legally mandated rights for returns and cancellations - it gives actual teeth to angry customers, since if you succeed in tricking them, they can just cancel the deal [not neccessarily through a process that the company prescribes] and get full returns.

unclebucknasty 14y ago

Is it a dark pattern when companies like Dwolla walk you through a multi-step signup procees involving a significant amount of info and an email verification, then ask for ultra-sensitive info like SSN only at the very end? Clearly this is done to prevent some abandonment that would occur upon seeing the SSN on the first step of the process. Their idea is that you are already so invested by the end that you are more likely to give up that sensitive info. But, whether it is technically a "dark pattern" or not, it feels really, really slimy.

benburton 14y ago
Feels a bit like lowballing.
- unclebucknasty 14y ago
  It does. And it definitely sends the message that it's all about them: "We don't really care about your trite security concerns. We just want you in our database."
seanp2k2 14y ago
I like the one that Flickr (Yahoo) is now using where you can "log in with Facebook!" only to have it take you to a page where you still must have a Yahoo ID to continue. I took some screenshots of the process: http://imgur.com/a/TPdYb http://imgur.com/a/TPdYb Yahoo ID registration requires your DOB, full name, gender (of which only M/F are options), and postal code. Mobile phone / alt e-mail are the only non-required fields in the screenshots I linked.
- unclebucknasty 14y ago
  Yeah, I guess it's easier to fit "log in with Facebook" on a button than it is to fit "let us hijack your FB feed, then sign in with Yahoo".

ck2 14y ago

If you wouldn't do it to your mother, it's not ethical. So, most marketing isn't ethical at all. But that doesn't stop most marketing.

raverbashing 14y ago
It's a good measure, but I'd say most marketing is ethical Several are sleazy yes, but I wouldn't say it's most of them
- ck2 14y ago
  Sleazy is a subset of non-ethical, not an intersection. If you wouldn't want to see it done to your mom, it's unethical. It can also be sleazy but it starts with not ethical. You cannot do something sleazy that is ethical. You might be thinking of illegal. You can be sleazy and legal. You can also be legal and unethical. (Thanks to some lawmakers and enforcers who are also unethical and sleazy.)
Mahn 14y ago
This. Most marketing is all about getting the click, the sign up or the sale, regardless whether what's being marketed is good or the best option for the possible customer. That's not something I'd avise to do to my mother.
dizzystar 14y ago
Not allowed to down-vote, but this is using a very large brush to paint a ton of people the same color as bad apples. Most marketing around you is perfectly ethical with no desire to trick you into buying things you don't want. Most sales people you meat are perfectly ethical. There are, of course, some idiots, but that is about as productive and narrow-minded as saying that since some small percentage of programmers are misogynist, all programmers are.
- Fargren 14y ago
  As an aside: down-vote on HN isn't for disagreement. It's should be used when you think a post doesn't add to the discussion. The fact that you are giving an interesting counterpoint, I think, shows that the post isn't worthy of a down-vote.

rubbingalcohol 14y ago

Requiring the user to watch a Flash video is a dark pattern.

camus 14y ago
requiring anything from the user is already.

josscrowcroft 14y ago

For a shining example of dark patterns, simply try to book a flight on Ryanair without accidentally opting in to their upsell products. Try to continue without insurance? Massive popup. "Last year X,000 people lost $$$... can you really take the risk?" And two buttons. One big green one, "Continue with insurance" and one, tiny, non-button text link saying "No thanks, I'll take the risk." That's one example. There are dozens.

camus 14y ago
I dont have much money , but i'll never fly with these punks. I did it once in 2002 to go to Eire , thought the plane would crash.
- dabeeeenster 14y ago
  Much as I hate Ryanair, they have never had a serious accident in their entire history, and they have a LOT of planes...
  - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
    Charlie: Ray, all airlines have crashed at one time or another, that doesn't mean that they are not safe. Raymond: Qantas. Qantas never crashed. Charlie: Qantas? Raymond: Never crashed. Charlie: Oh that's gonna do me a lot of good because Qantas doesn't fly to Los Angeles out of Cincinnati, you have to get to Melbourne! Melbourne, Australia in order to get the plane that flies to Los Angeles! http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095953/quotes http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095953/quotes
  - jules 14y ago
    Ryanair does not only have dark patterns on its website, but also within the company. Two months ago there was a program on Dutch TV where a couple of Ryanair pilots anonymously stated that Ryanair flies with dangerously low fuel to keep costs down. Here is the video with english subtitles: http://reporter.kro.nl/seizoenen/2012/afleveringen/28-12-2012/extras/mayday_mayday_-_international_version http://reporter.kro.nl/seizoenen/2012/afleveringen/28-12-201... While this hasn't lead to an accident yet, it has lead to several mayday calls when planes had to fly to another airport due to weather conditions or had to wait in the air because the airport was busy. The airport had to let Ryanair land before its turn. If the other firms that had aircraft landing at the airport had been flying with similarly low fuel it would have been a crash. and part 2: http://reporter.kro.nl/seizoenen/2013/afleveringen/03-01-2013/extras/mayday_mayday_part_2_-_english_version http://reporter.kro.nl/seizoenen/2013/afleveringen/03-01-201... This part is partially about the fuel issue but also about other issues, such as pilots being pressured to fly while ill or very tired.

andrew_wc_brown 14y ago

The worst I've encountered recently was Mastercard. They call thanking you and your family for using their service. They say as a thank you they give for free, card protection services, by accepting their thank you/free gift your opting in for a reoccurring service that will charge you next month. Its the devil's wording.

seanp2k2 14y ago
As a general rule, almost nothing "FREE!" ever is in the strictest sense of the word.

anonhacker 14y ago

Thanks for posting this, I'm going do try writing a NLP bot that identifies some "dark patterns"

willfarrell 14y ago
Wound love to see it when it's done

sigzero 14y ago

Once you "trick" anyone to do anything, it is not longer ethical.

emehrkay 14y ago

Privacy Zuckering -- so perfect that it doesnt need an example.

morpher 14y ago

The slide cast doesn't show up in mobile safari. But, there is a link on the page to a list with detailed descriptions and examples: http://darkpatterns.org/what_is_a_dark_pattern/ http://darkpatterns.org/what_is_a_dark_pattern/

michaelfeathers 14y ago

It's interesting to talk about the ethics of this sort of thing because the rabbit hole is very deep. I think it was P.T. Barnum who can came up with the idea of making customers walk though the gift shop to exit his circus. I think of that every time I walk though an airport that does the same thing on entry or exit from its international flights area. That's an example of user interface design, isn't it? And, what about the process of automobile sales? For nearly a century buyers have gone through the ritual of negotiating with a sales person who goes to the back room for 15 minutes at a time to "talk the manager" only to slurp on a coffee cup. That's a user interface as well. I'm not defending the patterns in the presentation, but I don't see them as anything new. The medium is just different. Some businesses are just particularly shameless, and that's a problem.

jhspaybar 14y ago
As someone who spent 10 years selling cars, the salesman really is "talking to the manager". There is just incompetence and slow workers everywhere. Also, often times that manager has 5 salesmen in line wanting an offer to give their customers. Throw in folks who need the dealership to get financing, etc and it is just an inefficient bottleneck. Lots of companies have tried changing it, but it seems the old school method keeps being the best way to maximize profit.
- milesf 14y ago
  It's a negotiating tactic called "higher authority" http://www.negotiationdynamics.com/Authlim.asp http://www.negotiationdynamics.com/Authlim.asp
unclebucknasty 14y ago
The well-placed gift shop is user interface design. The lying car salesman is just dishonesty. I think they are different. Taking it back to the subject medium: well placed ads or upsells are like the gift shop. They represent opportunities to make sales at the right time. Nothing wrong with that. But, deliberately opting people into a product by subtly checking a box or otherwise in a manner that you are hoping they don't notice or understand is just dishonest. It aims to deceive people, not sell a product. So, the proper anology is that the gift shop automatically debits your bank account as you walk through, while a worker slips an item in your bag. If you make it out of the airport without noticing, you're stuck with the bill.

drunkenmasta 14y ago

Will someone please recommend some (academic) books on the subject closest to "Dark patterns?"

chrstphrhrt 14y ago
Read this last summer: http://books.google.ca/books/about/Exploitation.html?id=2eyHV0r7J64C http://books.google.ca/books/about/Exploitation.html?id=2eyH... Thought it was good because it doesn't give a lot of attention to purely economic stuff.

ninetax 14y ago

I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way but I think this information would have been presented way better in a video or an article. I was hard to connect the meaning between some of the videos and I feel like there was some dialog I was missing. I hope the trend of just releasing slide shows in lieu of articles or videos does not become a trend.

RougeFemme 14y ago
I agree. This seemed to be a lazy or "less competent" way of presenting the material.

DanBC 14y ago

When your dark pattern attracts the attention of the FCC you know something's wrong. (http://transition.fcc.gov/transaction/aol-tw/exparte/nationwide3_exparte110600.pdf http://transition.fcc.gov/transaction/aol-tw/exparte/nationw...)

jaddison 14y ago

Perhaps this is obvious, but this affiliate marketing in a nutshell - that is, the heavy usage of "dark patterns".

fridental 14y ago

I'm very disturbed. The only reason you've got job and work for a company is that the company expects you can help it to make (more) money. The things you've mentioned do help boosting income, for some companies only in short-term, for other companies even in long-term. If your personal ethics are not OK with it, there are only two ethical things you can do about it. Either you design a UX that is equally efficient in terms of KPI, but conforms to your ethics, or you quit the job. Remaining employed, receiving your paycheck, but working against the company and waving ethics codes around or quietly sabotaging boss' decisions is NOT ethical.