Majority of sites and apps use dark patterns in the marketing of subscriptions

I absolutely hate subscriptions, I can't wrap my head around why people got so comfortable with allowing companies to charge their credit cards whenever they want, how much they want and how long they want.. Yes it's convenient, but there are so many potential problems - what if you loose access to your account and basically won't be able to cancel the subscription? what if company will continue to charge you even after closing your account? what if they accidently charge you for who knows what? what if you simply forget you even had a subscription?

I've had enough bad experiences with subscriptions that I avoid them at all cost, just to give an example - I subscribed to a popular streaming service because I wanted to watch a movie that was only available on their platform. I immediately canceled my subscription so it would end with current billing month, but to my surprise when I checked my credit card history several months later I've noticed an additional charge that was around 10x what I paid for the one month of subscription! I emailed them and they answered me that "it was some kind of mistake" and refunded me, but it made me realize how dangerous subscriptions are.

Subscriptions should be able to be paid by invoices - you receive an invoice before next billing period and if you don't pay, account is locked, but of course that would give user too much control over their spendings and companies clearly don't want that.

Why isn't there yet a "two clicks away unsubscribe" law? Unsubscribing from any service is two clicks away: one for unsubscribing and the second should be a mail with a link to confirm that you effectively want to unsubscribe. And you should receive another email confirming that you definitely unsubscribed. This button for unsubscribing should be visible at all times from whatever app/browser/GUI you're using. It is as simple as that. Why isn't this a solved problem yet?

I was so hopeful when subscriptions became a thing because it could technically solve one of the big problems with desktop software: updates.

Selling a version of software that you "own" creates a perverse incentive: charge as much as you can and as often as you can for "upgrades". Back when Photoshop was sold this way, support for the raw formats of new cameras that came out was gated for absolutely no reason behind buying a newer version of Photoshop. Even bugfixes would eventually only be applied to the latest version or two.

And what constitutes a major version requiring a paid upgrade anyway? Well that's completely arbitrary but the company is incentivized to make that happen as often as possible.

Subscriptions technically mean the company can just keep updating the software. There's only one version to support, really. There's no incentive to gate features behind another paid update.

The gold standard for subscriptions is Jetbrains. Cancel anytime. When you do cancel, whatever version you had you got to keep, basically. You got warnings in your email that you would be charged in a few weeks if you didn't cancel. The prices were reasonable. Jetbrains quite literally did everything right.

Then there's Adobe. The subscription prices are pretty outrageous. No warning. Hard to cancel. Easy to get a recurring charge. Adobe, like many companies, seems to have decided that whatever the sticker price was for the standalone software, charge that every year in a subscription.

But before you start waxing lyrical about the halcyon days of software you "own", you've either forgotten or never experienced the shady things software compnaies did to maximize revenue then as well.

Im more shocked by the world of direct mail advertising. I constantly receive important and substantive looking letters from banks, car insurance, car warranty resellers that are all aiming to trigger a negative emotional reaction (urgency) so you open their mail and don’t throw it immediately in the trash. The sheer volume of junk mail I receive and its toll on the environment throughout the entire chain honestly makes me shudder.

In the digital world FIGMA - Is by far the worst at adding monthly users to your account, without clear indication that it’s happened and they make it incredibly difficult to find where to unsubscribe those users as an Admin

These dark patterns are also pervasive across all of American society in general. A common one that is spread across many aspects of American society is the hiding of the full cost of something, e.g., flights, apartment leases, home purchases, car purchases, internet contracts, etc. where there are all kinds of last moment cost ad-ons. That may look like extra monthly fees on apartment leases beyond the price that was advertised, air travel that obscures things like the baggage charges, internet service that requires monthly equipment rental and various fees, etc.

You know it’s all deceptive and fraudulent just by virtue of that they hide it, but also that the companies usually vehemently resist being transparent about the coerced extraction of money, not really all that different than theft. When someone holds a gun to your head you also have a choice to not hand over your money.

It gets worse when you're a contractor and regular consumer protections don't apply, since they address you as a business.

I'm currently receiving unwanted attention from a credit scoring company, whose sales person said falsehoods about their records about me just to make a sale. I had to go to their office to confirm that without buying a subscription, because while they're legally compelled to give me this information, they don't have to make it easy, so the only ways are appearing there personally or usig snail mail.

FYI: the specific dark patterns are listed and described on pages 8-16 of the report:

https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/science-and-technology/dark-co...

> They generally fall in one of the following categories:

> forced action, interface interference, nagging, obstruction, sneaking, social proof, urgency

I think every subscription should be required to have an information label, akin to the Broadband Consumer Labels (https://www.fcc.gov/broadbandlabels) that contains basic facts about the subscription, e.g.

- Price (only Monthly/Annual prices are acceptable),

- Additional data if this is an introductory rate,

- Minimum length of contract,

- Whether the contract auto-renews,

- How to cancel,

- Cancellation period (i.e. 30 days in advance of renewal),

- Any cancellation charges,

I am not sure if social proof is a dark pattern. If you use it to say, here, we already have x number of satisfied customers, what is possibly wrong with that?

Is anybody surprised by this? Companies are not your friend, they only want your money...

I won't even agree to 6 months no payments or interest when buying things - sure it is 6 months I don't have to pay and I can invest the money to make interest. However they are looking for ways to make me forget to pay after 6 months.

It's hardly an ideal alternative to ethical business practices, but a few financial tools exist to deal with this. Banks that let you create virtual cards, or a service like Privacy.com, for example.

I've even gone a step further with multiple bank accounts. All of my income goes into an account that doesn't even have a debit card attached to it, and I only allow a couple of sources to even ACH out of that account (like my mortgage). I manually move money out into accounts I use for spending, bills, etc. (not that hard, with tools like Zelle)

I use virtual card and lock the card as soon as I’m done. The company will send a few nag notices then cancel for me.

I’d propose some kind of certification for SaaSes, maybe including a digitally signed seal on the website and a registry, validating that the site doesn’t use dark patterns. Or maybe something like that exists?

Remember subscriptions also came about because of corporate limitations on expenses. If the charge was under the corporate limit then an often burdensome and time consuming approval process wasn't neccesary.

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2004/12/15/camels-and-rubber-...

While Patreon is often to support an individual artist, it's still a subscription. I wonder how often people sign up and forget they're a member. If your email inbox has 10,000 unreads and you don't check your bank statement, it'll just keep you on as a member forever. Especially since expiring credit card numbers are automatically relinked.

Why exactly does an international organisation have the US FTC as part of its logo and advertise a US .gov side?

Yup, I'm about ready for governments to get involved here.

The place I buy my laundry detergent from now wants a subscription in return for 20% off so now I have to subscribe every time I purchase it, and then unsubscribe. Or be the sucker who pays 20% extra for it.

Who in higher education is teaching and encouraging dark patterns?

Where are people learning not just how to design them, but that there's no ethical impact to subjecting people to them?

The term "Dark Pattern" is at least ridiculous. Article is trash tier. Still gas 226 comments. Hacker News is a place of schizos.

Get a life!

Not really surprising. The only time my world was rocked was when I figured out a middle-class high-priced spa my partner and I are regularily visiting since more then 10 years is using hidden divs to hide pr0n-akin SEO on their main page. We only "saw" it because a screen reader we were using ignored the visibiliy of elements. Felt pretty surreal, but helped me to understand that everyone is doing fowl-play these days.

subscriptions should just be illegal

so sick of these bottom feeder apps praying on users forgetting that they are subscribed so they can keep extracting life-essence from your empty husk of a corpse

"traders"?

we should use the more accurate term 'Modern User Retention Strategies'