Collection of Dark Patterns and Unethical Design
The website showcases various dark patterns used in digital interfaces to deceive users, including confirmshaming and hidden costs. Examples from companies like Lyft and Microsoft illustrate manipulative tactics.
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The website provides a catalog of dark patterns, unethical design practices used in digital interfaces to deceive users. Examples include bait and switch, confirmshaming, disguised ads, hidden costs, misdirection, nagging, privacy zuckering, roach motel, sneak into basket, and trick questions. Each category contains specific cases from various companies like Lyft, Microsoft, DoorDash, and more, illustrating how these patterns manipulate user behavior. Dark patterns such as misdirection aim to distract users from their intended actions, while roach motel tactics make it challenging to cancel subscriptions once signed up. Privacy zuckering involves tricking users into sharing more information than intended, and sneak into basket adds extra items during checkout. The website aims to raise awareness about these practices to help users recognize and avoid falling victim to deceptive design strategies online.
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31 commentsBooking.com -> Pretending other people are looking at the same property
Booking.com -> Pretending the venue is about to run out of places and there are only "2 places left..."
Any dating platform -> Anything goes...
I have wondered about the merits of creating some sort of ethical software charter which companies can adhere to or face questions as to why they do not adhere.
I feel like this should exist already but I am not aware of such a thing.
As phones are used in almost every aspect of our lives now, the very devices we use (even our cars) are listening to our most private conversations and leaking them to companies with the sole interest of engineering our money out of our pockets faster. It also empowers CEOs and mega-company insiders to run espionage on and leverage anyone they want in the world, as everyone, even government officials and agents use cell phones.
It's completely contradictory to every aspect of law and democracy, as well as creating a loophole that invalidates privacy and individual rights against self incrimination, and it's only going to get covertly worse moving forward unless it's totally banned with sever criminal consequences as a practice. This data can also be tapped into by any interest through data hacking, or if one can pay for the info, as it's logged across everything from the car you drive to every app you use (especially when TFA is involved).
I've been using spotify for over a decade, paying for premium almost the entire time. The last couple years have just been awful with ads, 'promotions', and 'suggestions' that are just more ads.
Popups for concerts every 5th time I open the ad. There's NO way of turning this 'feature' off. I turned off concert recommendations, but there is NO way of turning off concert recommendations IN THE APP. I spent about 3 weeks with their support until I got in contact with a developer who confirmed this. 100% 'nagging'
The suggestions and mixes, I am convinced, include artists that pay for promotion. Artists that I have 0 interest in, and are only tangentially related to a song in a playlist of mine. 'disguised ads'
Pushing podcasts EVERYWHERE. Why can't I remove the 'podcasts' playlist from my playlists? I didn't create it, why is it there? Also auto-playing podcast videos on the spotify home page, man that bugs me. And the spotify home used to be really useful, now it's 60% ads, and 40% useful. I think this is a form of 'nagging' too.
I've had 'recommended artists' that are from genres I don't listen to. 'disguised ads'
Spotify has gotten much more aggressive in the past couple years.
my tech savvy SO accidentally signed up for expensive subscriptions because they were hidden at the bottom of her cart, and it took threat of legal action to get customer support to cancel. never boycotted a shop faster.
1. Not possible from a mobile browser.
2. Installed the app: not possible.
3. Put mobile browser into desktop rendering, and somewhere was able to get it to unsubscribe.
The worst of it all! EU should fine such practices.
Don’t forget all these
Yet they all offer it, even in the Netherlands where paying via your bank account is trivial, fast, and save (IDEAL).
1: Have a look in the various national newspapers on that topic. It's distressing.
Vueling airline is a my lastest candidate for misdirection.
User Goal: Buy a ticket that allows to store your carry-on in the overhead cabin storage on the plane.
They give you only two ticket options at first. Squeeze your small bag under your seat with their strictest size limitations with no overhead cabin allowance or pay extra for checked-in luggage. At that point you look around for an overhead cabin option, alas you find no such option and the lowest tier specifically states overhead cabin storage is not permitted. So since there is no overhead cabin option you're forced to select the check-in luggage option as a last resort.
But several steps later there is the seat selection step. There are some seat options that include overhead cabin storage. The price for those seats are cheaper than the checkin baggage option several steps earlier. So in order not to be the dumbass that bought both checkin luggage and overhead storage for no reason, you go back to the beginning and pick the lowest tier option and click through all the steps all over again...
Long logout - complete logout needs extra steps after clicking logout e.g. removing/forgetting the account. Often times the action is not even accessible from the logout screen either. On a shared machine it even leaks pii. Linkedin, Gmail, Facebook
> What's a Privacy Zuckering? A service or a website tricks you into sharing more information with it than you really want to.
I wonder how Zuck feels about that being the impact he left on the world.
You do a video call on some service, like Messenger or WhatsApp or Zoom.
After the call, you get a popup asking you about the quality of the service, on a 5-point scale.
If you click 5-stars, it says "thanks" and lets you go.
If you pick one of the others, it does the whole "oh help us do better, please fill out this form" spiel which is obviously a lot of work.
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FTC finds 'dark patterns' used by a majority of subscription apps and websites
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