Dark Patterns: Inside the interfaces designed to trick you

http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/29/4640308/dark-patterns-inside-the-interfaces-designed-to-trick-you

by Evolved • 11 years ago

164 44 11 years ago

theverge.com

iooi• 11 years ago

Weird for the article not to mention http://darkpatterns.org/

It was the first source I know of that started a compilation of these.

psuter• 11 years ago

The article is by the curator of that website, as mentioned in the first two sentences of the author bio.

nodemon• 11 years ago

lol

LoSboccacc• 11 years ago

Yeah my first thought was this. Definitely remembering it from an article of the same author about the new UK directive http://www.90percentofeverything.com/category/dark-patterns/

vonnik• 11 years ago

A similar piece in Pando about a year ago: http://pando.com/2014/04/15/dark-patterns-the-crimes-and-mis...

whoopdedo• 11 years ago

Perhaps the most devious use of an interface anti-pattern is used to put people on the FBI's no-fly-list. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7193631

nsegal• 11 years ago

Limit Ad Tracking is actually listed under Settings > Privacy > Advertising in the latest IOS version.

cpeterso• 11 years ago

The name "dark pattern" is a bit too clever. There ought be a more straightforward term for something this important to become mainstream (like "spam" or "phishing" have).

jbrooksuk2• 11 years ago

Misdirection.

walterbell• 11 years ago

The name dark pattern is a dark pattern.

TeMPOraL3• 11 years ago

I'd go with "cheating", "fraud", or at least "dick move". Though the more popular label now is "growth hacking".

zo1• 11 years ago

Brain-hacking?

Sami_Lehtinen• 11 years ago

SourceForce pushing malware would fit perfectly into this dark pattern category. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8849950

Btw. In most of apps user interfaces and usability is just so bad, that you don't need any dark patterns to completely ruin experience and frustrate users. Making something purely random and without any logic, isn't 'carefully crated', but it does exactly the same.

aaronbrethorst2• 11 years ago

Given that Apple rendered MAC addresses useless for tracking users in iOS 8, and make developers swear up and down that they're only going to use IDFA for advertising, I think they're a bad example to start with.

Tepix2• 11 years ago

Except that they broke the feature so it doesn't really hide your Mac address for most users.

elnate2• 11 years ago

The article was written on August 29, 2013 but iOS 8 was only released in 2014.

aaronbrethorst2• 11 years ago

A good reason for the OP to append (2013) to the title

roel_v2• 11 years ago

"Given that Apple rendered MAC addresses useless for tracking users in iOS 8"

How does that work?

geon• 11 years ago

The idea was to randomize the mac sent out when scanning for wifi networks. The feature appears to be crippled, though.

Kurtz79• 11 years ago

I was always bothered by Ryanair's (biggest low cost EU airline) "optional" travel insurance.

Its mandatory field is a list like this :

"Which is your country of origin ?

Austria

Belgium

Croatia

Denmark

France

I don't want insurance

Italy

Sweden

Ungary"

Priceless.

junto• 11 years ago

I noticed the other day, that if you use the Ryanair booking system in German, you get a much clearer "Keine Versicherung erforderlich" (No Insurance Required) option, right at the top.

http://i.imgur.com/99pIygi.png

It appears that they don't use this dark pattern on German speakers.

expertentipp2• 11 years ago

Could be because of more strict consumer rights. They differ for countries within EU.

jbrooksuk2• 11 years ago

It appears that they don't use this dark pattern on German speakers.

Dark patterns like this are now illegal by European Law. [1]

[1] http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2014/08/26/some-dark-pa...

Tepix2• 11 years ago

A dark pattern that even well-liked websites like SPIEGEL and heise.de use is image galleries with wrong image counts. The gallery claims there are X pictures, yet there are only X-1 and the final one is an advert.

flycaliguy• 11 years ago

Situations like that often make me wonder if I'm being fooled or the person paying for advertising space is. Both I guess.

praptak2• 11 years ago

I have recently spotted a real-life dark pattern: http://imgur.com/wFsfrfl

It's a gas station in Poland. This attempts to trick you into buying the overpriced 98 octane gasoline instead of the default 95 that everyone buys.

Notice that the 95 is hidden in the middle of the diesel fuel dispensers and even its nozzle is designed to match those. The photo doesn't show it well but the actual labels are placed high enough so that you won't spot them unless you deliberately look up.

expertentipp2• 11 years ago

Good catch. It's a pain to decrypt the branding of gas types, they differ from retailer to retailer plus nasty tricks like this. Once you get it right and go to the cashier - "Perhaps chocolate bar? coke? hot dog?" Just let me pay goddammit! Even buying gas is frustrating in Poland!

praptak2• 11 years ago

Yeah, this is also annoying. But the nozzle thing is another class of dickery - they are messing here with a convention established to prevent people from mistaking fuel type.

dsl2• 11 years ago

But if a startup does something similar like highlighting the most expensive option on a subscription page, it is called growth hacking and we applaud the CEO and designers.

Mahn• 11 years ago

Everything is relative. If you define "evil pattern" as a design that encourages a certain action that you (the makers/owners) want the user to do for your own benefit, then practically every single sign up form or landing page is an evil pattern too. Heck, almost every form of marketing could be considered an evil pattern by that definition as well.

lambda• 11 years ago

we applaud the CEO and designers

Who is this "we" you talk about? Any time I hear "growth hacking", I reinterpret to "whitewashed term for scummy SEO and/or spam."

username223• 11 years ago

At present, Quora doesn't mess around with opt-ins or questions of any kind. They just opt you in as part of the terms of service.

What a surprise to see the "?share=1" people in an article on dark patterns. I don't understand how that site exists.

thisjepisje• 11 years ago

I've been there a few times, the content is actually pretty good.

iQuercus• 11 years ago

I'd be leery of assigning "dark" and "light" intrinsic villainy or heroism to patterns like opt-in vs. opt-out. Yes, a tick normally should mean yes, but context matters. For example, look at the opt-in/opt-out debate in organ donation. The evidence suggests that opt-out forms significantly increase rates of deceased organ donation.

As long as the form is clear about what the tick means and an opt-out set up increases positive behavior that benefits fellow man and society, is it really such a clear-cut bad thing? Is the pattern evil, or the outcomes?

Also if you're interested in the opt-in/opt-out debate, here's an interesting discussion of some of its nuances:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/biome/opt-in-or-opt-out-informi...

TeMPOraL3• 11 years ago

I agree. Opt-out itself is not wrong, what matters are your intentions and the consequences. Some things really do have to be opt-out - like organ donation you mentioned or other things that are beneficial to individual or to the society at no expense to the individual. But the "dark pattern" starts when you're exploiting individuals via opt-out.

I think issue is quite simple - if you're exploiting people for your own gain, it's dickish. A lot of the discussion, and generally sales, marketing and PR, is just people trying to excuse doing things they know are wrong, so that they don't feel bad about themselves.

harrybr• 11 years ago

This article doesn't argue that opt in / opt out has "intrinsic villainy or heroism". Other than that, you're absolutely right – it's all about the context in which the UI is applied.

awjr• 11 years ago

Have to agree on Experts Exchange. I used them quite extensively, they moved to being quite aggressive at hiding their answers, so I got to the point where I asked Google to remove them from any search results. Then stackexchange made it all better.

Netminder_EE• 11 years ago

What's annoyingly fraudulent is posting this as if it were something new.

The article was written in August 2013, and used information from early that year. For one thing, Experts Exchange has used neither that system since before the article came out (meaning it's bad research to begin with).

But if you all want to drink the Kool-Aid, be my guests.

Dark Patterns: Inside the interfaces designed to trick you

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