[HN Gopher] Dark Patterns Hall of Shame
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Dark Patterns Hall of Shame
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 203 points
Date : 2021-05-29 22:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.darkpatterns.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.darkpatterns.org)
| jokoon wrote:
| Am I the only one who had trouble finding the parameters menu in
| instagram?
|
| Same thing for google mail.
|
| Sometimes I wonder if it's crappy design or because they would
| prefer default settings (notifications etc)
| colordrops wrote:
| The absolute worst thing about instagram is when you tap the
| search icon, then tap the search input, your keyboard is
| automatically hidden by Instagram right when it pops up, so you
| have to tap the input again. The purpose is to get you to
| choose one of their recommendations rather than what you
| intended to search for.
| josh_fyi wrote:
| I wonder how many product designers read this as a learning
| opportunity. This site clearly states that dark patterns are
| effective (if evil).
| RedShift1 wrote:
| The preview version generates a history entry in the browser for
| each list item you click, that's probably a bug?
| sebmellen wrote:
| A... dark pattern, perhaps?
| sharkweek wrote:
| I see it on the list here, and I know it's not the most
| universally malicious of dark patterns, but Amazon defaulting
| users to a "subscription" on things like vitamins, diapers,
| toilet paper, etc. is so annoying.
|
| Reminds me of a time I was in their Seattle book store maybe six
| months ago and overheard the person at the register telling every
| customer they "qualified for a free audiobook" and that he'd get
| them all set up.
|
| At no point did he mention that the customer was being subscribed
| to Audible or that they'd be eventually charged for the service.
| I can only imagine the discussions up the food chain that made
| this retail employee feel like this was alright. I shudder
| thinking about how many people are probably being charged to this
| day because they simply never noticed (I doubt I would!)
|
| Gross gross gross.
| ectopod wrote:
| > I can only imagine the discussions up the food chain that
| made this retail employee feel like this was alright.
|
| It doesn't work like that. The management give the workers
| mandatory sales targets, possibly with a bonus attached. The
| workers find that the targets are nearly impossible to meet,
| but it's much easier if they omit some of the important
| details. Sales go up and management all pat each other on the
| back. Nobody in management has a difficult conversation or even
| imagines for a second that they are anything other than a good
| person making the world a better place.
| edoceo wrote:
| So, that's how Jeff got all that money. Slight-of-hand through
| his expendable pawns.
| LegitShady wrote:
| > I see it on the list here, and I know it's not the most
| universally malicious of dark patterns, but Amazon defaulting
| users to a "subscription" on things like vitamins, diapers,
| toilet paper, etc. is so annoying.
|
| I cancelled amazon prime and stopped shopping there, and this
| one of the reasons. The site is increasingly filled with such
| patterns.
|
| Try and buy something without prime and it offers it to me on
| 2-3 screens, including the shipping screen after you've already
| told it no to prime.
|
| Ostensibly someone might change their mind, but to me it looks
| like trying to get accept clicks out of customers who don't
| read the screens just click buttons.
|
| >Reminds me of a time I was in their Seattle book store maybe
| six months ago and overheard the person at the register telling
| every customer they "qualified for a free audiobook" and that
| he'd get them all set up.
|
| I would never go back to a place that gave me an in person
| audible commercial.
| grishka wrote:
| How would one not notice being charged? Do you not get an SMS
| or a push notification for every transaction in real time?
| dain_ wrote:
| This happened to me several years ago. I signed up to
| Audible's free trial, got a single audiobook, then decided I
| wasn't really an audiobook person and forgot about it. Then
| many months later I noticed I'd been charged monthly (I think
| ~$10 USD or so?) for a service I never even used, and I don't
| remember even giving my card details for (it is my
| longstanding policy never to continue with "free trials" if
| they ever ask for payment details during signup, exactly
| because I know I'll forget and get charged). It turned out to
| be the card I use with Amazon -- I think I must have signed
| up for Audible using my Amazon account and they automatically
| used the card I had saved with that, without telling me. I
| don't remember the full details of it but I ended up hours on
| the phone with Audible trying to claw back my money.
| rootsudo wrote:
| No, at best maybe an email but it does not show up in recent
| orders on Amazon.
|
| The plus side is Amazon is really good about refunding - I
| had kindle and music trials that I thought I cancelled, go
| for almost a year+ and they refunded the entire subscription.
|
| The amounts of $9.99/14.99 are small enough that it's noise
| on the credit card amount, and it's all auto pay to pay in
| full anyway. So unless you do quarterly audits, you won't
| catch it.
| grishka wrote:
| Uh, probably another US weirdness then. Over here SMS
| alerts are standard. Depending on the bank, there might be
| a tiny monthly fee for them. I just can't imagine someone
| charging my card and me not knowing about that immediately.
| LegitShady wrote:
| my bank didn't get 2 factor authorization until long
| after reddit did.
| ibraheemdev wrote:
| One that I didn't find on the list, Coursera makes it _really_
| difficult to take ( "audit") a course for free:
| https://github.com/ossu/computer-science/blob/master/FAQ.md#...
| melomal wrote:
| Glad I'm not the only one that noticed this. The link itself to
| 'audit' is basically as small of a clickable link as possible.
| I am honestly surprised they didn't just hyperlink 'a'udit at
| this point.
| anticristi wrote:
| Geeez. I didn't even know that was an option. Very
| disappointing Coursera!
| g_p wrote:
| Is the phrase "audit" a specific Americanism, or is it more
| widely used? I've never encountered it (beyond the context of
| American colleges referring to sitting in on lectures in the US
| system of building credits yourself towards a major) - in other
| countries with different (perhaps more regimented) university
| education, I've never encountered the phrase. And personally I
| haven't encountered the concept either really.
|
| I'm wondering if the phrase itself is also designed to be
| understood by the fewest number of people possible, in addition
| to being hidden?
| flotzam wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_audit
| leoc wrote:
| It's a standard expression, not an Americanism.
| taneq wrote:
| I've never heard it in Australia in this context.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| I'm Australian, and have heard this sense of "audit"
| approximately once before in my life, from Americans.
| com wrote:
| We used it at the University of Western Australia back in
| the '80s when I'd attend lectures and tutorials for a
| course without formally enrolling (bureaucratic issues
| meant that that was often impossible). Some academics
| were very positive about it, they got good participants
| in the room, rather than just check-the-box degree mill
| students.
| ectopod wrote:
| Kind of. To audit means to assess the quality of. This is
| true in British English, but hiding free access to a course
| behind the pretence that the student is auditing, not
| studying, is wholly American.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Audit is Latin for "I hear" (think "auditorium",
| "audience", "audition"). If you think about it an
| audience with a lord, a legal "hearing", and an academic
| lecture are in many ways similar.
|
| Later the meaning of audit branched/changed, and one
| common modern sense of the word is to do a thorough
| examination of something, comparing results against
| specification. I speculate that it first became a
| technical specialized legal term (in a context where it
| was originally still about a hearing in court), and then
| mutated as it filtered back out to people who didn't know
| the word's origin.
|
| The "audit" in "audit an academic course" (meaning to
| attend the course without obtaining a credential)
| branched from the original sense of the word.
| kcartlidge wrote:
| Not in regular use in that sense in the UK either.
|
| I've heard it very infrequently and usually with some US
| context in the conversation.
| Anthony-G wrote:
| It's not standard in Ireland or Britain. I figured it was
| more of a MOOCism rather than an Americanism as this is the
| only context I've seen it used to refer to trying out a
| course for free.
| magnusmundus wrote:
| I'm not sure about the "free" aspect, but I've seen it
| used to mean "attending classes without being enrolled in
| a course" in other places, that is, in the offline
| university context.
| asiachick wrote:
| On the linked page is this
|
| > Google Calendar has trained me to think that a Google Meet link
| on the invite is probably a mistake.
|
| > That one decision has completely ruined the GMeet brand.
|
| > Doing bad/dark UI patterns to pump up usage numbers might be
| good short term but an awful long term decision.
|
| What is this referring to?
| Macha wrote:
| Google calendar invites from Workspace (fka G Suite, Google
| Apps) accounts include a meet invite link by default,
| regardless of if anyone actually intends to have a video call
| at that time
| Grustaf wrote:
| That confused me a lot too, curious to know what it refers to.
| I find Google Meet quite easy to use and it works well, the
| only weird part is that sometimes I have to wait for people to
| let me in, sometimes not. Not a dark pattern though, just bad
| design.
| journey_16162 wrote:
| Some time ago I signed up for a hosting account with Siteground.
| The pricing page clearly listed the prices in monthly format -
| and I was charged the monthly price when I signed up.
|
| To my surprise, the next charge was to be for the whole year.
| After contacting support, they explained to me that the first
| month was oferred as a trial, to test things out, but that they
| do not offer monthly prices otherwise.
|
| Let me put that again, they displayed monthly prices on the
| signup page, charged the monthly fee for the signup, but it turns
| out that they actually signed me up for a yearly plan and they do
| not offer monthly plans at all.
|
| I don't know if they still do it and they offerred me a monthly
| plan after I complained about it.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| this could also be renamed to "cool patterns for startups and
| growth hackers" and nobody would notice.
| whateveracct wrote:
| don't give them ideas!
| [deleted]
| colordrops wrote:
| The term "dark pattern" is a bit of a misnomer and too soft. How
| about we just say what it is - manipulation, misdirection, and
| sometimes outright fraud.
| rapnie wrote:
| An alternative term is Deception Pattern. Might communicate
| better that they are often intentional.. i.e. with the intent
| to deceive.
| colordrops wrote:
| I like it, concise and accurate.
| vntok wrote:
| See also: http://littlebigdetails.com
| Hard_Space wrote:
| Good, but please don't disable right-click. Should not have to
| use Absolute Enable Right Click Firefox add-on in order to ensure
| a link opens in a new tab.
| rapnie wrote:
| Will the Hall of Shame also use Airtable?
|
| Isn't the ad-based business model of this unicorn itself a dark
| pattern? Or aren't we yet at that stage, and consider "Read the
| legalese of the privacy policy, and either continue or move on"
| good enough?
|
| There's opportunity to use open-source, self-hostable Airtable
| alternative, such as NocoDB [0] or Baserow [1].
|
| As for darkpatterns.org itself. On the Hall of Shame page there
| are 5 trackers, and on the landing page (due to YouTube
| embedding) there are 8. But the site lacks a Privacy Policy
| AFAICS explaining this. Arguably a site about Dark Patterns could
| be a shining example of not using them, and I think it could well
| be tracker-free without major concessions.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27303783
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26448985
| harrybr wrote:
| Hi, I'm the author of the website you are referring to.
|
| The website is built using webflow, which is a very reasonable
| choice for someone who wants to run a website who is not also a
| developer. Embedding or linking to content on third party
| services like youtube, twitter or airtable is not an unusual
| thing to do.
|
| The website has no revenue model, and has been provided free of
| charge since 2010. Though it's not perfect - it would after all
| be preferable to entirely javascript-free - it's had a tiny net
| positive effect on the web.
|
| You suggested using NocoDB instead of airtable. NocoDB was
| launched 3 days ago.
| stareatgoats wrote:
| The parent commenter was out of line with their insinuations
| IMO. Thanks for your efforts towards keeping the web a little
| bit cleaner.
| rapnie wrote:
| Yes, they are mere suggestions. You are doing great with the
| site, attracting attention to Dark Patterns in general and
| now with HoS to the specific parties involved. Highly
| appreciate the effort, thanks.
| rapnie wrote:
| Will the Hall of Shame also use Airtable?
|
| Isn't the ad-based business model of this unicorn itself a dark
| pattern? Or aren't we yet at that stage, and consider "Read the
| legalese of the privacy policy, and either continue or move on"
| good enough?
|
| There's opportunity to use open-source, self-hostable Airtable
| alternative, such as NocoDB [0] or Baserow [1].
|
| As for darkpatterns.org itself. On the Hall of Shame page there
| are 5 trackers, and on the landing page (due to YouTube
| embedding) there are 8. But the site lacks a Privacy Policy
| AFAICS explaining this. Arguably a site about Dark Patterns could
| be a shining example of not using them, and I think it could well
| be tracker-free without major concessions.
| rapnie wrote:
| Note: this comment was posted twice due to an issue on HN, that
| I reported to @dang. Can't delete any longer, sorry.
| [deleted]
| wsc981 wrote:
| In many free mobile apps, there's a very annoying dark pattern in
| ad screens. Often an ad is displayed, but close button is not yet
| visible. Often a timer is shown however in the top right corner
| of the screen. Only after maybe looking 10-30 seconds to the ad,
| the close button appears. Sometimes the close button appears in a
| different corner as expected (I would expect same corner as the
| timer was displayed, e.g. top right corner).
|
| I assume the close button functionality is not controlled by the
| ad framework, but developed and maintained by the mobile
| developers behind the app. So the mobile devs should be able to
| make the functionality more user friendly, if they wanted to.
|
| I guess it's all trickery to make people more likely to
| accidentally click ads, but it's really annoying. Sometimes I
| wish I would be able to pay a small amount of money to remove the
| ads, but this is often not even possible.
| anticristi wrote:
| When it's not possible to pay for removing the ads, consider
| decompiling the app and removing ads. While I hate depriving
| developers well-deserved revenue for their hard work, allowing
| me as a consumer to choose whether I pay with cash or attention
| takes precedence.
| runawaybottle wrote:
| I've specifically programmed stuff like that. Very specific
| specs are given to the devs to show a close button after a
| certain amount of time, only showing back/next buttons after a
| certain time/event, all mangled with deliberate tracking
| scripts that capture all of those user events.
|
| It wasn't necessarily to increase clicks, but more so to
| prolong time on page, and sneak in more ads in between their
| browsing.
|
| When we were done jamming all this in, our boss took a look at
| it and said 'increase the time before the buttons are visible,
| and show one more ad as well'. Relentless.
|
| Tracking the user and showing syndicated content/ads is more
| profitable than just charging them a flat fee for many
| businesses.
|
| The user experience did not matter at all to the stakeholders.
| grishka wrote:
| On Android, the system back button works most of the time to
| close ads. You don't have to look at the ad screen at all to
| try to find a way out, at some point you just develop a reflex
| that makes it go away instantly without relying on advertiser's
| mercy.
|
| Or, block ads system-wide. There's an app called Blokada, and
| you can also use the DNS-o-TLS support ("private DNS") to do
| that.
| jokoon wrote:
| One awful dark patterns are instagram notifications "you might
| know XXX is on instagram", which have no options to be turned off
| in their settings, you would have to turn off all instagram
| notifications.
| KirillPanov wrote:
| > Tweets by darkpatterns Your browser does not support JavaScript
| so you can't see our tweets here.
|
| Irony.
| lazyeye wrote:
| As far as dark patterns go, nothing compares to the intentionally
| confusing mess that is Google's privacy settings.
|
| It could all be replaced with a single button labelled "stop
| tracking me".
| anticristi wrote:
| Do you live outside the EU? After 50MEUR of fines, they seem to
| finally understanding the meaning of the word "privacy". A few
| days after creating a GMail account (for my printer), I even
| received an invitation to do a privacy checkup.
| taneq wrote:
| Privacy or 'Google privacy' (ie. only you and Google have
| access to your data)?
| jordanpg wrote:
| Where is auto-renew by default?
| rootsudo wrote:
| This is great, now I know what to implement when I develop to
| retain customers and make it hard to leave.
| pstadler wrote:
| Cookie consent banners are the worst. I could swear that every
| single one I've ever encountered has ,,Accept all" as primary
| call to action. On top of that some employ opt-out forms made in
| hell, where one has to manually click through half a dozen of
| checkboxes while ,,Accept all" is still the primary action at the
| bottom of said form. I'm not only incredibly annoyed by
| constantly being greeted with obtrusive overlays and huge
| banners, I've also given up on opting out a long time ago[1].
| Arguably this part of GDPR failed miserably.
|
| [1] Manually opting out that is, I'm blocking trackers on DNS
| level and via browser plugins.
| stareatgoats wrote:
| Agree, my main gripe with cookie banners is that they are
| designed to make you "accept all". But is has less to do with
| the layout of the banner than the fact that they pop up the
| second you enter the site, at which moment the mind will find
| all popups an annoying distraction (hence 'Accept all').
|
| GDPR should require all websites to have their cookie settings
| under a standard icon in the top row of the screen, which you
| could scrutinize and tweak at leisure. As it stands you have
| one shot, short of clearing all cookies.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| The worst part of this is that if you know how to do it, it's
| _trivial_ to have your browser just clear the cookies at the
| end of the session... including the one that dismisses the
| cookie form from hell, and the cycle repeats...
| wyattpeak wrote:
| > Arguably this part of GDPR failed miserably.
|
| I'd definitely argue against that. For a hot minute they were
| truly terrible, with occasionally hundreds of tickboxes
| (Looking at you Techcrunch). Now 80% of sites I go to seem to
| use the same provider, which has a primary "Accept all", but
| rejecting all is usually a matter of clicking 3-4 radio buttons
| and a secondary "Confirm choices" button.
|
| That's still pretty damned dark pattern-y, no doubt, but it's
| light years better than my previous options of either accepting
| or accepting.
| visarga wrote:
| Wasn't there an auto-GDPR clicker extension to help us get
| rid of them?
| Grustaf wrote:
| The fact that most websites asks me to accept cookies _every
| single time_ I visit is quite reassuring. If they can't even
| remember that I've visited their site a hundred times before,
| I'm not so worried about their tracking.
| Macha wrote:
| Mobile dialogs where accept all is nice big touch area and
| "Options" is a link where you need to scroll it into view and
| the touch area is small and right against the accept button are
| another peeve.
| number6 wrote:
| I don't think it's the GDPRs fault. It just states, that if you
| want to use personal data you have to have a legal basis. One
| is consent, but consent has to be given freely and informed.
|
| For my part I find that totally reasonable. What cookie banners
| try to negate is the fact that most people just don't want to
| be tracked.
| leshokunin wrote:
| How many founders are here to take note of interesting patterns?
| anticristi wrote:
| Indeed, I'm worried that without proper legal action, the Hall
| of Shame will only serve as inspiration for the next wave of
| start-ups. "Hey look, Amazon does this and they converted so
| many users to subscribers. Let's try that too."
| Ygg2 wrote:
| Good. At one point they will transgres the threshold of
| acceptable behavior or we will get used to them so much,
| we'll figure out ways to bypass them.
| brailsafe wrote:
| How else would you expect them to get those cool Founder
| t-shirts
| jonplackett wrote:
| I built this game based on all the dark patterns on
| darkpatterns.org
|
| http://termsandconditions.game
|
| If the creator is here anywhere - thanks for the inspiration!
| kwanbix wrote:
| One that is terrible is Scribd. IIRC the flow goes something like
| this. 1) You press a cancel button on the subscription, and it
| takes you to a page that lists lots of things but if you don't
| pay attention, just at the bottom is asking you to confirm the
| cancellation and the previous things are the "benefits" you will
| loose if you cancel. 2) If you press, yes cancel, it takes you to
| a third page where it again asks you to cancel. That is how I
| stayed with them 1 more month.
|
| Very bad.
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(page generated 2021-05-30 23:02 UTC)