Dark Patterns and Deceptive Designs in Software and Services

Found some good resources for defining, identifying, and cataloging dark patterns and deceptive design practices in various software and services.

These are designs in UI or functionality meant to trick or abuse the user into an unwanted action. Often these patterns target those who are less tech-literate.

Examples include:

  1. a service being very easy to subscribe to, yet very difficult to unsubscribe from with multi-step friction and obfuscation
  2. windows installers that hide installation of other unwanted apps, buried in “advanced” or hidden UI so the user skips by unknowingly.
  3. game design focused around gambling mechanics aimed towards children
  4. in game shops that abstract away the currency into intermediary currency to obfuscate the amount being spent. while also setting item prices such that you can never reach a zero balance. there is always an amount of in-game currency trapped in the shop that you can’t spend, which incentivizes spending more to be able to use that currency.
  5. default settings to opt-in user to collection of data without their knowledge or consent.

darkpattern.games currently only features mobile games for now, but say they plan to add other platforms in the future. Mobile games are notoriously bad across the board.

When they do start adding desktop games, they should add Fortnite which employs a few patterns…


Next time I run into a dark pattern I’ll make a note of it here.

Discuss and share here any dark patterns or deceptive designs you’ve run into in your travels.

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For example amazon. I rarely use amazon but unfortunately there’s the odd item you can’t really find locally. I have no use for prime.

Notice the button UI design on checkout:
Screenshot_20240207_132906

In the context of this window the, it’s designed to make the big yellow “Start Your Trial” button look and feel like the next button, while this continue is a small link.

Given common UI language, the continue link looks more like a back or cancel next to the subscribe button. This one is not terribly egregious if you stop and read, but probably enough to trick grandma into blindly clicking.

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And the cancel button looks “greyed out” and unable to click it, next to the big shiney obvious button

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Worse… that’s not the “cancel” button…

the hyperlink to the left is the cancel / don’t choose prime…

the yellow And the grey, are both to accept Prime…
the yellow is accept, and the grey cancel, is just a badge / info box under the accept button…

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The websites you suggested are amazing! And the examples really hit home for me since they’re something I got used to avoid growing up with computers and access to the internet. Which can be bad at times, but has taught me so much about how to avoid the pitfalls many people still fall into these days. I swear to god that malicious/fake apps are the new Internet Explorer toolbars.

One I can immediately point my finger to is how websites handle cookie’s permissions given by the user. They give you the option to not accept them, then open a bigger window with options to choose from and still highlight the button to accept them all instead of letting you choose to accept only the ones you selected.

Also the constant barrage of subscriptions I’m bombared by in some apps I use daily, but that’s an auto-skip in my head. Just like having developed muscle memory to not accept cookies.

Other than that I can’t say I notice many of them in my daily browising nor have I been “tricked” into getting subscriptions or buying things for mobile games.

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Any user who’s grown up on windows learned to step very slowly and carefully through every installer to uncheck that toolbar installation.

When browsing the web, you instinctively mouse over the close button any time anything pops up.

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I agree with your last statement. Also, like you, after so many years of being online and having noticed them over 20 years I’ve developed a mental reflex that keeps me from unwittingly falling for the patterns. It’s almost like recognizing where the landmines are.
In the last few years I’ve even started taking it upon myself to point them out to family, friends and even clients. Going as far as explaining how it works. As a result, as far as the clients are concerned, I had earned their trust and repeat business.

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The one I’ve noticed lately is the prominent button that asks if I want to continue reading in the app, and in much smaller print, the button that asks if I want to continue reading in my browser. I definitely don’t want another app to siphon my data.

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Reddit does this for example: I was the EM for Reddit's Growth team around this time. I am responsible for / c... | Hacker News

protip: www → old.reddit

desktop view isn’t as nice on mobile. but it works better than a spyware app

Driver download pages for obscure retro driver searches with 6 different download now buttons for various other irrelevant suspicious things.

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Just visited sennheisers website. I am actually very pleased with this cookie popup where they provide clearly upfront a “Deny” button, and the UI language is consistent.

Screenshot_20240208_010356

This is a an example of good honest design, and I want to point out positive examples in contrast to the dark patterns.

W for Sennheiser! something something German engineering?

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I only „winget“ third party apps nowadays - usually that gets me by without any unwanted applications.

Try snappy driver origin - that’s the only third party driver resource I trust and which supports Win XP - Win 11

For retro PCs vogons.com, https://www.philscomputerlab.com/ and the internet archive are my resources.

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The real dark pattern here is moronic middle managers using mindless A/B testing on garbage content that doesn’t conform to generally accepted UI tranditions and thinking they found a “winner” because conversion rates are higher. This would eventually come back and hurt a company, but if you are dominant like Amazon, you don’t have to care.

Speaking of Amazon - and I must confess I use them many times a day; same-day or next day early morning shipping is very habit-forming - what’s up with all these sellers nobody’s ever heard of that seem to have names that came from a password-generator?



image

Are they used to somehow game Amazon or the customer?

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My first thought was Starbucks card reload. :joy: My friend mentioned that if Starbucks wanted to be a bank, it could—from all the spare change it’s holding on to.

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Re: gambling in games

tl:dr; don’t gamble on nft’s and skins kids

part 2:

An IRL tale of dark pattern from telecom + collection agency.

My grandma ended up getting double billed for some service she never signed up for. It appears to be a clerical error. Unfortunately it ended up getting sent to collections and a portion was already paid because of the scary letter. So we are trying to help her correct it, because it’s become too complex of a process for her to fix.

First off, it was difficult to even get to a human. After 15 minutes of fighting with the useless AI customer service chatbot to get to a real human, we finally get a phone number and get put on hold for a couple hours.

Once on the phone with a human and with the issue explained, the telecom said they don’t handle disputes once it’s been handed off to the creditor/collector and that we have to call them instead…

We call the provided creditor number and after more holding and some back and forth the collection agency said it’s not an error on their end we need to talk to the telecom… Okay…?

So we call back the telecom and let them know that we were sent back

telecom: “It’s not our responsibility”
creditor: “It’s not our responsibility”
me: Look, I don’t care who’s responsibility it is. You guys made the error, and you guys need to fix it.

We have now switched all correspondence to email so we don’t have to dig through call recordings (because its started to get ridiculous at this point and we need a paper trail).

It has been confirmed by the telecom in writing that it was infact a clerical error, and we are entitled to a refund on erroneous collection that was already paid. And the the collection needs to be dropped and corrected as not to falsely tarnish the credit history.

It has now been 5 months since we started fighting this, and we still have not yet gotten refunded. There were some back and forth emails and now just radio silence as we are waiting for them to “fix things on their end”. It seems we will have to periodically remind them until it is resolved…

This is an example of multi-step friction, and intentional avoidance of responsibility by both parties. They can sign you up and take your money in a single day, yet can’t fix it after months of back and forth. The goal is to make people give up and stop chasing.

It smells like elder abuse, and I suspect they are doing this sort of thing to other customers if they are doing it to us. Tho this is all heresay at this point.

This is still not resolved. Will update when we finally get her refunded…

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