Dark Patterns
darkpatterns.org
Dark Patterns
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Re: Dark Patterns
#2It's missing the one that I hate the most: the way Booking.com and similar sites create a fake sense of urgency.
"9 people are actively looking at this hotel right now!"
Yeah, right.
Re: Dark Patterns
#3It's missing the one that I hate the most: the way Booking.com and similar sites create a fake sense of urgency. "9 people are actively looking at this hotel right now!" Yeah, right.
Or the everlasting "1 item remaining in stock" on amazon.
Re: Dark Patterns
#4It's missing the one that I hate the most: the way Booking.com and similar sites create a fake sense of urgency. "9 people are actively looking at this hotel right now!" Yeah, right.
I run a development agency, and on a few occasions, we've had clients ask us to build features similar to what you've outlined above. One of those clients had a pretty thorough specification document that outlined how this behavior should work.
When you open the listing, it should wait a few seconds and then show you a number between 8 and 20 of people who are actively looking at this listing. If it was night-time, it shouldn't really be that much, so let's put in a number between 2 and 8.
This was of course all fake since the platform didn't launch yet. There was also a lot of other "building fake anxiety" tactics, but this one and all other got buried way in the backlog and never actually implemented thankfully.
I'm not saying that Booking.com is doing this, but I definitely hate this pattern.
Re: Dark Patterns
#5It's missing the one that I hate the most: the way Booking.com and similar sites create a fake sense of urgency. "9 people are actively looking at this hotel right now!" Yeah, right.
> It's missing the one that I hate the most: the way Booking.com and similar sites create a fake sense of urgency.
There's booking.com mentioned at 3min 30sec into the video on the main page.
Re: Dark Patterns
#6It's missing the one that I hate the most: the way Booking.com and similar sites create a fake sense of urgency. "9 people are actively looking at this hotel right now!" Yeah, right.
“9 people looked at this property in the last [rolling window whose length maximizes booking revenue].”
Re: Dark Patterns
#7One thing I don't understand is why we are calling these patterns _dark_ rather than _manipulative_, or even just calling it straight up manipulation?
I feel like manipulation has a clear meaning for a lot of people, which I would define as attempts at making you do things against your best interest. This definitely applies to booking.com's multiple practices of creating artificial urgency, various website's "opt-in" to their tracker cookie policy, etc. I don't believe it "weakens" the meaning of manipulation as a term. The appropriate red flags should be raised when hearing about it.
To me, the term "dark pattern" itself seems like a dark pattern, intended to obfuscate what is really meant to those unfamiliar with internet lingo. But, at least the dot org -is-was still available.
Re: Dark Patterns
#8It's missing the one that I hate the most: the way Booking.com and similar sites create a fake sense of urgency. "9 people are actively looking at this hotel right now!" Yeah, right.
> It's missing the one that I hate the most: the way Booking.com and similar sites create a fake sense of urgency. There's booking.com mentioned at 3min 30sec into the video on the main page.
It seems to be missing from the 'Types of Dark Pattern' list:
Re: Dark Patterns
#9Roach Motel is a great name, but surely it should be called Hotel California?
Re: Dark Patterns
#10It's missing the one that I hate the most: the way Booking.com and similar sites create a fake sense of urgency. "9 people are actively looking at this hotel right now!" Yeah, right.
I run a development agency, and on a few occasions, we've had clients ask us to build features similar to what you've outlined above. One of those clients had a pretty thorough specification document that outlined how this behavior should work. When you open the listing, it should wait a few seconds and then show you a number between 8 and 20 of people who are actively looking at this listing. If it was night-time, i…
Isn't this basically false advertising?