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Dark Patterns

darkpatterns.org

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41–50 of 69 posts

Re: Dark Patterns

#41

Post by TuringTest »

ckastner wrote: post #2

It'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.

At least that one can be ignored. I hate even more how flight companies increase the price for the flight you've pre-selected if you are actively comparing options for several flights with the same origin/destination for the same dates (only to recover the original price several hours later if you don't buy it right then).

Re: Dark Patterns

#42

Post by [deleted] »

octosphere wrote: post #21
Phemist wrote: post #7

One 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"…

It's probably called dark because the user is often 'left in the dark'[0] about how to use the interface [0] https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/left+in+the+dark

[deleted]

Re: Dark Patterns

#43

Post by nickjj »

What about ecommerce sites where they pop up a little notification where it's like "Cathy from Ohio just bought ..." and then it links you to the item.

Or even worse, you have XYZ in your cart and then suddenly as you browse you get all of these notifications that the world is buying that same item so you better checkout soon before you miss out.

You see this a lot on Shopify stores. Here's one app for it: https://apps.shopify.com/mps-sales-notification

I never used it but I wonder how many of those are fake notifications in general.

Re: Dark Patterns

#45

Post by nickjj »

gameswithgo wrote: post #29
nickjj wrote: post #17

I still remember one of the first businesses I did a contract for in the early 2000s wanted a hit counter on the bottom of their page. So I put one in but they wanted it to start at 10,000 instead of 0 to give a false sense that the site was popular. This stuff has been going on for decades.

thousands of years

Yeah absolutely. The diamond industry is a good pre-internet example.

Re: Dark Patterns

#46

Post by badpun »

ckastner wrote: post #2

It'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.

My team actually implemented this feature in a large booking.com competitor and the numbers were in fact correct - we didn’t just pull them out of thin air.

Re: Dark Patterns

#47

Post by greenhatman »

blr246 wrote: post #39

GMail seems to have opened a vector to amplify dark patterns by placing action buttons on messages. My least favorite is the LinkedIn accept invitation button, which I've clicked now several times by accident because I've spent years using GMail without it taking actions like opening GitHub PRs and accepting LinkedIn invites. I can't find a way to disable this feature. Does anybody know how?

Not sure this is a GMail feature. This would technically be possible with any HTML link styled like a button.

Re: Dark Patterns

#48

Post by justapassenger »

octosphere wrote: post #23

Some services like Amazon make it outrageously difficult to leave their service. You have to contact support and the link is buried really deep in their site, you have to jump through serious hoops to leave their service. There's a great site called Just Delete Me[0] that lists all the services where leaving / deleting your account is hard and the user is subjected to dark patterns. [0] https://backgroundchecks.org/j…

Kind of funny to see that Hacker News gets worst ranking there :-)

Re: Dark Patterns

#49

Post by WA »

There's one more: Suggesting that you lose benefits in a subscription business right away, when in reality, they run until the "contract" ends. Culprit: Amazon Prime. I just checked and they're still doing it (on Amazon.de).

If you try to cancel your Prime Membership, they make it sound as if you lose all benefits right away, even though I pre-paid for the entire year and my membership will end with the billing period and not before.

Re: Dark Patterns

#50

Post by svnpenn »

ArtofSaf wrote: post #33

Another pattern: When companies slow down their web experience and push their mobile apps, where users cannot block tracking or ads as easily.

I think Reddit does this...

The mobile site is absolute garbage.

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