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Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

darkpatterns.org

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Re: Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

#81

Post by abalone »

eevee wrote: post #49
abalone wrote: post #38

The worst mainstream example of this I know of is PayPal. Their entire business is predicated on steering you away from using your credit or debit card (better for you) to a direct bank withdrawal (better for them). Bank withdrawals carry a risk of overdraft fees, have fewer consumer protections, and lack the rewards programs and other benefits of cards. But they cost less for PayPal. Merchants don't pay any less tho…

I'm no fan of PayPal, but I interpret this as a reflection of the state of the banking industry rather than scummy behavior on PayPal's part. Cards skim a ton off the top and are generally designed to gouge the merchant (i.e. PayPal) so customers remain blissfully unaware and keep using them; banks aren't making much effort to compete with direct transfers, probably because they get kickbacks from debit card use.

That argument would make sense if PayPal charged a lower fee for bank withdrawals. They don't. They "gouge" merchants just the same.

It's literally a case of using UI to steer customers towards a method that's worse for customers and no better for merchants.

Re: Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

#82

Post by abalone »

dangrossman wrote: post #63
abalone wrote: post #38

The worst mainstream example of this I know of is PayPal. Their entire business is predicated on steering you away from using your credit or debit card (better for you) to a direct bank withdrawal (better for them). Bank withdrawals carry a risk of overdraft fees, have fewer consumer protections, and lack the rewards programs and other benefits of cards. But they cost less for PayPal. Merchants don't pay any less tho…

> Their entire business is predicated on steering you away from using your credit or debit card (better for you) to a direct bank withdrawal (better for them). You're being hyperbolic, or don't know what predicated means. This defaulting to bank transfers is a relatively recent thing in their history; they've been profitable for more than 10 years without that. Their fees are also sufficient to make a profit on credi…

I think you're wrong on the facts. PayPal has always steered towards bank withdrawals as long as I can remember.

Your note on chargebacks supports my point: Paying by card is better for the consumer. PayPal's trick UI steers them away from that.

Re: Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

#83

Post by netcan »

abalone wrote: post #82
dangrossman wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Their entire business is predicated on steering you away from using your credit or debit card (better for you) to a direct bank withdrawal (better for them). You're being hyperbolic, or don't know what predicated means. This defaulting to bank transfers is a relatively recent thing in their history; they've been profitable for more than 10 years without that. Their fees are also sufficient to make a profit on credi…

I think you're wrong on the facts. PayPal has always steered towards bank withdrawals as long as I can remember. Your note on chargebacks supports my point: Paying by card is better for the consumer. PayPal's trick UI steers them away from that.

Taking your point, I wonder if honestly would be a better policy.

Credit Cards essentially cost paypal more. A more honest solution might be pricing in the cost of credit card transactions fees and chargeback/fraud risk to the customer. I have no doubt this would be bad for conversion rates. It introduces huge friction, going from 0 cost to small percentage costs.

The way they do it now allows users to segment themselves. If you have a strong preference for using credit cards, it's available. If not, well then paypal does. They choose if you don't.

It's like an opt out system. In a lot of cases, thats a good system. For example, I think organ donation should use that system.

Re: Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

#84

Post by kalleboo »

markdown wrote: post #80
abalone wrote: post #38

The worst mainstream example of this I know of is PayPal. Their entire business is predicated on steering you away from using your credit or debit card (better for you) to a direct bank withdrawal (better for them). Bank withdrawals carry a risk of overdraft fees, have fewer consumer protections, and lack the rewards programs and other benefits of cards. But they cost less for PayPal. Merchants don't pay any less tho…

If you've subscribed to some service via Paypal, try and find a way to unsubscribe and stop payments from within the Paypal interface. You may just end up pulling all you hair out before you find a way to do so.

* Logged in, "My recent activity", clicked a recent recurring payment

* Third line of text on the page: "You can see all of your recurring payments on the [My preapproved payments].". Clicked the link.

* Hair intact.

Re: Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

#85

Post by ansible »

r00fus wrote: post #45
T-hawk wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. That's the only way to use PayPal as a consumer. If you're just a buyer and not a seller, there's no advantage to you to tell them about your bank account. They make some noise about a sending limit until you verify with a bank account, but I've never had any transactions run into that. I had my bank account connected to PayPal once, but deleted the association a few years ago. Somewhat surprisingly in the modern…

Consequently PayPal make no shortage of effort to get you to add your bank account. I'm surprised they don't allow people to transfer money to you (and then force you to connect your bank account to get the money).

Every frakkin' time, they have to ask. But whatever, I only use PayPal for donating to charities and other non-critical stuff.

Re: Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

#86

Post by kalleboo »

reddit_clone wrote: post #59

Recently I find it annoying that the button I don't want to click is all bright, blue and defaulted and the button I eventually want to click looks gray as if it is actually disabled. Even google does this.

Especially Google do this (everywhere they try to rope you into Google+)

Re: Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

#87

Post by jka »

ArtDev wrote: post #53
jka wrote: post #20

Open question: as a startup grows and matures, even if it is originally entirely designed with honest user objectives in mind, where usability and simplicity are paramount, at some point there will be calls to increase revenues - either in response to declining growth, market saturation, or simply to maintain existing growth. Is there any way to structure the incentives of a business to prevent this from happening as…

Dark patterns are a short-term tradeoff. Ultimately, though your customers will resent you. Its easy for stakeholders to say "So what? We loose a few customers!" However, your company really might be loosing a potential investor, a potential business partner, a potential star hire or a potential product champion. Ambitious companies don't use dark patterns but dying companies do.

I used to believe this - but once you reach a certain scale and number of users, they do not notice small things - especially if they are average everyday people.

We are all hyper-sensitive to design, functionality, behaviour because we build and make decisions about technology, but at the end of the day most people have 5-to-15 minutes to use your product during or between other work and conversations.

Investors will likely not be carefully analyzing your UI, unless they have a lot of time - most of their decision will be based on conversations with your top-level executive team and the information provided therein.

Star hires is a potential one - I can definitely imagine that a lot of very savvy designers and engineers might be put off by manipulative design decisions - but ultimately they may care more about the workplace environment that you claim as a company, the opportunity to be part of a growing business, etc.

I'm a touch on the pessimistic side with this one but these are my perceptions, partly based on experience and partly based on observing startup businesses evolve over time.

Re: Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

#88

Post by processyellow »

kalleboo wrote: post #84
markdown wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you've subscribed to some service via Paypal, try and find a way to unsubscribe and stop payments from within the Paypal interface. You may just end up pulling all you hair out before you find a way to do so.

* Logged in, "My recent activity", clicked a recent recurring payment * Third line of text on the page: "You can see all of your recurring payments on the [My preapproved payments].". Clicked the link. * Hair intact.

This assumes your last subscription was in the last 7 days and you know when the money gets withdrawn. Some subscriptions are not monthly, so you end up having to search for a specific subscription you know of to click on to get to the secret My preapproved payments page.

Of course, the polite way of handling subscriptions would be having a link to this page in the menu. Sort of like how there are links to all of the other things you can do.

Does this feature honestly not seem hidden to you compared to the other things you can do on PayPal?

Re: Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

#89

Post by diminoten »

dredmorbius wrote: post #79
harrybr wrote: post #2

Hi, I'm the guy who started darkpatterns.org. It's nice to see it popping up on HN every now and then. We're actually looking for contributors to help edit and update the content. If anyone is interested, drop us a line (contact details on the site). It's intended to be a community project and we'd love to see a lot more faces and names on the about page.

My comments: I'm that guy who uses NoScript/ScriptSafe to disable JS on most sites. Took me several minutes to figure out what combination of hosts I had to enable to play your slideshow. My suggestion: find a simpler tool to display your slideshow. Otherwise: a pretty decent collection of horrors. I'll also note I'm that guy who generally avoids shopping online if at all possible. I'll do a lot of online research, b…

It's completely unreasonable to ask someone to change their website because you disable JavaScript.

Re: Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People

#90

Post by dhimes »

diminoten wrote: post #89
dredmorbius wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comments: I'm that guy who uses NoScript/ScriptSafe to disable JS on most sites. Took me several minutes to figure out what combination of hosts I had to enable to play your slideshow. My suggestion: find a simpler tool to display your slideshow. Otherwise: a pretty decent collection of horrors. I'll also note I'm that guy who generally avoids shopping online if at all possible. I'll do a lot of online research, b…

It's completely unreasonable to ask someone to change their website because you disable JavaScript.

But it's perfectly reasonable to let someone know that the website might be broken for those to whom it is most likely to appeal. A more precise suggestion about how to fix it would have been nice, however.
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