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There's a tumblr for that! They call it "confirm shaming". http://confirmshaming.tumblr.com/ And yeah, it's UX cancer.
And even Apple is doing it. You you want to update your iphone now or tonight?
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And even Apple is doing it. You you want to update your iphone now or tonight?
Software updates are the rare case where I can forgive it. It's annoying to have clients actively resisting updates, especially security updates.
On every single minor "security" update...
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Blockchain based application platforms can allow re-architecting of applications such that the data that backs the application is not "owned" by the company, but instead is either public or user owned. Currently, if you want to use LinkedIn you have to either use their website. Sometimes there are 3rd party options that consume the API but in the current model of the web, as soon as one of those 3rd parties is seen a…
Sure, blockchain-based applications might have that ability... but what incentive do companies like LinkedIn have for doing this? What incentive does any company that uses these dark patterns constantly have to use a blockchain-based application? Especially because most of the time, the users data is the profit machine, so companies certainly want to own the data that backs the application.
They don't have any incentive and I suspect they will hold onto that data until it's "pried from their cold dead hands".
I think that companies like LinkedIn and other massive data silos are going to atrophy and die as users migrate to new platforms that treat them better and give them more control over their data and experience. I'd like to point out that while there is little incentive for current companies to adopt this architecture, it doesn't mean that new companies won't be successful implementing their business under this architecture. Admittedly, almost all of this is utterly unproven given the newness of blockchain based application platforms.
One way to look at this is that the current model of internet companies is highly anti-competitive. The data they "own" is really the data of all of their users who can freely give it to any other source they choose. The fact that they have control over the database is what gives them the competitive advantage. These new application platforms which have open public databases can change the game such that the previous closed-data model can no longer compete.
One pattern that I consider "dark", but don't see in this list, is using loaded options on a dialog box. One that I often see in apps is like: Rate our app! Those really get under my skin because the developer is clearly trying to play a psychological trick on me, but it's so brazen and obvious that it just pisses me off. And bigger companies do it too (e.g. Google).
There's another brilliant app rating pattern (perhaps a dark one). A dialog pops up and asks if I loved their app. A "yes" takes me to the marketplace for rating, but a "no" only allows me to send them feedback. It both positively skews the ratings and collects feedback from disgruntled users.
An even smarter way (in my opinion) of getting 5 star reviews is by showing the dialog only after x hours of use. Users most likely to rate badly will have the app uninstalled before the dialog shows.
My question is how well these dark patterns work? People who have or must have implemented them, do you have any data? For an example join newsletter pop ups you get on websites. I assume everyone pisses off and closes them, or do they?
Think of it as similar to the mall kiosk people -- they dont care if you are offended, you probably would never have bought their product anyways.
Also similar to spammers who now send emails that are so stupid that you think no one would ever click them -- except the small number of people who are so naive that they do -- which is what they are trying to select for.
Which points to age old problem of any public network: spam.
One pattern that I consider "dark", but don't see in this list, is using loaded options on a dialog box. One that I often see in apps is like: Rate our app! Those really get under my skin because the developer is clearly trying to play a psychological trick on me, but it's so brazen and obvious that it just pisses me off. And bigger companies do it too (e.g. Google).
Remember, as an app developer, if a user denies the iOS permissions dialog in your app, you can't EVER show the dialog again -- the user has to manually leave the app and re-enable the permission in the iOS Settings.
Successive calls to the function to ask permission automatically return false for "denied" so it is in the developer's best interest to try to avoid showing the real iOS permission pop up unless the user somehow indicates that they are going to accept the permission (in this case, in the "pre permission" clone dialog).
There's even GitHub projects and CocoaPods for this: https://github.com/yahoo/YMPromptKit
When I used this "trick" (yes, I'm guilty), only a handful of thousands of users actually accepted the soft-prompt and then successively denied the real iOS hard prompt.
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There's another brilliant app rating pattern (perhaps a dark one). A dialog pops up and asks if I loved their app. A "yes" takes me to the marketplace for rating, but a "no" only allows me to send them feedback. It both positively skews the ratings and collects feedback from disgruntled users.
Not necessarily dark though... as an app developer I'd actually really want to hear the feedback from the people who dislike my app. As in any business, oftentimes the most disgruntled customer is the one that can provide the most useful feedback. An even smarter way (in my opinion) of getting 5 star reviews is by showing the dialog only after x hours of use. Users most likely to rate badly will have the app uninstal…
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This. I hate this more than I can express in a public forum. Google is notorious for it, especially when they try to get you to use the YouTube app rather than the web interface. It's not "maybe later" I want—it's "never ask me again".
Google Maps on Android is massively using dark patterns. If you are on the go and open the app, it requests to enable the location service to continue. The choices are: "Enable location service" or "Cancel". It is phrased in a way that it will not run the app if you tap on "Cancel" but it works perfectly if you select "Cancel". The worse, if you agree, it enables the location service for everything all the time where…
And Google is really shitty app publisher in more ways than this. Has anyone ever seen a meaningful changelog in any major app of theirs?
Great video and great website. My only nitpick: the author wants the industry to agree on a "code of ethics." Unfortunately, such exhortations strike me as naive. They are unlikely to work, because the truly bad actors will continue to use dark patterns regardless, putting pressure on all other actors to follow suit. The key challenge is not in getting the good actors to do the right thing, but in preventing the bad…
A code of ethics would be 100x more effective than this, and still be ineffective.