
Dark Patterns at Scale: Findings from a Crawl of 11K Shopping Websites - mxfh
https://webtransparency.cs.princeton.edu/dark-patterns/
======
dspillett
_> Countdown Timer_

This, and its equivalent "stock level countdown", has become an instant red
flag for me. If I see one I cancel all interest in ordering that product from
that company. I don't think I've seen one that is genuine (opening the page in
another browser and seeing the count reset to a value, or seeing a fresh
countdown started on a visit not long after the previous one ended) and I
don't appreciate being lied to. And these things are lies: not misdirection,
exaggeration, or any other softer word, they are outright lies and I refuse to
trust companies/individuals that tell them so won't be handing over my payment
details.

 _> Sneaking & Hidden Costs_

I'm perfectly happy to make a little effort, even to pay a little extra, to
find other sources for what I'm buying when I see this happen. Unfortunately I
think I'm in a minority here and such trickery is getting more prevalent (so
harder to avoid) for that reason.

 _> Even viewing products requires signing up and creating and account._

That is where my old friend Mr Fake McFakeFake who lives at Faketown,
Fakeshire, FA1 1AF, plays his part. Or of course just walking away on the
basis that if your offer was _that_ good you would openly display it.

~~~
blue_devil
I upvote this comment for the alter ego flamboyance.

~~~
MR4D
Heh - mine is similar but with a different “F” word. :)

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amitport
I Could not find this one mentioned: some lodging sites add _obligatory_ costs

(e.g., "All prices (expressed in Euros) exclude € 27.50 reservation fee,
obligatory: € 7.95 p.p. bed linen per person per stay, € 6.95 p.p. cot linen,
tourist tax € 1.85 ")

some countries requires that everything obligatory is included in the main
price, or at least displayed with the same font, size, and placement.

this pattern should be generally illegal IMHO.

~~~
parliament32
Throwback to the ebay days when you could list an item for $5 but charge $150
shipping -- your item would show up at the top of the results (which by
default were ordered by sell price only).

~~~
Scoundreller
That’s because eBay only used to only charge commission on the item and not
the shipping cost.

I’m sure someone else (or even the same seller) has the same item for $175 and
free shipping for those wanting to indirectly donate an extra $20 to eBay
shareholders.

I was probably on a list for selling games for $0.01 and clearly specifying $7
shipping in the title.

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doitLP
I see my own company on here. I work in a back office role and I’ve never used
the main customer site, because it’s just not my demographic. After some
honest looking I can say our company doesn’t just do one, but all of these.

I think it’s time to move on...

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k__
"Sneaking & Hidden Costs"

The traveling industry is the worst here.

In 2016 I tried to book a holiday. I wanted it to have an okay price, good
food, and a beach. I didn't even have a specific country in mind.

Took me weeks to find something. I quickly noticed why we have so many
traveling agencies in Germany.

The longer you click through a buying process on such sites the more your
price goes up, sometimes you pay more than double than what was advertised on
page one.

~~~
martin_a
I have all my browsers set to delete all cookies on exit. Works wonders on
things like these.

~~~
m463
I wonder if fingerprinting will replace this.

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supernovae
For every site that annoys the crap out of you with these “dark patterns”
there are probably 10x that don’t - that people don’t visit and don’t buy
from. To fix the internet we have to fix our behavior and not PUT our money
into systems that we find appalling.

~~~
rchaud
It's a trade-off. ~20 years ago, when aggregator sites like Priceline,
Hotwire, Kayak and the like became mainstream, we stopped seeing the
individual sellers, and started picking based on a table of prices.

It seems inevitable that companies started gaming their pricing so they could
appear on the top of the list.

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dstick
Urgency, social proof and scarcity are dark patterns? Isn’t that online
marketing 101?

~~~
ehnto
Urgency and scarcity is so often manufactured that I can definitely see this
in the dark pattern side of things. As well, whether or not there really is
only 3 left, they chose to add the messaging as high impact alert messaging
and it's definitely intended to be coercive.

All marketing is intended to be coercive of course, but I think you land in
dark pattern territory when your coercion is no longer related to the value
propositions of your product. Saying "You need this TV because it has great
definition!" is just selling your product. But saying "You need this TV
because TIM bought one, we only have three left and this deal runs out in 9
minutes!" is just plain old bullying someone into buying, regardless of what
the item was.

Often enough too, TIM didn't buy one, there is a backorder of 1000 units being
delivered this week, and the deal will just start again after the current
ticker finishes.

~~~
Spooky23
I get where you’re coming from, but I think legitimate scarcity or urgency is
ok.

If there truly are 3 items left, that is a legit fact that matters. And it’s
context that I had in retail. Likewise, sales do run out.

That said, online retailers don’t seem to need to meet any true in advertising
standard, and they are mostly full of shit.

~~~
metters
There is no more legitimate scarcity or urgency anymore. This also was
discussed here yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20269376](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20269376)

~~~
tatami
I found the information on airline websites rather accurate (n seats left at
this price). I guess this comes directly from how it's stored in the back end
booking system (0..8, 9+ seats per booking class)

On legacy carrier official websites, not OTA or LCC like Ryanair.

~~~
metters
Before or after buying the ticket? If I already have paid and check in online
I can pick the seat. But then it is too late already.

If you mean before you bought the ticket, then I don't know. Maybe they are
the last ones to be honest here... But I would be surprised if they were

~~~
subhro
Also, you can get a subscription from a website like Expertflyer and see the
backend inventory from Sabre or likes.

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CptFribble
These patterns get used because they work. It's game theory: if site A makes
10-50% more money because they do all this stuff, sites B-? are going to wind
up doing it too.

If you want to get rid of marketing dark patterns, the solution is simple:
just make sure all humans remove emotion and feelings from every decision, and
give them the time and money to find all possible alternative sources for the
desired product or service.

(/s)

~~~
rchaud
We could also recognize that businesses have an incentive to exploit human
psychological impulses, and attempt to counteract that by providing the public
with information about these methods so they can make more informed choices
next time.

~~~
tdb7893
Not to mention as a society we can also legislate against certainly patterns
(having to show costs up front is a common example).

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dublin
There are very few, if any at all, large companies that are honest with their
customers on this stuff. I did a contract a couple of years ago with an online
home rental company. I strongly suspect the "only X left in this area" and
"viewed Y times" were often completely fictitious. (The latter could be easily
gamed by including it in any search results page, anyway...) Since I was the
PM for the product, I know for certain that 100% of the properties they
featured in their weekly emails touting getaway destinations were already
booked and never available. To my knowledge, they _never_ promoted a property
that was actually available the entire time I was there. And I strongly
suspect there was something fishy about the advertised rates, too, since they
were always ridiculously attractive properties that they knew couldn't be
booked.

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carapace
Flipping this around, who are your _favorite_ sites that _don 't_ do this
crap?

For me I can list Digikey (
[https://www.digikey.com/](https://www.digikey.com/) ), my recent experience
ordering from them was flawless.

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ptah
I can't help but think these dark pattern catalogues will make them
proliferate faster

~~~
rchaud
The information could also proliferate among the public, so they they won't
succumb to these tricks as often.

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jtchang
If you really want to see some dark patterns go try booking a flight on
United.com.

~~~
aivisol
I was going to write something similar about some (many!) European (budget,
but who can draw a line these days) airlines: I can get crazy finding those
small, grey links labelled "No, I do not want to add checked bag", "No, I will
not buy insurance from you", "And I do not need your car rental, airport
transfer, hotel reservation, just let me buy that plane ticket!"...

~~~
doitLP
Agreed. It’s fine if you’re sharp and tech-savvy but there’s a reason I am the
family travel agent...my dad with his poor eyesight and short temper breezes
through tricks like that and ends up paying unnecessarily.

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RocketSyntax
How is it that every hotel seems to have "1 room left!"

I'm a repeat user of your booking site, why would you treat me like a naive
fool?

~~~
SaladFork
Relevant discussion from yesterday too:

"Consumers Are Becoming Wise to Your Nudge"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20284298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20284298)

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leowoo91
Among all, showing low stock warning (if plenty) is more than a dark pattern,
because that's direct misinformation I think.

~~~
CWuestefeld
On our site, we show inventory on hand (when the data's available, we don't
always know).

We didn't put it there to create urgency. The feature is there due to customer
demand for it. Customers do not want to be surprised and disappointed when
something turns out to be back ordered. They've made it very clear that they
want this transparency.

Perhaps some sites misrepresent this (or just make it up). But the fact that
inventory information is shown isn't in itself a dark pattern.

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VvR-Ox
Yes of course!

In a capitalist market where the one main goal is to earn as much profit as
you can people use everything legal on a big scale because they won't have a
chance to beat competition otherwise.

The really big ones even invent new "dark patterns" and more than enough are
also willing to do stuff which is illegal as long as they can cover their
tracks or think they can.

It's a flaw in the whole system because incentives lead people to morally
questionable decisions. It doesn't advance humanity or something like that - a
free market is free so no one stops the evil geniuses to get the max. out of
it.

~~~
VvR-Ox
Oh I forgot - many of the ppl responsible for implementing these patterns are
here to vote stuff like this down.

~~~
dillonmckay
Guilty!

~~~
VvR-Ox
Haha at least you are honest ;-)

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kzzzznot
Don't a lot of these fall under 'false advertising'? Seems like each country's
regulators are not doing as much to combat this online as they are in brick
and mortar shops?

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secure
Meta: I really like how the paper is summarized on the site.

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m463
I think pop-overs and other interruptions should be considered a dark pattern.

Probably the original dark pattern.

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jason_slack
Some other examples: Ticket Master, Wigs.com

