

Dark Patterns: Inside the interfaces designed to trick you - Evolved
http://www.theverge.com/2013/8/29/4640308/dark-patterns-inside-the-interfaces-designed-to-trick-you

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praptak
I have recently spotted a real-life dark pattern:
[http://imgur.com/wFsfrfl](http://imgur.com/wFsfrfl)

It's a gas station in Poland. This attempts to trick you into buying the
overpriced 98 octane gasoline instead of the default 95 that everyone buys.

Notice that the 95 is hidden in the middle of the diesel fuel dispensers and
even its nozzle is designed to match those. The photo doesn't show it well but
the actual labels are placed high enough so that you won't spot them unless
you deliberately look up.

~~~
dsl
But if a startup does something similar like highlighting the most expensive
option on a subscription page, it is called growth hacking and we applaud the
CEO and designers.

~~~
Mahn
Everything is relative. If you define "evil pattern" as a design that
encourages a certain action that you (the makers/owners) want the user to do
for your own benefit, then practically every single sign up form or landing
page is an evil pattern too. Heck, almost every form of marketing could be
considered an evil pattern by that definition as well.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'd suggest a better definition - "evil pattern" is "a design that encourages
a certain action that you (the makers/owners) want the user to do, _which
provides negative value for said user relative to alternatives_ ".

Your job as an entrepreneur should be to steer your users toward options that
are optimal for him/her and charge accordingly. Trying to trick your user into
choosing something worse for him so that you can profit more is just dickish,
period.

> _almost every form of marketing could be considered an evil pattern by that
> definition as well_

Because it often is, and it's bewildering how people are used to it - to the
point they turned cheating and abuse into a legitimate occupation.

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Tepix
A dark pattern that even well-liked websites like SPIEGEL and heise.de use is
image galleries with wrong image counts. The gallery claims there are X
pictures, yet there are only X-1 and the final one is an advert.

~~~
flycaliguy
Situations like that often make me wonder if I'm being fooled or the person
paying for advertising space is. Both I guess.

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Kurtz79
I was always bothered by Ryanair's (biggest low cost EU airline) "optional"
travel insurance.

Its mandatory field is a list like this :

"Which is your country of origin ?

Austria

Belgium

Croatia

Denmark

France

I don't want insurance

Italy

Sweden

Ungary"

Priceless.

~~~
junto
I noticed the other day, that if you use the Ryanair booking system in German,
you get a much clearer "Keine Versicherung erforderlich" (No Insurance
Required) option, right at the top.

[http://i.imgur.com/99pIygi.png](http://i.imgur.com/99pIygi.png)

It appears that they don't use this dark pattern on German speakers.

~~~
jbrooksuk
> It appears that they don't use this dark pattern on German speakers.

Dark patterns like this are now illegal by European Law. [1]

[1] [http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2014/08/26/some-dark-
pa...](http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2014/08/26/some-dark-patterns-now-
illegal-in-uk-interview-with-heather-burns/)

------
Sami_Lehtinen
SourceForce pushing malware would fit perfectly into this dark pattern
category.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8849950](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8849950)

Btw. In most of apps user interfaces and usability is just so bad, that you
don't need any dark patterns to completely ruin experience and frustrate
users. Making something purely random and without any logic, isn't 'carefully
crated', but it does exactly the same.

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whoopdedo
Perhaps the most devious use of an interface anti-pattern is used to put
people on the FBI's no-fly-list.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7193631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7193631)

------
iQuercus
I'd be leery of assigning "dark" and "light" intrinsic villainy or heroism to
patterns like opt-in vs. opt-out. Yes, a tick normally should mean yes, but
context matters. For example, look at the opt-in/opt-out debate in organ
donation. The evidence suggests that opt-out forms significantly increase
rates of deceased organ donation.

 _As long as the form is clear about what the tick means_ and an opt-out set
up increases positive behavior that benefits fellow man and society, is it
really such a clear-cut bad thing? Is the pattern evil, or the outcomes?

Also if you're interested in the opt-in/opt-out debate, here's an interesting
discussion of some of its nuances:

[http://www.biomedcentral.com/biome/opt-in-or-opt-out-
informi...](http://www.biomedcentral.com/biome/opt-in-or-opt-out-informing-
the-organ-donation-debate/)

~~~
TeMPOraL
I agree. Opt-out itself is not wrong, what matters are your intentions and the
consequences. Some things really do have to be opt-out - like organ donation
you mentioned or other things that are beneficial to individual or to the
society at no expense to the individual. But the "dark pattern" starts when
you're exploiting individuals via opt-out.

I think issue is quite simple - if you're exploiting people for your own gain,
it's dickish. A lot of the discussion, and generally sales, marketing and PR,
is just people trying to excuse doing things they know are wrong, so that they
don't feel bad about themselves.

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username223
> At present, Quora doesn't mess around with opt-ins or questions of any kind.
> They just opt you in as part of the terms of service.

What a surprise to see the "?share=1" people in an article on dark patterns. I
don't understand how that site exists.

~~~
thisjepisje
I've been there a few times, the content is actually pretty good.

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cpeterso
The name "dark pattern" is a bit too clever. There ought be a more
straightforward term for something this important to become mainstream (like
"spam" or "phishing" have).

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'd go with "cheating", "fraud", or at least "dick move". Though the more
popular label now is "growth hacking".

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nsegal
Limit Ad Tracking is actually listed under Settings > Privacy > Advertising in
the latest IOS version.

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awjr
Have to agree on Experts Exchange. I used them quite extensively, they moved
to being quite aggressive at hiding their answers, so I got to the point where
I asked Google to remove them from any search results. Then stackexchange made
it all better.

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Netminder_EE
What's annoyingly fraudulent is posting this as if it were something new.

The article was written in August 2013, and used information from early that
year. For one thing, Experts Exchange has used neither that system since
before the article came out (meaning it's bad research to begin with).

But if you all want to drink the Kool-Aid, be my guests.

------
vonnik
A similar piece in Pando about a year ago: [http://pando.com/2014/04/15/dark-
patterns-the-crimes-and-mis...](http://pando.com/2014/04/15/dark-patterns-the-
crimes-and-misdemeanors-of-design/)

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aaronbrethorst
Given that Apple rendered MAC addresses useless for tracking users in iOS 8,
_and_ make developers swear up and down that they're only going to use IDFA
for advertising, I think they're a bad example to start with.

~~~
roel_v
"Given that Apple rendered MAC addresses useless for tracking users in iOS 8"

How does that work?

~~~
geon
The idea was to randomize the mac sent out when scanning for wifi networks.
The feature appears to be crippled, though.

~~~
roel_v
Oh, so to stop location tracking, not identification by app developers? I
interpreted the GP as meaning that apps somehow couldn't use the mac for id
purposes. Thanks.

~~~
maxjg
Both are correct (unrelated). MAC address is randomized when scanning for wifi
networks, and if you ask iOS for the device MAC address, the SDK will return a
fake MAC.

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iooi
Weird for the article not to mention
[http://darkpatterns.org/](http://darkpatterns.org/)

It was the first source I know of that started a compilation of these.

~~~
psuter
The article is by the curator of that website, as mentioned in the first two
sentences of the author bio.

~~~
nodemon
lol

