
Dark Patterns - User Interfaces Designed to Trick People - willfarrell
http://darkpatterns.org
======
michaelfeathers
It's interesting to talk about the ethics of this sort of thing because the
rabbit hole is very deep.

I think it was P.T. Barnum who can came up with the idea of making customers
walk though the gift shop to exit his circus. I think of that every time I
walk though an airport that does the same thing on entry or exit from its
international flights area. That's an example of user interface design, isn't
it?

And, what about the process of automobile sales? For nearly a century buyers
have gone through the ritual of negotiating with a sales person who goes to
the back room for 15 minutes at a time to "talk the manager" only to slurp on
a coffee cup. That's a user interface as well.

I'm not defending the patterns in the presentation, but I don't see them as
anything new. The medium is just different. Some businesses are just
particularly shameless, and that's a problem.

~~~
jhspaybar
As someone who spent 10 years selling cars, the salesman really is "talking to
the manager". There is just incompetence and slow workers everywhere. Also,
often times that manager has 5 salesmen in line wanting an offer to give their
customers. Throw in folks who need the dealership to get financing, etc and it
is just an inefficient bottleneck. Lots of companies have tried changing it,
but it seems the old school method keeps being the best way to maximize
profit.

~~~
milesf
It's a negotiating tactic called "higher authority"
<http://www.negotiationdynamics.com/Authlim.asp>

------
josscrowcroft
For a shining example of dark patterns, simply try to book a flight on Ryanair
_without_ accidentally opting in to their upsell products.

Try to continue without insurance? Massive popup. "Last year X,000 people lost
$$$... can you really take the risk?"

And two buttons. One big green one, "Continue with insurance" and one, tiny,
non-button text link saying "No thanks, _I'll take the risk._ "

That's one example. There are dozens.

~~~
camus
I dont have much money , but i'll never fly with these punks. I did it once in
2002 to go to Eire , thought the plane would crash.

~~~
dabeeeenster
Much as I hate Ryanair, they have never had a serious accident in their entire
history, and they have a LOT of planes...

~~~
jules
Ryanair does not only have dark patterns on its website, but also within the
company.

Two months ago there was a program on Dutch TV where a couple of Ryanair
pilots anonymously stated that Ryanair flies with dangerously low fuel to keep
costs down. Here is the video with english subtitles:

[http://reporter.kro.nl/seizoenen/2012/afleveringen/28-12-201...](http://reporter.kro.nl/seizoenen/2012/afleveringen/28-12-2012/extras/mayday_mayday_-
_international_version)

While this hasn't lead to an accident yet, it has lead to several mayday calls
when planes had to fly to another airport due to weather conditions or had to
wait in the air because the airport was busy. The airport had to let Ryanair
land before its turn. If the other firms that had aircraft landing at the
airport had been flying with similarly low fuel it would have been a crash.

and part 2:

[http://reporter.kro.nl/seizoenen/2013/afleveringen/03-01-201...](http://reporter.kro.nl/seizoenen/2013/afleveringen/03-01-2013/extras/mayday_mayday_part_2_-_english_version)

This part is partially about the fuel issue but also about other issues, such
as pilots being pressured to fly while ill or very tired.

~~~
derleth
> The airport had to let Ryanair land before its turn.

"Ryanair: Getting you there _faster_."

~~~
dhugiaskmak
Well, getting you _somewhere_ faster.

------
PeterisP
Regulation can help.

A good example is 3rd party marketing opt-out dark pattern. It is already
legislated in a number of countries; and if a local business puts in an opt-
out checkbox instead of opt-in ? Blam; this contact info is considered
obtained without consent, please delete it and here is the invoice for your
fine, thank you very much.

Another pattern that can be eliminated is hidden costs - i.e., in EU, you have
to advertise the full cost, including the tax and "mandatory convenience
fees"; so for some costs you can't hide them away.

And of course, the most effective tool is legally mandated rights for returns
and cancellations - it gives actual teeth to angry customers, since if you
succeed in tricking them, they can just cancel the deal [not neccessarily
through a process that the company prescribes] and get full returns.

------
unclebucknasty
Is it a dark pattern when companies like Dwolla walk you through a multi-step
signup procees involving a significant amount of info and an email
verification, then ask for ultra-sensitive info like SSN only at the very end?

Clearly this is done to prevent some abandonment that would occur upon seeing
the SSN on the first step of the process. Their idea is that you are already
so invested by the end that you are more likely to give up that sensitive
info. But, whether it is technically a "dark pattern" or not, it feels really,
really slimy.

~~~
seanp2k2
I like the one that Flickr (Yahoo) is now using where you can "log in with
Facebook!" only to have it take you to a page where you still must have a
Yahoo ID to continue.

I took some screenshots of the process: <http://imgur.com/a/TPdYb>

Yahoo ID registration requires your DOB, full name, gender (of which only M/F
are options), and postal code. Mobile phone / alt e-mail are the only non-
required fields in the screenshots I linked.

~~~
unclebucknasty
Yeah, I guess it's easier to fit "log in with Facebook" on a button than it is
to fit "let us hijack your FB feed, then sign in with Yahoo".

------
ck2
If you wouldn't do it to your mother, it's not ethical.

So, most marketing isn't ethical at all.

But that doesn't stop most marketing.

~~~
dizzystar
Not allowed to down-vote, but this is using a very large brush to paint a ton
of people the same color as bad apples.

Most marketing around you is perfectly ethical with no desire to trick you
into buying things you don't want. Most sales people you meat are perfectly
ethical. There are, of course, some idiots, but that is about as productive
and narrow-minded as saying that since some small percentage of programmers
are misogynist, all programmers are.

~~~
Fargren
As an aside: down-vote on HN isn't for disagreement. It's should be used when
you think a post doesn't add to the discussion. The fact that you are giving
an interesting counterpoint, I think, shows that the post isn't worthy of a
down-vote.

~~~
jamieb
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171>

PG: "I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement.
Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems
reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness."

~~~
Fargren
I stand corrected.

~~~
mindcrime
It may be pg's site, and he sets the rules in the technical sense, but I feel
like a majority of the users of the site agree with your position, and would
discourage people from downvoting simply out of disagreement. The "rules" are
one thing, the "culture" may be different. In this case, I think the cultural
norm is in favor of not expressing disagreement through downvotes. But that's
just me. _shrug_

------
hakaaaaak
There weren't many patterns presented, so here are a few of those and some
more:

Some evil UX patterns are:

* Opt-in: Prepopulating option with more expensive or recurring payment. (example was a donation, but Amazon does this when not defaulting to free 5-7 day ground shipping _after promising free shipping prior to putting it in cart!_ which is much worse since they are bait and switching)

* Opt-in, part 2: Making changes subtle changes can be evil. By switching around buttons, etc. after having it work a certain way a long time and not changing the interface enough, you trigger muscle memory to do the wrong thing. Amazon has exploited this as well with the (not) free shipping option.

* Difficult to quit/cancel: also mentioned in the OP's linked presentation. In addition to more steps or having to email, etc. they don't even give you a documented option, e.g. you have to email them so they will delete your account and they say that nowhere in the site.

* Glossing over legal: Small text or less readable font to hide details is evil.

* Hiding legal: putting legal disclaimers in an area of the site that is hard to get to is evil.

* Unnecessary login: making the user login because they _might_ want to retain info about something, when really the site owner is getting more benefit (selling email address or lead info, mining it themselves, etc.).

* Asking for more than is needed for user to accomplish what they want: asking the user for more info than they need to provide in order to get lead info _when they are not aware you will contact them_ is evil.

* Unintended use of data: Worked for a telecom that had page to get phone# to look up service availability and then they would use that for lead info.

* Easy to determine security questions: this is just stupid. Many are easy to find out and they do little more than make the uninformed user feel more secure. Examples: birthday, street you grew up on, etc. that can be learned even without social engineering.

* Passwords: one of the most archaic and stupid constructs ever. Passwords encourage people to use the same password across sites, so if one is compromised, they all are. An autogenerated passkey and a more secure way to reset it with a new one if your passkey was lost or stolen would beat passwords anyday. SSO only compounds this idiotic UX we can't get rid of. (And we put abusable/hackable cameras in every laptop instead of adding retinal scanners or thumbprint readers in every laptop, which could be viable alternatives.)

~~~
rhizome
_Passwords encourage people to use the same password across sites_

I've heard this said about _difficult_ passwords, but I think this is putting
too fine a point on it. Passwords don't encourage anything on their own,
except perhaps a consciousness of the basics of security. It's akin to saying
that pizza encourages eating it for every meal. I don't think we've yet seen a
gene _that_ selfish.

~~~
bnegreve
> It's akin to saying that pizza encourages eating it for every meal.

I am also fine with passwords, but I really dislike useless parallels:

Passwords have to be remembered and therefore having many different passwords
cause inconvenience. How does _this_ apply to pizza?

~~~
claudius
I don’t know 95% of my passwords. Opera does, though, and so does a little
encrypted text file somewhere on my harddrive. And neither of the two mind if
my passwords are all of the form GgSGlIXrPE1IrbhgWFBU.

Of course, I only use one computer rather than five different laptops, three
tablets and fifty-two smartphones, in which case I imagine it to be tedious to
sync them (unless you trust Opera enough to use Opera Sync or some such
thing).

~~~
bruceboughton
Off topic but 1Passsword is cross-platform, syncs via Dropbox and has browser
extensions for auto-filling passwords.

~~~
networked
1Password is cross-platform in the sense that it works on Windows, OS X and
mobile phones but it doesn't support Linux.

Since I need Linux support I use KeePass 1.x [1] on Windows and KeePassX [2]
on Linux and Mac OS X. Both versions are free software. They store password
entries in a single AES-encrypted container, use in-RAM encryption and allow
you to attach a file with arbitrary binary data to each password entry (handy
for key files). While there is no single Firefox extension that works across
all the platforms they both can emulate typing for password entry. For
synchronization I keep the encrypted password file in my Dropbox. If your use
case is similar to mine I can highly recommend this solution because it
behaves consistently across the platforms I've tried it on [3]. There's also
KeePassDroid for Android that supposedly works well with Dropbox but I haven't
used it.

[1] <http://keepass.info/>

[2] <https://www.keepassx.org/>

[3] The most exotic one being Debian PPC. Sadly, it didn't last since while
KeePassX worked fine on it there was no straightforward way to get Dropbox
running on non-x86 Linux and using a workaround like rsyncing with an x86
Linux machine running Dropbox or a VM introduced a large extra breaking point
to the system.

~~~
cscheid
With Dropbox, you get 1password on linux via their html frontend (I use it all
the time)

~~~
abrowne
You can view -- which I do appreciate -- but you cannot edit.

------
greggman
No it's not ethical. When I see it as I'm checking out I CANCEL MY ORDER AND
LEAVE! I'm not going to do business with a company that is trying to scam me.

~~~
ZoFreX
I've started doing this whenever a company pulls a bait and switch (pet hate
of mine). I got an email offer saying a site was $9.95 for 1 year, limited
time only... ok sure, big savings and I had been thinking about signing up.
Click through and get £9.95. Not cool.

------
Monkeyget
Nice redesign! It took me a while to find the actual patterns. Shouldn't the
list of patterns be visible on the home page or at least accessible from the
menu?

------
andrew_wc_brown
The worst I've encountered recently was Mastercard. They call thanking you and
your family for using their service. They say as a thank you they give for
free, card protection services, by accepting their thank you/free gift your
opting in for a reoccurring service that will charge you next month. Its the
devil's wording.

~~~
seanp2k2
As a general rule, almost nothing "FREE!" ever is in the strictest sense of
the word.

------
rubbingalcohol
Requiring the user to watch a Flash video is a dark pattern.

~~~
camus
requiring anything from the user is already.

------
sigzero
Once you "trick" anyone to do anything, it is not longer ethical.

------
morpher
The slide cast doesn't show up in mobile safari. But, there is a link on the
page to a list with detailed descriptions and examples:
<http://darkpatterns.org/what_is_a_dark_pattern/>

------
campuscodi
I think this is the 6th time this link has been posted here. The site is 4
years old already.

~~~
Foomandoonian
And I don't think the site has improved in any meaningful way. Someone should
fork it and make something better.

(Also, the headline should be 'Dark Patterns: Are They Ethical?' not 'Is It
Ethical'.)

~~~
seanp2k2
Meh; it's just "begging the question" (the popular use of the phrase, not the
pedantic "correct" use of the phrase [quotes because language evolves IMO]
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question> \-- more info if you're
interested)

------
DanBC
When your dark pattern attracts the attention of the FCC you know something's
wrong.

([http://transition.fcc.gov/transaction/aol-
tw/exparte/nationw...](http://transition.fcc.gov/transaction/aol-
tw/exparte/nationwide3_exparte110600.pdf))

------
fridental
I'm very disturbed. The only reason you've got job and work for a company is
that the company expects you can help it to make (more) money.

The things you've mentioned do help boosting income, for some companies only
in short-term, for other companies even in long-term.

If your personal ethics are not OK with it, there are only two ethical things
you can do about it. Either you design a UX that is equally efficient in terms
of KPI, but conforms to your ethics, or you quit the job.

Remaining employed, receiving your paycheck, but working against the company
and waving ethics codes around or quietly sabotaging boss' decisions is NOT
ethical.

------
emehrkay
Privacy Zuckering -- so perfect that it doesnt need an example.

------
ninetax
I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way but I think this information would
have been presented way better in a video or an article.

I was hard to connect the meaning between some of the videos and I feel like
there was some dialog I was missing. I hope the trend of just releasing slide
shows in lieu of articles or videos does not become a trend.

~~~
RougeFemme
I agree. This seemed to be a lazy or "less competent" way of presenting the
material.

------
anigbrowl
+1 for Reynholm Industries in the slide deck.

------
jaddison
Perhaps this is obvious, but this affiliate marketing in a nutshell - that is,
the heavy usage of "dark patterns".

------
anonhacker
Thanks for posting this, I'm going do try writing a NLP bot that identifies
some "dark patterns"

~~~
willfarrell
Wound love to see it when it's done

------
drunkenmasta
Will someone please recommend some (academic) books on the subject closest to
"Dark patterns?"

~~~
chrstphrhrt
Read this last summer:
[http://books.google.ca/books/about/Exploitation.html?id=2eyH...](http://books.google.ca/books/about/Exploitation.html?id=2eyHV0r7J64C)

Thought it was good because it doesn't give a lot of attention to purely
economic stuff.

