
Dark Patterns - pmontra
https://darkpatterns.org/
======
opdahl
Reddit mobile site version has one of the more egregious design patterns
concerning how they try to get you to install their app.

If you're not logged in and open up reddit.com on mobile, the first thing you
will notice is a footer asking for you to open in their app, and your choices
are "No", or a prominent "Continue" [1].

So if you click no, you're still not done, not even halfway on their dark
pattern for getting you to install their app. When you now try to open a post
it will stop the page, darken it and ask you to again open it in the app [2].
Now "Continue" means continuing to seeing the post so you click that.

Okay after twice as many clicks as necessary and 2 prompts you're finally
looking at a Reddit post, but you're still not done! When you load in the post
you will see a huge bottom footer _again_ asking you to open it up in the app
[3]. And now you have the two choices and the worst dark pattern of all. You
see a huge "Continue" button, which now means continue to open it in the app,
or a really small link that says "or go to the mobile site". The thing is, is
that you are already on the mobile site, and clicking that link just removes
the footer, you won't actually "go" anywhere... So here they are tricking
people to thinking that clicking continue will let you keep looking at the
post as normal (as they taught you on the previous prompt), and by clicking
the the small tiny link that is easy to miss, you will be brought to somewhere
else. But the case is actually the opposite.

Reddits mobile page is just the worst collection of dark patterns I know of,
in line with the fake download buttons littering shady sites. It's almost
unusable now, and I'm sure that is their intention. Make the mobile website
experience so horrible that you are forced to download their app so you don't
have to spend half your time clicking away prompts.

1: [https://i.imgur.com/fYqabnx.png](https://i.imgur.com/fYqabnx.png)

2: [https://i.imgur.com/DuuzSvD.png](https://i.imgur.com/DuuzSvD.png)

3: [https://i.imgur.com/qQ4lAIM.png](https://i.imgur.com/qQ4lAIM.png)

~~~
thaumaturgy
Yeah. Reddit's mobile experience is a frequent topic on /r/assholedesign
(recent example with video:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/9oy75c/reddi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/9oy75c/reddits_mobile_website_design_somehow_got_even/)).

Their efforts this year to make the desktop site look and work more like 9gag
unless you plug "old.reddit.com" into the url bar was pretty fun too.

It's been for the best though. It's helped me cut my time on that site down to
almost nothing, which has improved my overall mood quite a bit.

~~~
TheFattestNinja
If you are logged in, you can set in your preference to always use the old
design. As of lately though, "always" means "usually", as sometimes it will
lose track of it and redirect you to the new design until you "opt-out" again.

~~~
Havoc
Even then its a patchwork. Like some of the mod tools are new design only and
then any tabs opened from there are new design.

Annoying AF & pretty sure it's not accidental

~~~
giancarlostoro
Sounds like bad code to me.

------
Animats
Some sites shoot themselves in the foot with dark patterns. J.C. Whitney, the
auto parts company, does this. If you go to their site, you probably want to
buy an auto part. They have a reasonable system where you select make and
model of vehicle. But then they start throwing full screen ads at you on
mobile which get in the way of buying auto parts. It's really hard to get past
those ads.

I tried twice to buy a part from them, then gave up and went to a competitor.
On the compeitor's site, I was done in five minutes, and the part arrived
today.

Fandango, the movie ticketing service, has a similar problem. If you go there,
you either want to buy a ticket or find out what's playing. They keep shoving
trailers and popups in your face as you try to get to the desired movie and
the ticket ordering page. And they keep trying to get you to install their
"app". I've stopped buying tickets on line from them; I just go to the theater
and pay cash. It's faster.

~~~
Gibbon1
> Some sites shoot themselves in the foot with dark patterns.

I was thinking this when trying to navigate altium.com.

Hint: we have a license for their software which we spend about $5-10 grand a
year on and it's behaving like an ad sponsored clickbait site, throwing one
pop up after another. Click on video, pop up shows up with a tiny ill placed
dismiss button.

------
skilled
The one where you can't click 'not now' for OSX Mojave is just painful.
Clicking on the side doesn't work, neither does hovering. You _have to_ open
the Apple Store every single time, just to remove the notification.

Elsewhere, I seem to have taken note that there's been a significant decrease
in modal usage across the web. Seeing a lot less popups and other crappy
widgets.

Nothing more juicy than a brigade of 3-5 popups moments after loading a page.
/s

~~~
stiGGG
The update notification on macos can be removed by drag and dropping it out of
the screen. But it will show up again (after 24h IIRC) if you don’t change
your auto update settings.

~~~
skilled
It does not work like this for Mojave notification. The only way to remove is
to click and open App store.

------
jankovicsandras
The most relevant looking link on the front page is

[https://darkpatterns.org/hall-of-shame](https://darkpatterns.org/hall-of-
shame)

which is just a link to Twitter

[https://twitter.com/darkpatterns](https://twitter.com/darkpatterns)

.

Isn't this a dark pattern itself? :)

~~~
hobofan
It's not a link to Twitter (as in a redirect).

It's just repurposing Twitter as a CMS for their Hall of Shame. I don't see
what would be the dark pattern here?

~~~
alanbernstein
Maybe it's "using Twitter as a CMS"?

------
leeman2016
Linkedin was particularly annoying with the "you are missing out a lot ... a
lot has happened since ..." type of emails. It would also give me couple of
non-existent new notifications ... abusing the red indicator badges

~~~
Vinnl
> non-existent new notifications ... abusing the red indicator badges

I think the most egregious instance of this I have seen is the allegation that
Facebook displayed fake notification badges during the GDPR flow, which
pressures users into quickly accepting the terms so that they can see the
notifications: [https://www.dailydot.com/debug/facebook-gdpr-notification-
la...](https://www.dailydot.com/debug/facebook-gdpr-notification-lawsuit/)

~~~
mattbreeden
> Facebook, for its part, told the Daily Dot that the red notification icons
> are generic visuals meant to reassure users that the terms they’re agreeing
> to do, in fact, come from the social platform. The icons were supposedly
> added so people wouldn’t suspect they were agreeing to a phishing
> notification.

Yikes.

------
jlangenauer
Google has also become quite disgraceful for this - they've added prompts to
their mobile apps to get you to install their other mobile apps. For example,
when you click a link in their Gmail iOS app: "Do you want to open this link
in Chrome [Install] or Safari [Continue]?"

I hope whichever product manager and UX designer contributed this are cursed
to a life of either scalding or freezing showers caused by incomprehensible
taps in every hotel they visit.

------
Topolomancer
That's an interesting and well-curated list!

I do wonder though to what extent these patterns are being introduced on
purpose (or even A/B-tested for maximum 'efficiency') or just a result of
'form over function' or, in some cases, just an indicator of missing technical
prowess (scaling the buttons with the font size, for example).

~~~
eponeponepon
It's hard to say - "never ascribe to malice what can be sufficiently explained
by stupidity" is all very well, but on the other hand, sufficiently advanced
malice is indistinguishable from stupidity...

------
eveninglucifer7
Wait. When I click the Hall of Shame all I see is a single link to a Twitter
feed (probably my adblock is working). What kind of pattern is that? ;)

~~~
thecatspaw
You do not see the twitter iframe?

~~~
Animats
I don't. Blocked.

------
dqpb
This should include business processes in addition to UI tricks. For example,
you can easily subscribe to NYT online but to unsubscribe you have to talk to
a salesperson. FU NYT.

~~~
sudomakeup
This is somewhat covered by [https://darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-
pattern/roach-motel](https://darkpatterns.org/types-of-dark-pattern/roach-
motel)

Gyms are notorious for this. Almost any staff member can sign someone up, but
if you want to cancel theres only one guy in the entire gym authorized to do
that, and they are frequently "out to lunch".

Either that or you have to print a cancellation form and send it by snail mail
with 30 days notice. And if you dont send by certified mail they will claim
they never received it.

------
CM30
Medium's got a few dark patterns too. Most notably, how hard they try to trick
people into viewing paid articles and losing their three or so free articles
supply.

Seriously. Every single article on the front page is usually a paid article.
Every single article in the email digest is usually a paid article. And in all
cases, actually figuring this out is pretty hard, since you have to know the
tiny star icon stands for 'paid' rather than any of the four million other
meanings it may have.

Let's not forget how hard they push you to register either. Those giant modals
and bars can be utterly obnoxious.

Other examples I've seen recently are:

Twitter and its absolute obsession with getting you to view tweets in 'non
linear' order. Every time you set it to 'chronological order' or what not, it
seems to revert back to their algorithm the next time you load the site or
app. No, I don't want this. Why is the idea of a simple timeline so scary for
social media sites now?

As well as YouTube and its attempts to smuggle content you don't want into
your notifications list. Again, if users click subscribe, they want to do just
that, not get spammed with promoted content so you can make a quick buck.

It's annoying how bad most large sites nowadays seem to be about stuff like
this.

~~~
vthriller
> Twitter and its absolute obsession

Oh yes, Twitter, that very Twitter that shows me full-screen modals [0] after
[0] every [0] other [0] scroll [0] on [0] its [0] mobile [0] website [0].

[0] [https://i.imgur.com/q19sqZw.png](https://i.imgur.com/q19sqZw.png)

------
mlang23
Had something like that happent o me when I tried to terminate my Audible abo.
Apparently, the website was broken, the button to click simply didn't do
anything. Last resort was to call support via phone. This taught me a lesson,
and was bad for the whole online bussiness. Since that, I think trice before I
go into a monthly-payment thing, because, after all, who knows how hard it
will be to get out of it again?

------
funkattack
Marriage is always easier than divorce. In those terms its a dark pattern too.

~~~
bausshf
Separation is easier than marriage though.

------
jokoon
I love to right click, "block element" with ublock origin.

I wonder if websites are legally required to prove user clicked on "I agree".

~~~
pmontra
If it has anything to do with personal data, under GDPR they must gather
consent so yes, they must prove users gave them consent.

Hiding elements with ublock is my favorite anticlutter activity on my phone.

------
williawmgant
Coincidentally, we just covered this on our podcast today:

[https://completedeveloperpodcast.com/episode-175/](https://completedeveloperpodcast.com/episode-175/)

We didn't get into all of them, but covered a lot of them.

------
solarkraft
s/dark pattern/shit design

~~~
Topolomancer
To some extent, yes. But the term _pattern_ is more apt because it also
teaches users to expect a certain behaviour from a website. For example: the
GDPR laws result in a lot of these 'We use cookies for FOO' popups; and users
are now 'trained' or even 'conditioned' to just click on them as fast as
possible to get to the article.

This is problematic from a UX point of view because whenever you _do_ show
relevant information, it might get lost in the noise.

