Deceptive Patterns @darkpatterns Twitter profile | Pikagi

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Deceptive Patterns

@darkpatterns

36,945

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3

Following

490

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4,485

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Exposing Deceptive Patterns (aka "Dark Patterns") since 2010. Run by @harrybr (founder), @MLeiser , @Cristianapt & Kosha Doshi.

https://t.co/9UXlotPWHd

Joined September 2010

Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

9 months

Buy the book!

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Deceptive Patterns - Buy The Book

Buy the book "Deceptive Patterns" by Harry Brignull. Learn about the latest tactics (aka 'Dark Patterns') used by companies to manipulate and deceive users.

www.deceptive.design

@toddlibby

Todd

9 months

This joined the library today. Deceptive Patterns by @harrybr and I HIGHLY recommend it to anyone to add their library to read up on and visit . A lot of what I talk about in my conference talks and examples I give are from this resource.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

How Adobe tricks users into a 12 month contract. Thread.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

Let's recap: 1. The total annual cost was hidden 2. The 50% cancellation free was hidden. 3. The clickwrap agreement text was much smaller than the sales text (e.g. "£0.00", "Start free trial") 4. The cancellation terms were hard to find Should this be permitted?

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

Here's a (now deleted) thread from last year that can be found on the internet archive wayback machine:

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

If we want to leave, we have to pay 50% of the outstanding ANNUAL BALANCE! E.g. If we want to leave in the first month, we're on the hook for ≈£300. Plus, our access to the products get cut off at the end of the first month.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

Ooh, I can scroll. That was not obvious at all. "Should you cancel after 14 days, you'll be charged a lump sum of 50% of your remaining contractual obligation and your service will continue until the end of the month's billing period"

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

What does this mean? It took me a while to get the facts, but it turns out that by clicking "Start free trial", we are tied into an annual contract. It's just shy of £50 a month. £50x12 months = £600.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

After a bit of googling I found this article on adobe's website that explains it a bit better.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

What's all this tiny grey writing? Funny how the heading "Enjoy your 7 day free trial!" is so big, yet this text is so very small and feint. Blah blah blah. Nothing remarkable here. But wait! What's that at the bottom, "Cancellation Terms:" Can I scroll?

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

By clicking "Start free trial", we're tied into a clickwrap agreement (though you'd be forgiven for not noticing the tiny writing). "By starting my 7-day free trial, I am beginning a subscription and I agree to the subscription and cancellation terms and Terms of Use"

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

We're now venturing into territory where most people probably don't go. Let's click the "subscription and cancellation terms" link.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

The homepage starts with a very clear offer. "Starting at £49.84/mo". Let's click the "Free trial" button.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

But what does "Annual plan, paid monthly" actually mean? Let's fill in our email address and press continue. Maybe that's explained on the next page.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

The next page has very little information on it. "7 days free, then £49.94/mo". Let's click the "Start free trial" button.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

This page seems innocent enough. "7-day trial"... "Due now £0.00". ... Recurring billing starts only after your 7-day free trial ends". That sounds nice. Most people will think "Gee that's great, where's my credit card?"

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

@alfonsoDev In order to use an adobe product you have to be subscribed to auto-renewal of your contract.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

5 months

A menu button that contains a single menu item. What could possibly be the motivation for that?

@etterstudio

Etter Studio 🌸

5 months

Just a heads up if you ever try to cancel your Google Workspace... it's under 'More' cc @darkpatterns

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

10 months

“AT&T's chatbot pretends to not be able to 'hear' you”

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

“By cancelling, I acknowledge: HP Instant Ink subscription cartridges will no longer work after my final billing cycle ends, even if they are already installed in my printer.”

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

Before buying a NYT subscription, here's what it will take you to cancel it.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

On the Kindle buried 3 layers deep in the settings is an Option called „Privacy“ which controls if your personal data is collected and used for marketing stuff. Enabling the „Privacy“ toggle means they use your personal data, disabling it means they won’t use it. 🙃

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

ADD A PHONE NUMBER FOR SECURITY blah de blah it's also not just for security its for a bunch of other things did we forget to mention that in the heading blah de blah blah SEND CODE

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

1 year

“Doordash made me think I’d forgotten to tip.. they actually just wanted me to leave a second tip.”

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

Quite a strong reaction to the adobe thread!

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

Here's @chrisinsilico on "Consent Washing" Excerpt from the book “Mindf*ck”:

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

I've noticed this form of trick wording a lot lately. It involves saying one thing in the heading, then burying something else completely different in the body of the text below.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

1 year

“No surprises” according to Via

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

5 months

Surely this can’t be real. “We've alerted you multiple times that this printer had non-Original HP cartridges installed. This is your final notice to fix the issue”

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

8 months

“Little known fact: when you connect your phone to your vehicle […] (1) your car sucks out a lot of data from your phone (e.g. your text message database […]) and (2) your phone has access to vehicle data that is sent out via the phone.”

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From the IAmA community on Reddit: We're the Researchers who looked into the privacy of 25 of the...

Explore this post and more from the IAmA community

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

The familiar yellow button that used to say "add to basket" now sets up a bi-monthly subscription, and the thing you have to click to make a one-off purchase doesn't look like a button at all.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

Look at the difference in the marketing email opt-in for UK vs USA. Source:

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

Imagine getting locked out of your smart home thermostat because your credit card expired on an e-commerce store account.

@PhilOnEdTech

Phil Hill

2 years

A tale of the convenience and the evil of #BigTech @amazon edition. We recently installed two Amazon smart thermostats to save energy, and last night I noticed they weren't at the programmed temp and red light flashing. 1/

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

1 year

“You”= regulators in various countries

@bchesky

Brian Chesky

1 year

5. You’ve told us our prices aren’t transparent. In November, we rolled out total price display as a beta. It’s now available to everyone

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

“This may take a few minutes to process” !

@blohmvos141

George Hines

3 years

This is a new and interesting dark pattern

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

"Why does TeamViewer install a font it doesn’t use on your computer? [...] Intentional or not, it enables websites to detect if you have TeamViewer installed on your computer."

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TeamViewer installs suspicious font only useful for web fingerprinting

A weird almost unreadable font file bundled with TeamViewer for Windows software lets website detect if you’ve installed the software. Raises privacy concerns.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

Create a subscription in a few clicks with @express but if you want to cancel, this is what you get…

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

"A tip: use instead of .com as you'll get the real full price in the searches as they must comply with Australian law. This works all over the world." Source:

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Airbnb | Holiday rentals, cabins, beach houses & more

Get an Airbnb for every kind of trip → 7 million holiday rentals → 2 million Guest favourites → 220+ countries and regions worldwide

www.airbnb.com.au

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

1 year

Netflix uk on mobile: 1. 3 plans visible 2. Scroll down and a small “see all plans” button becomes visible 3. Clicking it reveals a fourth plan - basic without ads

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

"No, I do not want to be guilt-tripped on this topic."

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

In this thread, I'm going to post a series of examples of from "Dark Patterns at Scale: Findings from a Crawl of 11K Shopping Websites" by Mathur et al (2019)

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

1 year

Check out the length of the delay when the user clicks "decline all". This is @StarbucksUK using @TrustArc .

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

1 year

“DoorDash openly admits I’m part of ‘pricing experiment’ after I compared delivery prices between me and my partner’s accs.” Source:

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

1 year

“Tried to cancel my adobe student account cause I can’t afford it anymore. Their cancellation fee is 4x their monthly student price”

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

I AcCePt

@elocemearg

Graeme Cole (@graemecole.bsky.social)

2 years

@darkpatterns Irony

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

HP at it again: Have to create an account to scan a document.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

NordVpn disables features when you turn off auto-renew

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

It would be interesting to compare the adobe sales and checkout journey in different legal jurisdictions. For comparison the New York Times cancellation experience is apparently very easy in California because of local laws. But it’s difficult elsewhere.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

“There was an attempt… to stop me from downloading a new browser”

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

“Some operators have reported an extremely long game play time on Donkey Kong for the better players. To remedy this we have introduced a speed up kit which eliminates the primary strategy utilized by this level of player.” (1981)

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

What @airtable neglects to say here is that clicking "Grant access" will incur a $240 USD annual subscription fee.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

And a mandatory arbitration agreement in tiny low contrast text 🤔

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

You sit on a throne of lies

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

The erosion of choice. “Delete” becomes “disable” “No” becomes “remind me later”

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

As if anyone would ever want this turned off! 😂 "As a user, I like being surprised by hidden fees, so that I can ... uhhh... feel more engaged with the @Airbnb brand?"

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

Nice job, Disney. Finally, a GDPR Cookie UI that is actually GDPR compliant. (uk-english version attached here).

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

6 years

Airbnb Price Per Night Correcter A browser extension that gives you the real price per night of an Airbnb stay after accounting for any and all fees

GitHub - davidsawyer/airbnb-price-per-night-correcter: Gives you the real price per night of an...

Gives you the real price per night of an Airbnb stay after accounting for any and all fees - GitHub - davidsawyer/airbnb-price-per-night-correcter: Gives you the real price per night of an Airbnb ...

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

Naughty "X Visitors are watching this right now" You can view source and check it for yourself here:

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

4 years

This site is excellent: It’s a game review site that analyses the Dark Patterns used by different games. It has a voting system and is meticulously put together.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

10 months

‘Pay no attention to the USB port behind the “no USB” covering a printer’s USB port with a sticker to push people into wireless printing’

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Pay no attention to the USB port behind the “no USB” sticker.

Is covering a printer’s USB port with a sticker to push people into wireless printing the worst thing HP does with its hardware? Not remotely. Is it still pretty funny to watch someone just take off...

www.theverge.com

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

1 year

WHY WOULD YOU EVER WANT TO LOG OUT OF THE COCA-COLA APP. IT HAS EVERYTHING.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 months

"They also like that it shattered to bits and is a waste of money" It appears that Amazon chose to use the verb "liked" instead of something neutral (eg "observed"). It's is funny because customers quite obviously didn't "like" it. It's false information!

@KSPrior

Karen Swallow Prior (Notorious KSP at The Priory)

3 months

This AI-generated summary of the Amazon reviews of a hanging planter is cracking me up:

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

1 year

The Nextflix deceptive "hidden plan" is somewhat reminiscent of Dan Airley’s Economist magazine study, described in his book Predictably Irrational (2010). It plays with the framing bias and the anchoring bias.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

Audible final cancellation screen (there were ~3 before this trying to prevent cancellation)

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

The EU Digital Services Act will have a huge impact on big tech:

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

1 year

Glassdoor blocks access unless you feed it data

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

This is how you get me to buy a new printer

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

9 months

"Nope, not malware. Just Windows."

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

What kind of mental gymnastics is needed to design a “no” toggle that actually means “yes”?

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

The Cognitive Bias Codex (Benson, 2016)

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

Confusing toggles are often used in dark patterns (particularly privacy consent UIs).

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

"I support paying for journalism, but why does the experience have to be so uncomfortable? The plans can be confusing, there are introductory rates which silently shoot up 1000% after 3 months, and cancelling can be a nightmare."

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

Look that the number of Gigabytes remaining (loads) and then look at the chart (which looks like you’ve got hardly any left)

@oliveremberton

Oliver Emberton

@oliveremberton

3 years

An evil genius made this progress bar Millions of customers needlessly upgrade because you flipped it and made it red

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

11 months

How I was let go for refusing to deploy a dark pattern (2021)

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

Remarkable. An example of Amazon NOT using dark patterns in a subscription cancellation process.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

Can you click on both?

@yourolly

Olly Browning

2 years

Wow I tried to cancel a subscription to a product I use for work and absolutely fuck this dark pattern

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

5 months

Apparently deceptive and manipulative practices actually IMPROVE consumer experience according to this group…

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@ccianet

Computer & Communications Industry Association

5 months

Many of the so-called “dark patterns” labeled in the FTC’s new report are omnipresent design elements businesses employ that consumers experience every day on sites across the internet that serve to improve the consumer experience online. Learn more:

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

"I’ve found that after testing the feature, now I can’t make the chronological feed the default. Instead, I can only have Home as my default or set up the two Home and Latest Tweets tabs and swap between them as needed."

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Twitter makes it harder to choose the old reverse-chronological feed

Twitter is pushing users toward the algorithmic feed.

www.theverge.com

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

1 year

“Can’t cancel my siriusxm subscription online”

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

🤷‍♀️

@louisnicholls_

Louis Nicholls 💫

@louisnicholls_

2 years

So Outlook just asked me if I want to upgrade to... bigger ads? I've never in my entire life been more confused by the intent behind a piece of copy...

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 months

$4.92 Billion Company Vs. 2 YouTubers These two youtubers found that Euronet ATMs charged them for pushing the "cash and balance" button without receiving any cash or balance information. The video went kinda viral and here's their follow-up:

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$4.92 Billion Company Vs. 2 YouTubers

The company came up with a genius trick to charge people a fee they didn't even know existed. We made a video about it, and now they're saying we lied. Where...

www.youtube.com

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

New updated version of now live!

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Deceptive Patterns - Home

Deceptive patterns (also known as “dark patterns”) are tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn't mean to, like buying or signing up for something.

www.deceptive.design

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

Are designers responsible for the work they do?

@AdobeXD

Adobe XD

4 years

Are designers responsible for preventing dark patterns?

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

“WhatsApp Beaten By Apple’s New iMessage Privacy Update”

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

What's the difference between Zipcar's $7, $8, and $10 plans?

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

1 year

“How I experience the web today”

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

The minimum rating you can give on is 2.5 stars (September 2019)

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

A design mistake or a dark pattern?

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

The @Grammarly “Plans” page doesn’t show any prices. Clicking “Get started” takes you to a registration page. This is what you end up with when you AB test for growth without any design principles to guide your decision-making.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

StubHub did a huge test on hidden fees vs vs upfront fees. Users who weren’t shown fees upfront spent ≈21% more and were 14% more likely to complete a purchase.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

9 months

AS A USER I want to be repeatedly nudged, coerced and cajoled to give a tip to a corporation that has just received $85 million in Series C funding.

@johnloeber

John Loeber 🎢

9 months

Out of control The second interface in particular has “add $30 tip” as its primary CTA, people will just click on it to get through As a general rule, if your hotel booking software uses sleazy dark patterns to extract “tips” from customers: I’m short your biz

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

How to cancel Dropbox: 1. Click "cancel" 2. Ignore all buttons & content. Click "I still want to downgrade" 3. Fill in survey, ignore primary button. Click "continue" 4. Type reason for downgrading. Ignore content, ignore primary button, click "I still want to downgrade"

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

LinkedIn now combines connection requests with newsletter subscriptions. Two totally different things, lumped together in an area of the ui where the user has been trained to mindlessly click the ☑️ button…

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

4 months

Not cool. Surely providing UK citizens information about tax should be on and governed by the same rules?

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

1 year

Here's Fathom analytics casually respecting their customers like it's no big deal....

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

"All apps that allow for account creation must also allow users to initiate deletion of their account from within the app." Goodbye to the account creation "roach motel" dark pattern in iOS!

Account deletion within apps required starting January 31 - Latest News - Apple Developer

The updates to App Store Review Guideline 5.1.1 last June provided users with greater control over their personal data, stating that all apps that allow for account creation must also allow users to...

developer.apple.com

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

3 years

“Sorry, we replaced that old technology…”

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

Shaming as a Service (Manipulative but not deceptive)

@Vintharas

Jaime González García 🔥🧙‍♂️🔥

2 years

Emotional blackmail is a dark pattern @duolingo .

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

“Superfast” is the slowest option.

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

8 months

This is a lovely site that extends the concept of the "Hall of Shame". Not sure who runs it – if you're out there, keep up the good work!

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Dark Patterns Hall of Shame

Protect your online privacy and rights by learning about dark patterns and unethical designs. Stay informed and avoid manipulation in the digital world.

hallofshame.design

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@darkpatterns

Deceptive Patterns

2 years

The three pillars of sexual consent seem to work pretty well for consent in general.

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