Technology @beehaw.org Bebo @literature.cafe 9 mo. ago

Dark patterns employed by online companies.

theconversation.com Dark patterns: how online companies strive to keep your money and data when you try to leave

Why it’s so much easier to sign up to a service than it is to leave.

A study on online companies employing dark patterns. Dark patterns are clever tricks built into apps and websites to encourage you to do things you may not necessarily want to do, for the gain of the companies.

2 comments

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- Those modals are themselves a dark pattern.
  
  The law they respond to was one that was intended to simply get website to stop using tracking cookies. Just don't do it unless absolutely necessary. It's just uncalled for bad practice.
  
  But it is so vanishingly rare for ANY company/site to be well-behaved that now, the modals are ubiquitous. So common that people desensitize to them. It's just Ferengi trying to scam you every way you look.
  
  I bet most of them don't even work.
- @tokyo @Bebo Occasionally media will report on the problem of aggressive monetization, but they will not blaze a trail in a new direction because that would neutralize the business model.
For anyone wondering, yes Terms and Conditions are a dark pattern when they’re mapped directly onto the enter key.