Dark Patterns – How You’re Manipulated Into Giving More

The aim? To take as much money, data and personal information from the customer as possible. While the website owner is aware that such a game is being played, the customer is not.

In the internet landscape, dark patterns are embedded everywhere. Not only on the dodgy websites in the dark corners of the internet, but also on websites of the most famous brands in the world (Amazon, Netflix etc).

While dark patterns have become commonplace across the internet, the average person has no idea they exist.

Perhaps some of the following scenarios will be familiar to you:

• While checking your bank statement you notice a payment of $35 that you don’t remember. You realise, in fact, that this payment has been made consecutively for last 3 months.

• On attempting to cancel your account on a website or social media platform, you find it incredibly hard to find the “close account” button.

• After comparing flights, you find a great deal for $350. You go through the payment process only to find that extra fees have been added and the new price is $420 (the same price as all of the other flights). You buy the flight anyway.

• You get advertising emails in your inbox, even though you have no recollection of signing up to receive them.

• You click the big “download” button only to find that it opens up an advert for something else entirely.

If these situations are familiar, it’s because you’ve fallen victim to a dark pattern.

Almost every website on the internet has a gravitational pull towards the checkout. UX designers have created the website with the ultimate aim of getting you to hand over your money or data. These UX designers will use every technique they possibly can, including unethical ones.

Businesses will do everything they possibly can to take as much money from customers as they possibly can. There are only two limitations: 1. The law 2. They must protect their brand’s reputation.

As long as they stay on the right side of the law, and the techniques they use are unnoticed by the majority of their customers – they can do anything they like.

Businesses don’t have a conscience. And they certainly don’t have any standard of ethics. They will do everything they can possibly get away with. Those businesses who refuse to use dark patterns will lose out on that extra 10-15% of profits they could be making through under-the-radar dark patterns.

Every single part of the website can be A-B tested until they’ve created the design that draws in the most beneficial user behaviour.

How do users react to dark patterns?

1. They don’t notice.

2. They blame themselves.

3. They assume it’s an accident or a bug.

4. They recognise the dark pattern for what it is and look down upon it (A very small number of people).

Most customers simply aren’t smart enough to understand dark patterns. The goal of this article is to enlighten you to the dark patterns that you’ll inevitably stumble upon throughout the internet.

Dark patterns usually fit into one of 7 categories.

1. Confirm Shaming

I’m sure you’ve seen this one before. Passive aggressive, manipulative messages placed on the buttons the website doesn’t want you to click. The aim being to influence the psychology of the user into taking the action the website wants them to take.

We can assume from the prevalence of confirm shaming all across the internet that this technique works on large numbers of people.

2. Disguised Ads

Every time you view an advert, the website makes a small amount of money. Clicking a “download” or “play movie” button will open up an advert you didn’t intend.

3. Forced Continuity

Once you start a subscription, they don’t want you to cancel. Ever. Having a customer not cancel is just as good as gaining a new customer.

Let’s say, for example, that you come across a 7-day free trial to try a new service. I’ll try the free trial decide if I want to start paying for the service, you say to yourself. You enter your bank details and the 7 day-free trial begins.

Within the next 7 days, you have a new project at work, you and your partner have an argument and you hurt your ankle running down the stairs. Life happens – and you forget all about your free trial.

As the 7 days come to an end there will usually be no warning. You check your bank balance to find that $31.99 has been taken out of your bank account. You check the website and realise that the 7-day trial has finished and they’ve automatically put you onto the regular subscription plan.

They want you to forget. They’re counting on a substantial number of people forgetting about the 7-day trial so that they can collect the profits. This is one of the main reasons the free trial exists in the first place. These kinds of “free trials” that quietly change into a paid subscription as they end are now commonplace throughout the internet.

If you do remember to cancel your subscription before the end of the 7-day free trial, it might not be a particularly easy process. Want to cancel your subscription to Verizon? If you try to navigate to the “cancel subscription” button on their website, this is what you’ll see.

As you can see, there is no cancel option on their website. At this stage, many people will become confused and decide to cancel the subscription some other time. People are busy and people are lazy. The more difficult it is to unsubscribe, the less people will do so and the more profit Verizon will make.

This is the only way you can unsubscribe from Verizon:

Verizon is perfectly capable of creating a simple “unsubscribe” button on their website. It’s 2020, there is absolutely no reason why cancellations need to be done over the phone. The only reason the call centre is required is because Verizon wants to create more friction to the process of unsubscribing.

Businesses really don’t want you to unsubscribe.

4. Hidden Costs

The displayed price is often far lower than the actual price. This is commonplace among booking sites like Booking.com and Airbnb.com as well as flight comparison sites like Skyscanner.com and Google Flights.

The customer initially makes the decision to buy based on the displayed price. After they take the time to enter their details they are then confronted by the actual price. At this stage, the customer is emotionally invested in making the purchase and will often accept the increased price.

Let’s say for example you’re looking to purchase a flight from London – New York. After scanning the search results, you notice one flight for a low-price of $278. This is the one, you think to yourself.

You enter your personal details, then your bank details, excited to finally book your trip to the USA. After several minutes, you get to the end of the payment process only to find the price has increased to $320. It’s only a little bit extra, no big deal. I just went through the hassle of entering my details and honestly I’m sick of searching for flights. Let’s just buy it.

You rationalise the extra $42 you’re now spending. And so did 10,000 other people buying flights that day. 10,000 x $42 = $420,000. That’s an extra $420,000 created for the airline simply by lowering the displayed price of their flights.

5. Sneak Into basket

Like a child that slips candy into his mum’s shopping cart when she’s not looking, major websites do the exact same thing. Items are added to your shopping cart by default.

Many users won’t notice the added item and will continue through the payment process.

While it is possible for the user to remove the added item, the fact that it’s Opt-out rather than Opt-in will mean that many users will end up paying for something they never wanted.

The “sneak into basket” dark pattern is now illegal in the UK and various EU countries.

6. Counter Intuitiveness

We have gotten used to the patterns we’ve seen on websites. Most of us have gone through plenty of sign up processes by now and we know what to expect.

Because we expect to see patterns on websites, this leaves an opening for dark patterns to exploit our expectations. These dark patterns play with the conventions of web design in order to confuse the user into doing what they want.

As you can see, even elections aren’t immune from the trend of dark patterns.

Buttons can be placed in positions you don’t expect, check boxes can be worded in confusing ways and buying options can be listened in a misleading way.

7. Button Placement

This dark pattern is different from Counter Intuitiveness in that it refers simply to the physical ability to click or tap particular buttons.

The buttons that agree to giving away data or money are big, central and easy to click. The buttons for unsubscribing, checking terms and conditions or taking any action they don’t want you to take, are small, unappealing and difficult to click.

Another common trick is incredibly tiny “X” or “close” buttons on Ads that are easily misclicked, resulting in opening the Ad.

If you find yourself tapping the wrong option, it may not be entirely your fault.

8. Hidden Code

We can’t see the code behind the website. This allows websites to trick us in ways that unlike the other dark patterns on this list, we can’t possibly detect.

You’ll also see this kind of hidden code used to demonstrate social proof. You may see the message “Jason has just subscribed!” or “7 people have bought this product recently!”. We don’t know the code behind these pop ups, as such we can’t be sure if they’re legitimate or not.

Dark patterns will not go away by themselves. As the internet advances into the future (and potentially integrates with VR in the future) different kinds of dark patterns will continue to emerge.

What kind of environment do we want the internet to be? Do we want an internet that is continually trying to psychologically manipulate people out of their money and information. A place where – every single time you want to make some kind of purchase, you need to dodge countless pitfalls.

Or do we want an internet where we can rely on websites being up-front and honest. An internet where we can relax, and navigate without constantly having to be on our toes. An internet that inspires feelings of goodwill and fair business, rather than an internet that makes you feel as though the world is filled with slimy manipulators.

As our understanding of psychology improves (with the use of MRI scanners and other neuromarketing techniques), dark patterns will only become more and more sophisticated.

It’s up to us as individuals to recognise Dark Patterns and to spread the word about their existence. Stop being played for a fool. Become aware of dark patterns.