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Dark patterns: what are most unethical UIs and growth hacks that you're aware of?

9 points by harrybr ↗ HN
Back in 2010, the Hacker News community helped kick off the ‘dark patterns’ initiative [1]. You guys were awesome, darkpatterns.org [2] benefited hugely from your input.

If you’re not aware, the purpose of darkpatterns.org is to make people aware of the types of manipulative practice that are out there, and to name and shame the sites that use them. Scams don’t work when the victim knows what’s going on. Also, as a professional it’s just interesting to know what other people are up to, and where we should draw the line.

So, I’m intending on investing some more time on darkpatterns.org over the next few months and I could really use some help from HN.

My question to you is - what are most unethical UIs & growth hacking practices in use today? Please don’t be shy, name and shame.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1511201 [2] http://darkpatterns.org/

7 comments

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kromodor
I am not sure if this fits but recent "close this window" = you like something on FB and until you see it and delete it, some of your friends follow the link.

The link, of course, is especially designed to capture attention using the human mind weaknesses (picture; headline).

It lives short, since I suspect, they ban the domain from the social website.

TheLoneWolfling
Simplifying permissions, in the process grouping them together so that things are either too open or unusable with nothing in between.

Android is going this direction, for example.

If you actually want to simplify the UI, do a tree-style permissions UI with lower levels hidden by default. But don't go "you can only enable this entire group or forbid everything in it".

personjerry
Asking a group of people to name and shame websites for you so that you have more content for your own website
bjourne
Why do you think that's unethical?
Spoom
What I call the "narrow unsubscribe", now used just about everywhere. The unsubscribe link at the bottom of that spam email you received? It will unsubscribe you... from that particular type of email from that company. Usually that category is so small that you'll still get roughly the same amount of email; unsubscribing from additional categories requires logging into the website (or worse).

LinkedIn is a big player here[1], of course, and if you add the fact that they add new categories of spam all the time (automatically opting in everyone, of course), it become just about impossible to fully unsubscribe from their email.

Viacom is a particularly bad player here[2]. If you've signed up for Hulu Plus, you've probably seen these emails. If you click the unsubscribe link on one of them, it will unsubscribe you from that particular Viacom property. Viacom holds dozens, potentially hundreds of properties. To unsubscribe from all of them, you have to go to each property in a big list, uncheck all the subscriptions, and save. And of course, these are all separate pages, and they likely do the LinkedIn automatically-opt-in strategy for new properties. They just went into a spam filter on my email.

1. https://getsatisfaction.com/linkedin/topics/how_do_i_stop_re...

2. http://www.techbyter.com/today/archives/436

acosmism
Embedding ifranes that point to products on amazon to auto-promote it as recommended when the user visits amazon.com
harrybr
Some of my bugbears in no particular order:

"Locked Slingshot" in Facebook's slingshot app [1] is an interesting one. Not the worst dark pattern in the world, but quite manipulative nonetheless.

Forced continuity services where they make a recurring membership look like a one-off purchase. Justfab [2] is still at it. Arguably they’re playing this card more than ever right now.

The way payday loan companies like Wonga [3] represent compound interest to target customers. They only present a a “best case scenario”, using sliders to imply a control, when in fact there no modelling of missed payments and true APR is hidden.

The relentless series of pre-checkout upsell pages you get with most domain name registrars (e.g. godaddy) and low cost airlines.

Abuse of html controls to make them behave in unexpected ways, e.g. Airasia [4].

Requiring cancellation of an online service by phone, and making you give reasons / listen to a long script / jump through hoops before allowing you to cancel (e.g. The Times of London).

1. http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/129454-hands-on-slingshot-ap...

2. http://www.justfab.com/

3. https://www.wonga.com/

4. http://usabilityhell.com/post/74591297913/airasia-com-bad-us...