How companies use dark patterns to keep you subscribed | Hacker News Reader

How companies use dark patterns to keep you subscribed

pudding.cool

289 pointsfeross179 comments

You know which services I don't have problems cancelling? Ones I subscribe to via Apple's in-app payments. I get that it sucks to have Apple scrape a percentage of my payments for themselves, but if you're a company I don't fully trust and/or want to have total control over my subscription without a bunch of hassle, Apple's IAPs are the way to go.

Mostly this is great with the big streaming services. Want Disney+ or Paramount+ for a month to watch a show? Sign up. Immediately cancel within Apple's App Store app. Simple. And if I have a complaint, Apple has generally favored me. For example, I recently signed up for a streaming service and their app simply wouldn't work. No idea why. Pinged Apple for a refund. Got it immediately. No hassle.

100% this.

Going even further I always get emails when yearly subscriptions are charging in a few days and those emails even include how to cancel the subscription if I no longer wish to use it.

I know people love to complain about the App Store, and there are some valid complaints. But companies being forced to use this mechanism for subscriptions is a huge benefit for consumers.

Also frankly, it's a huge benefit for the developers also. There are a number of apps that I would never subscribe too if I had to use their own custom solution thanks to how many bad behaviors I have seen. But since it is part of Apple's system I don't worry about subscribing.

Edit to add:

I really hope that if Apple does end up being forced to open this up and allow apps to do their own subscriptions. That for many consumers like me, as a developer your choice is 70% of the money or none. I am not moving to your subscription service and will find alternatives.

Apple and Google now only take 15% from mobile app developers with annual revenue under $1 million from the App Store. It means a lot to people like me since they also host and handle payment processing for a net 30-45 contract.

A company is “forced” to use Apple for subscriptions. It’s been years since either Netflix or Spotify has even allowed in app subscriptions.

I’m not going to subscribe to some unknown indy outside of the app store and guess what happens when someone changes credit cards or they expire? I’m going to update my Apple payment information. I may or may not update my other subscriptions or I may just decide it’s not worth it and let it lapse.

If I remember correctly they are forced in the sense that neither of those apps are allowed to give you a link to go outside of the App Store?

However I vaguely remember that Netflix had an exception to this, but I don't use Spotify so can't comment on that one.

Correct, you have to know how to go to their website and subscribe.

I was stuck in a loop where my son's iCloud account had a subscription to Parallels, but it was on my credit card. He lost his password because he's 12. Even though I'm the parent on the account, it wouldn't let me cancel his purchase. But it also wouldn't let me reset his password for 6 weeks, and only a week into that period a $100 parallels subscription was going to go through.

Fortunately, American Express reversed the charge because they're cool. But Apple didn't do anything and I'm not sure how it can be that I can ever be locked out of preventing a charge to my credit card.

I just wish we could find a way to give lower-level people the ability to deal with these absurd situations. It's not just Apple, you get treated like cattle everywhere.

US based? Next time tell them he's 12 and made the account himself without your permission.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_...

I could have, but I don't think I should have to massage the facts to get this fixed. I made the account. He just lost his password.

I call bullshit on this one.

Apple allows a Parent / Guardian account to reset the password of a child account. I do not have to do anything. I can just go into my iCloud settings and just reset my child’s account right away. Also, Apple does not allow you to create a child account (below 13) without having a parent account attached to it.

My guess is that you lied during account creation and created an adult account for your child and then you handed that account password and the reset mechanism to your child and he /she lost BOTH of them. In which case, Apple should still help you but I would say - you are more at fault here than Apple

My child's school forces us to create accounts the way you describe. Since kids all get ipads they need icloud accounts, but the school does not participate in the program that lets them create icloud accounts for kids. You as a parent must create the account. If you don't use apple products, I don't, you can only create an adult account. You cannot create a child account, or manage it once created, without another apple device. I went through all the steps to create an adult account, then logged out of the ipad and used the child account I created, but the account was useless without me being logged into the parent account on an apple device. You could not use the web-ui from a linux or windows device. I complained to the school and said I thought this was a violation of the laws for children under 13. They said the child doesn't own the account, I do as the parent and give them permission; so it's fine. There was no other choice to setup the devices for my children.

In order to attend the public school you have been paying for must first agree to a contract with a private company, if you refuse men with guns will put you in prison and put your child into the care of a foster family where they have a fairly high probability of being abused.

Nice kid you got there, would be a shame if something happened to them...

How the hell is this allowed?

Where would you like me to paste the screen shots?

I absolutely permitted him to buy the initial subscription. I approved it. I just wanted to cancel the renewal.

Anyway, I convinced American Express and they gave me my money back so what you think doesn't matter.

Even supposing you were right and I "lied" to let him have an adult account, that should give another purported adult access to my card without my authorization? I think you have the hierarchy of evils backwards just to say something shitty on the internet.

Yep. It's a blatantly obvious dark pattern. It's your credit card. Your money. Yet Apple gives you no way to cancel (or even view!) a child's subscription online. Heck, they won't even tell you which child made the subscription.

One of my younger kids bought $7,200 worth of currency and content on a game on a Kindle. She did so in a single afternoon. I contacted Amazon support and the refund was issued on the spot. After they issued the refund, the only question that was asked was why I had it set to allow her to buy online. I replied that it was because she could not use one of Amazon's services with the family account without having payments enabled (I think it was music). I'm pretty sure they corrected that... but I was struck by how pro-consumer and how little hassle there was. I do not think that either the Play Store or App Store would have issued that refund so quickly.

To be fair, Apple refunded and cancelled the subscription upon request in my instance too. But first you've got to notice the problem, and then jump through the hoops.

There's no good reason I shouldn't be able to cancel an auto-recurring subscription on my own credit card from some interface.

Why do you allow your child to buy subscriptions without approval?

Does "Family Sharing" with "Require Purchase Approval" not work as described?

It's (IMO) intentionally crippled because it asks for every app install. Including free ones. Which is not only annoying, since kids play a lot of games, but also creates a time delay. For example, the child is in a special education program that requires certain apps. If he tries to install one at school and I don't approve it immediately then that's a problem.

There is no option to "ask for permission if it costs money" option. Which, let's be honest - is probably what most parents are looking for (and would be dead simple to implement).

Ah. Totally makes sense.

My “kid” is nearly 30, so we never had to deal with this.

Not only that, but it can only be managed from another apple device. If your kid has an ipad and you don't have an iphone, ipad, or mac; you can't use the child accounts.

[deleted]

Pretty sure I was responding to somebody else? But, if Family Share doesn’t let you view and mange a child’s subscriptions that you’ve approved, that is awful, no disagreement there.

My bad. Deleted.

Apple does this because the alternative would be devastatingly bad press.

I mean, why do they permit 3 day trials that start billing at $9.99/week after that? For an app that creates ringtones? How many phone apps in the world are worth $520 per year?

And BTW, that "3 day trial"? It's actually 2 days since you have to cancel at least 24 hours before the subscription renews. So it's really 33% less than they claim.

If your child signed up for one of these subscriptions? Apple requires that subscription be canceled from the device that made it — yet provides no obvious way to determine which device that was. Is that child away at school? Too bad. Forgot their phone at a friends? Sorry about your luck.

The whole thing is absurd - letting a minor child control their own subscriptions with no way for a parent (the actual credit card holder) to cancel it unless they jump through a bunch of support hoops.

Apple doesn't get a pass here. They're just smarter about it all. I say that as a huge Apple fan generally.

Trials absolutely need to be super clear about the exact date of start of billing. I think iOS has gotten much better and you have even a dedicated subscriptions tab in your iOS profile in settings.

True, but you have no insight into subscriptions that a minor has made on your credit card as part of family sharing. One might expect them to appear there but they don't.

Honestly I wonder how much of the ludicrously priced app fees are just facilitation of money laundering.

There's a reason scammers demand to be paid in iTunes gift cards.

Yes. We have re-invented credit cards again.

The thing is. Credit cards may be in favor of the customer in the US, or maybe EU (I’ve never had a credit card while living in the EU so I really don’t know) but where I used to live, Brazil, the customer has always the burden of proof that something is wrong. One time my card was “cloned” and I had to go to court to remove the debt from my name. And I’ll never forget the reply that I got over and over from multiple levels of customer service: “we can’t do anything if you don’t provide the receipt of the purchase”

Once you figure out how to cancel via the App Store it’s great. It did take me a while to even go looking for it but once I had, it was awesome.

How do you do this? And is this applicable if the subscription is made thru their website (like Netflix)?

Generally, Settings -> iCloud (click your name/emoji) -> Subscriptions

Only applies to subscriptions made through the Apple ecosystem.

Still wouldn't fix the problem of a creditor reporting a delinquent payment to a credit bureau, and it's hard to know if that would happen up front. I don't think Apple's solution here comes risk free, but I see your points on the usability enhancements.

As I understand it, Apple's subscriptions represent the subscriptions themselves, not just the payment behind the subscription. So cancelling through the subscription interface on iOS actually handles the cancellation of the subscription, not just the payment.

Every individual company has an incentive to be a bad actor when it comes to subscriptions (or dark patterns in general). Apple is a regulatory authority acting on this tragedy of the commons. Apple has created a situation where it has a near monopoly of force when it comes to apps in the apple'sphere and is using this to the benefit of consumers.

It's no wonder people prefer apple's walled garden to libertarian android. Being able to force apps to act in a specific ways makes the experience as a whole better. Given apple's market share amongst people who can afford it, I would say the free market agrees that the Apple way is better.

Play store is able to do the same if google want to. It's not a problem. Its company's choice to sideload

That's what I'm saying, one company took the stance that they want to be a regulator, while the other took the stance that they want minimal regulation. People prefer the regulated environment.

Everyone wants the benefit of regulations (people can't do the thing thing I don't like) but many don't want to pay the cost of regulations (I can't do the things those other people don't like).

It's not like regulation though, it's more like extra service benefits the customers just like credit card (chargeback/insurance/extended warranty etc). There are many credit cards out there and ppl have the choices to have credit card chargeback or not. Or they could choose to use some other payment options. Google could add extra feature when ppl subscribe through play store, and keep app side loading at the same time. It's not either-or situation

I'm usually fine with regulation (and what it costs) that benefit the consumers but I'm not fine with apple (or any private company) being the arbitrator.

Apple is only beholden to it's shareholder and I have 0 influence on their behavior.

Not directed at you, but I don't get how people can complain about unaccountable politicians and then turn towards even less accountable boards of directors instead.

I agree in theory that a company should not be the arbiter, but the reality is that the company is less dysfunctional than the government and less beholden to political powers.

If we had a government that would regulate away dark patterns and generally do things in the interest of us, that would be great. We don't have that.

I think I have more influence over apple than I have over the us government. I think apple works on behalf of me more than the us government does. I've made that calculation differently than you, so we've come to different conclusions.

> It's no wonder people prefer apple's walled garden to libertarian android.

Do they? Or, is that the reason why people in the US buy more iPhones than Androids and the rest of the world buy more Androids than iPhones?

If you want to do this outside of apples ecosystem, I suggest using privacy.com to generate a card with only the first month's payment available, then closing the card after the charge has been made. simple as, with no corp skimming off the top.

Remember apple implemented the in-app payments in the first place.

What sucks about apple implementing this is that for a lot of developers who used to get by with a 99 cent app you buy once, now its 99 cents a year, sometimes $99 a year.

That's a good argument for requiring App Store apps to offer Apple in-app payments for anything that costs money, but not for requiring App Store apps to only accept Apple in-app payments for anything that costs money.

Good thing Apple doesn’t require App Store apps to only accept Apple in-app payments for anything that costs money. Install the Amazon app and see for yourself.

You can do this with subscriptions paid via PayPal as well.

I like my Macbook but I'm going to keep my financial transactions outside of the app store toll booths.

I heard someone say a while back that “cancelled customers are just potential future customers”. Anyone that’s had an easy cancellation process will remember that flexibility if they ever need that service again. No idea why no large subscription service seems to understand that. Make me go thru annoying hoops and you’ve lost me for good!

Agree, I've been finding myself pausing some of the Streaming services in the late spring thru fall, when I typically don't have time to watch tv with the nice weather outside. But I've been one-click re-enabling every October or November.

Well, exploiting brand loyalty is also a dark pattern. The better your brand, the more you can sell it for.

Presumably people have brand loyalty because they think they're recieving a good product they like. That's not a dark pattern, that's good!

Or maybe I'm being too idealistic as to what drives "brand loyalty".

If the "better" really corresponds to the "more", that's not exploiting brand loyalty. That's just when a brand is an honest signal of the branded product or service. Exploiting the loyalty is when they cheapen the product or service, but keep the pretense of the brand. Singer sewing machines and Pyrex glass cookware come to mind as prime examples, but I'm sure there's many, where someone buys the company for the brand, and then drives it to the bottom for quick profit.

I mean, just thinking through it logically, it _must_ be harder getting someone to sign back up for a service they quit right? I mean, they tried it and then they left it because ostensibly they didn’t think it provided value. How does that equation change?

The sample we’re talking about is people who want to cancel. It’s going to be hard to win them back no matter what, but it’s harder if the last interaction they had felt like being scammed.

Also a lot of people cancel for reasons like current finances, solving the problem they signed up to solve, or their usage is seasonal.

Compared to a random person, no, it shouldn't.

They know about you, understand your service, and clearly value it within the error margin your publicity material implies.

People's value evaluation change all the time, somebody that values it just a bit too little to subscribe has large odds of eventually changing into just enough to subscribe.

Or they left because it was no longer providing them value - but that is a consequence of circumstances which are always changing.

I subscribe and unsubscribe from Netflix a couple times per year when there is something I want to watch most easily available on Netflix. If unsubscribing from Netflix was an hour endeavor, I would never re-subscribe and instead go through the extra effort of finding a good torrent.

I worked for a business similar to Daily Harvest (used in OP's website as an example dark pattern) and this is absolutely true.

We did have some confusing terminology and the distinction between "Cancel" and "Pause" was often times not obvious. "Pause" meant you wouldn't be charged again until you Unpaused your subscription. "Cancel" meant the subscription was dead and could not be re-activated. If you wanted to subscribe again, you'd have to re-enter your payment information. This led to a lot of confusion so we had to message those things better. This was mostly due to the backend tech and I'm not sure how much that impacts some of the sites mentioned in the article.

What I see happening now with those services is that the "pause" function might allow you to pause for n-weeks but not indefinitely. That's a shit pattern as well.

Yup. I remember how hard it was to cancel Spectrum’s cable subscription, took almost 2 hours

Now a year later I wanted TV again for playoffs season, thought about Spectrum and was like nope. Went with an online streaming serving instead.

Perhaps many of the decision makers have their compensation tied to short-term results.

Part of the appeal of monetizing through subscription is that they pay more than they would through other methods.

Adobe doesn't want $21 for each of the 3 months that you used Photoshop, spread over the last 7 years. They want the guaranteed, "he didn't bother to cancel" $1800. If subscription plans actually worked such that people were paying less than if it was just a flat-price-per-major-version, then we'd still be seeing them do that.

I have my doubts that easy cancellation would change that... people would probably just remain subscribed anyway. Humans didn't evolve to deal well with persistent, parasitic threats quite like this. We have no psychological armor to protect us. But even so, why would they risk it by making cancellations too easy?

If legislation were to demand automatic cancellation after some period of time where data indicated the user wasn't using it, how they would howl. Imagine not showing up to the gym for 3 months, and it's cancelled whether you ask for it or not. They only get to bill you for those 3 months, and not try to send it to collections that you've had 19 months of access.

I don't think most people care, and so, businesses are not incentivized to be nice.

No shit! As an anecdote just yesterday I fell for the premium meme on LinkedIn... I could just not stand the idea of not knowing who visited my profile! (how weak of me), they literally charged me 20 bucks (half price) for a month of premium, I bet I will completely forget to cancel the sub next month and I will end up paying 40 dollars for a few more months until I finally decide its been enough... Also, fell for Spotify's 3 months free COME BACK!! meme... oh God... I need rehab

I typically add calendar reminders the moment I find myself signing up for something.

Current reminders: Cancel Peacock by n-Date; Don't renew Tidal by foo; Downgrade YouTube premium on n;

Dear Lord, Youtube.

Annoying Ad plays Saaay, we can make those ads go away, for just a little money.

It's like paying the mob to make sure nothing happens to your store (by the mob)

On all Linux PC's I use uBlockOrigin (I never use windows thankfully!) and never see any ads, ever... It may be due to a combination of uBlockOrigin & uMatrix - I've not tested to know. Either way, I just never see ads, ever. I only use NewPipe to watch YouTube on mobile. Then there's the Kodi YouTube add-on - I never see any ads there either...

uBlock Origin works fine on Firefox and Chrome on desktops on any OS so it's easy to have an usable YouTube viewing experience there.

Unfortunately that doesn't go for the mobile platforms where it's basically unusable.

I wonder if the rules limiting advertising on TV (in the areas that have rules) shouldn't apply to them as well...

What are you talking about, I use uBlock Origin in Firefox on Android and it works perfectly everywhere including YouTube.

I've used uBlockOrigin in the past for YouTube ads, and it works well on a laptop.

What's nice about Premium, if you use it on an iPad, is it lets you download videos, and let's you also play them in the background, etc. I did this a lot for listening to Sleep casts and such....

I'm at a point, though, where I only want to consume YouTube content from a computer, when I'm trying to solve a problem, and not passively consume it like I was for awhile.

Also, so much of the content I have has "built in" ads, and it's annoying enough that it degrades from the content for me.

What's annoying about premium is a lot of the features are things that were free that they made not be. You USED to be able to play videos in the background on an iPad no problem then they decided that was a paid feature for some reason. Fortunately on Android you can easily do it with Firefox and an extension.

Hmm.

I have an idea. Lets make a service what would remind you about the need to cancel subscriptions. A cloud based, AI-driven service would scan your email[*] and messages[*][**] to automatically add reminders based on the purchase receipts. And of course you can always add your own reminders![**]

[*] not available on the free tier, for more options check the current plans at https://dontforgettocancel.com/plans

[**] installation of a companion app is mandatory, refusal would be met with account termination[****]

[***] free tier forever!

[****] https://dontforgettocancel.com retain the rights to your money under any circumstances. It's our money, anyways.

Privacy Policy: to perform the advanced matching your emails, messages, photos sitting on the toilet could be sent to 3rd-party to enhance and enrich your experience.

As the saga of Unroll.me[0] tells us, services like these will inevitably turn on their customers when they need to squeeze out more money than what they're charging you. Unroll.me may have been free, but as we've seen with modern SaaS, there will always be an upsell around the corner:

https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/17/21027159/unroll-me-email...

Funny. I remember using unroll.me back in the day.

I use the "snooze" feature in gmail for this. When I get an email confirming a subscription, I snooze it for 29 days or however long so I get the same email in my inbox before expiration which reminds me to unsubscribe.

Are any of those dark patterns? They all seem very transparent. Set a reminder to cancel the subscription.

You're probably right... I suppose at the very least I could label them as "predatory". But yeah, still more a personal problem there, duly noted.

If the company is forcing you to put reminders instead of just letting you cancel right away, that's a dark pattern. I do not know about Linkedin, but I've seen plenty doing this, like Amazon.

I assume they all let you cancel.

If the subscription is free, and they do not let you keep the benefits if you cancel, then I would still not describe that as a dark pattern.

Amazon does not let you cancel and keep it for the month. As soon as you cancel it, your subscription ends.

I agree that is a dark pattern.

Ease of entry and exit should be roughly equivalent. Another perspective that makes it clearer; any attempt to trick or subvert the will of another is a dark pattern.

Transparency here is a distraction, plenty of tricks still work great even when people can see them coming. Focus on the intent and the result however and it becomes clear.

It would make more sense to ask the user if they wish to transition from the trial into a subscription. If they don't, consider giving them an exit survey.

> I bet I will completely forget to cancel the sub next month and I will end up paying 40 dollars for a few more months until I finally decide its been enough...

Usually if you cancel now you will still get to enjoy the rest of the period you paid for, without having to risk auto renewal. With these kinds of things in general I mean.

Yes, that's how it usually works, even though all the dark patterns try to imply otherwise. ("Cancel now and loose everything")

It gets even better, you can get even rewarded, if you cancel early.

With midjourney there was a free trial (2 weeks) but only if you subscribed and registered payment.

I did this and then tried to cancel immmediately.

"Oh no, please don't go, we give you 2 more weeks of free trial"

Ok I don't go now and take it.

Got it.

Ok, now I cancel. Worked and still 1 month of free trial.

Guess they know I'm a miser since they let me have a month of premium free of charge. I don't see much value in knowing who looked at my profile - if they don't follow up with a message then I wasn't the person they were looking for

It used to be that if you worked for LinkedIn, you got a premium subscription for life. That’s how I got mine. Could go that route.

I use Spectrum for home internet and they ran a deal for a while where you could as like 15 streaming channels for $15. It wasn't a bad deal to get a few channels for live sports + local news. Eventually, they started adding in more in "fees" for the TV package than the TV package itself costs.

There's no way to cancel online, so I had to call in. I have to give my name and contact information to at least 3 people and wait on hold in between each time I'm passed between different departments / levels of support. By the time I get the person on the phone who can actually cancel my TV service, I've been on the phone for 30 minutes. That's when she told me "you still have 20 days left on this month's plan, if you cancel today, you'll lose access immediately or you can call us back in 20 days to cancel and still enjoy the service".

I'd never heard that one before. I'd assume I'd either 1) get a pro-rated refund if access is cut off today or 2) get access for the time I've already paid for. At that point, it wasn't worth squabbling over $15 or 20 days of access, so I just canceled.

I switched from Spectrum to T-Mobile 5G and while I still have Spectrum on a $5/month holding plan I'm very much looking forward to cancelling after having a little more time with T-Mobile. It's been solid so far though

I got sportspass.io and have never looked back.

This is why I don't subscribe to Sirius XM even though it's built into both of my car stereos. They have no way of cancelling online and there's no way I'm playing phone tag with a company to stop them charging my credit card, I'll put it off and forget about it. Every time a Sirius XM sales person calls me I tell them the same thing. Maybe if more people made this a deal breaker for them companies would change.

I refuse to play their game of $5/mo for new subscribers then it jumps to $20/mo after the trial period. Sure, I could call and threaten to cancel and get another $5/mo period but I'd much rather just pay $10/mo and never have to play those games at all.

If your credit card provider doesn't offer "virtual credit card number services" as ammunition against these and sooo many other billing and subscription dark patterns, then you're carrying the wrong credit card product. It's the simple, comprehensive antidote to all these tales of woe (and data breaches no less.) I can't imagine doing business online without it.

Does not paying for a service remove the legal liability to owe for the service?

If you credit card is bad because you cancel the virtual card, can't they keep billing you anyway, and also add bad credit card fees on top of it? It is definitely a crime to intentionally write a bad check, is it a crime to supply a virtual credit card number that you know you will invalidate in the future to prevent being billed? That seems equally fraudulent.

I guess I don't see how a virtual credit card prevents debt collection and need to appear in a small claims court down the road.

I am a child of the 80s and 90s, I learned that you play the silly games of big corporations not because they are fair, but because they have very huge legal teams that can and will destroy your life.

I use it at the end of the subscription period as a means of easy cancellation. So I struggle to see that as a form of non payment. Once the service provider fails to collect the renewal fee, they cancel the subscription, effortlessly, of course.

Given that the author points out Vimeo as being the worst offender in their sample, I wonder if having a lot of dark patterns is a signal that the core value proposition of the business isn't strong enough to stand alone.

2nd thought is that every dark pattern that makes it harder to cancel or easier to sign up is a bullet point on a resume of a growth hacker somewhere.

As much as I think a website like this is beautiful, I always get highly annoyed when browsing stuff like this. There's a giant scrollable area with no text at the beginning, so I thought I had to click the little mac-like titlebar window buttons. When text finally appears, I have to wait for the animations before I can read. If I decide to scroll fast I lose text. My laptop fan keeps running all the time, which highly annoys me. People, please stop making websites like these. Keep the beautiful graphics but please kill all animation, make the site static.

Politely disagree. Keep these sites because they’re cool and I think they really flex the muscle of the medium, but for people who just want some straightforward long form journalism, have a “simple” style sheet.

I agree but make them usable on mobile. Scrolling this article on a phone was an atrocious experience.

I agree, ironic that it’s taking about bad web design when it has hard to read fonts and a Mario like character jumping around.

This is what passes for "interactivity" in this day and age. Scrolly-telling web design from NYTimes interactive style guide 2012.

My recent story on linkedin.

I subscribed for premium as I was eligible for free month. I did use one-time card as I wanted to unsubscribe before end. Of course I forgot to that. It tried to charge the card but it failed. When I tried to cancel the subscription it said I have attached invalid card.

Okay I will remove card and cancel subscription. Oh, no so fast. I couldn't remove card because I had "active" subscription. It was circular deadlock.

Finally I found way to unsubscribe on their plan picking page after few minutes of frustration. I hope this is QA issue and not intentional.

Add ProtonVPN to the list too. They have auto renew as the default and there is no cancel option anywhere. And if you try to remove the payment method it does not allow you to do so as your auto renewal is still active. The only way to cancel auto renew is to write an email to support.

I've migrated my email services to them so I plan to be there a while, but that is unfortunate to hear.

Canceling AOL back I’m the day was impossible. It took a phone call and they would bully you to not cancel. Thanks for the post- these tactics should be called out.

Cancelling my Times (UK) sub was almost impossible. They also make you call them, and then if you have enough will power you can get past the flurry of "N months free service", "half-price for the next year", and whatever else they can throw at you to make you reconsider your unquestionably hesitant stance.

That's a good reminder though. I subscribe and don't want to cancel but I would like a discount. Let's see how I get on.

Alternatively, "how to improve your subscription revenue retention". These dark patterns are outlawed by the card networks (visa and mastercard both have lengthy policy around this) but seems those rules are very seldom enforced, especially for the big players.

Terrible, terrible interface in the linked website. I've no idea how much to scroll to get "next" paragraph of content. Gave up after a few attemps, I don't care what he's trying to say, that UI deserves to die.

Payment processors (banks, credit card companies) need to give people tools to approve transactions one by one, and a standard interface for recurring payment. Would take care of subscription abuse in an instant.

The the first sign of a canceling struggle with customer service, I tell them that I'm revoking their permission to charge my card and I'll be filing a chargeback if they do. Never had a negative response.

I actually had a very comfortable time cancelling Amazon prime in Portugal. I guess this is again one of the areas where the evil regulations of the EU overlords make life easier for the average Joe.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_22_...

The last time I cancelled Prime from Ireland, I still encountered dark patterns. Lots of attempts to get you to reconsider, buttons being labeled "Lose my Prime Benefits" instead of "Cancel", cancellation links being a lighter colour and not clearly identifiable as buttons that kind of thing.

Not that corporations need me to carry their water, but I believe the popular subscription whipping boy, the New York Times, might be unfairly characterized now. After yet another one of these "subscriptions are evil" articles, I decided I wasn't going to support such shenanigans anymore, plus I don't read the NYT like I used to, so I'd sit on hold for as long as it takes.

But it looks like it's now a few button clicks, and a few "are you sure?"s, all online. And it's advertised that you can do it online. "Wanna cancel by certified letter? Perhaps a phone call? No? How about online?" (I'm obviously paraphrasing).

Now, I cannot confirm that the completion of the process works, as I decided to keep the subscription if I can cancel online. But I'll give the NYT the benefit of the doubt and assume the last button to click doesn't say "Call customer retention at 800-555-1212 to complete the process".

EDIT: no, I do not live in CA, nor has the NYT ever had reason to suspect that I do.

To California residents they have to provide the ability to cancel online. Some people change their billing address to be able to do it online without the infamous calling

None of that is relevant if the NYT allows anyone regardless of location to cancel online, which was my point.

Do you happen to live in California? The state requires that residents are able to either cancel subscriptions online or at least via the same method they used to sign up.

Would be curious to see if they are changing their cancel methods depending on your billing address. I know SiriusXM does this.

Another way to forcefully cancel a subscription is simply registering with a card to which you can manually add or recharge credit, the day that you do not put money in it (or remove from it), the subscription should be automatically cancelled as they can't debit that amount from you (yeah, it doesn't work if you're subscribed to several services. Or maybe it could if you meticulously add/remove credit the exact days that they charge you provided different days for each service, but that's just too much overhead).

If I recall correctly for example with Revolut it is even possible to generate virtual cards, which is great for security reasons as well.

For people that run their own mail servers no need to use any useful or real email addresses when signing up, simply use netflix@yourdomain.com, amazon@yourdomain.com, etc. Again you have 100% control over those email addresses and make sure that all trash/spam/undesired mail goes exactly where is supposed to go.

How is this legal? This always seemed like a weird "hack" to me. Just because your payment method does not work anymore, this does not cancel your buying contract. If they wanted to, couldn't they just sue you?

Well, to be honest I actually haven't thought about it that much (about the legal consequences). But hey if you start looking for the cancellation of your subscription and you run into this rabbit hole, can't you just simply justify that is not your fault that company X is deliberately using an anti-pattern to keep you hooked and you wasted too much time looking for it and finally gave up?

Edit: Has anyone used this technique and got into legal troubles?

But I think technically the contract is being renewed, since it's on a monthly basis (except of course, if it's a yearly commitment like Adobe, but you are paying monthly).

You’re exactly correct. The payment obligation still exists through the contract for service; you’ve just disabled the means to automatically settle that debt. So the debt accumulates. Sometimes a company writes it off as bad debt and terminates it for non-payment, other times they sell it to a collections agency and ding your credit (e.g. gyms).

Oh wow... If that's not another dark pattern, hell I don't know how to call it. So no company out there would automatically cancel your contract if they aren't able to debit from you? How's that even possible? If I understood correctly the debt will increase indefinitely even let's say after two failed attempts to charge from you? Why is not that illegal?

Because you agreed to pay them and you’re reneging on your part of the agreement. If you want to terminate the contract, you need to terminate it in the way spelled out in the contract. If it states that not paying your bill automatically terminates the agreement, then your fine. If not, well, you can’t make up your own rules once the ink is dry.

Just cancelling the payment without any contact isn't legal, but if the company makes it hard for you to cancel that's already fraud and after that the contract is normally moot. (IANAL, by the way, and yes, there are enough obvious details being handwaved here that it doesn't matter anyway.)

But a company suing you to get monthly payments for future monthly services raises so many red flags that I can't imagine anybody even accepting getting involved with it.

I don't know exactly what would happen, but I assume they'd get a collection agency to harass you for it, or possibly sell the 'debt' to one. Suing you would be more effort than it's worth.

It's a nuclear option and you need to justify it, but having made good-faith efforts to cancel will cover you, as any company starting legal action will also need to explain their side of events and why they ignored your good-faith effort to cancel. This will also bring any of their dark patterns to light in front of a court which they definitely wouldn't want, so in practice you are fine.

What contract?

Did you sign a piece of paper promising to buy it for the next year? They do this even after 3 or 5 or 11 years of service after all, so even in the unlikely event there was a proper contract, your complaint is sort of moot.

Are you going to claim that it's a verbal contract? Those are rather narrowly defined. Telling your friend "Oh yeh, I'd buy one of those when you get one in!" isn't a verbal contract. At minimum, there's no mutuality going on here. They suffer no detriment from 1 in 10 zillion subscribers forcing a cancellation they made impossible in the first place. Verbal contracts should require, at least, that someone met you face to face and heard/saw you assent.

There's a strange cultural phenomenon going on in the modern world, where people believe that contract norms/laws govern things that they absolutely do not.

I am happy to see this other option. I have been using privacy.com for virtual cards along with an anonymous domain from njal.la with catch all email address. I do this for most all my subscriptions, donations, and online purchases. In addition to control over subscriptions, nobody needs to know what I buy, subscribe to, or patronize.

Hey thanks for suggesting about privacy.com. I'd have never thought that such thing could ever exist! I'm very surprised to see that this very countermeasure is mentioned in their landing page. Awesome!

I find that Audible is quite rude in one respect when cancelling a subscription. The way an Audible subscription works is that when you're subscribed, you get 1 credit for a free audiobook every month. If you don't use it, you keep accumulating them. If you have a few months where you don't buy anything, you can accumulate a lot of credits. But if you cancel your subscription, you lose all your credits, which you paid for! Yes, you can spend all your credits before cancelling, but I don't know right now which 5 audiobooks I want to buy, and I don't want to waste them on things I won't download, so I don't cancel right now.

You also have the option to pause your subscription. I use it whenever I’m accumulating too many credits, to catch up on my listening. If you didn’t like a title you can refund it after the pause.

I disagree about the point regarding "turn off auto-renew". This actually makes way more sense to me than "cancel". When I read "cancel" I am always worried that I may lose my current access that I paid for. When I know I am simply disabling auto renew I know that I will still have the remaining access that I paid for.

These companies do a lot of dark patterns, but you stressing things such as this and others really discredits your otherwise valid argument.

> I am always worried that I may lose my current access that I paid for.

That would be illegal. They must either give you the service you paid for or refund your money on a prorated basis. I have seen free trials where cancelling early ends the trial but no money had changed hands so it's acceptable.

That's exactly my point, this makes the dark pattern calling the action "cancel" instead of disabling auto-renew? In general when I see the word cancel on the web it typically gets rid of something instantly.

The OP missed the one where they add new categories of email subscriptions so that even if you keep removing the old subscriptions, you are automatically opted into new categories of email subscription. I have an account where the email subscription category list to unsubscribe from increases every month and there are dozens of categories.

> Products that confusingly label “cancel” or “unsubscribe”

> Some websites that are subscription-based hide the cancellation flow under a new name: “auto-renew” or “edit plan.” With Daily Harvest, Express VPN and Vimeo, there isn’t a button or area that says “cancel.” Instead a user has to look for “auto-renew” and turn off “auto-renew” payments, which effectively cancels the subscription. This kind of naming is confusing, adding unnecessary friction to the cancellation process.

This particular case doesn't seem like a dark pattern to me, although it depends on how difficult they make it to find the feature. However, as far as the button label, there is no "cancel" button because seeing a button explicitly labeled "cancel" will make some users think that they are exiting the dialog rather than performing the action they desire. This would be poor UX, and I see nothing nefarious about not naming the button "cancel" exactly as stated in the blurb I quoted.

I disagree. To be fair to the user, they need to clearly indicate the way out. Additionally, the avoidance of a clear language (like auto-renew instead of subscription) is a dark pattern in itself.

It's good some knowledge has been gathered as documentation (if not evidence), but these practices are even considered best practices internally, they're essential constituents to a subscription model. Even before the Internet, if you care to look.

It may be "best practice" to send cancelling customers to a retentions department to haggle with them to try and prevent them from leaving, but it's still a dark pattern.

We need more regs about this, it's ridiculous.

It's so bad that I'm completely afraid to get out my credit card for whatever reason.

Thanks for putting this together but interfering with scrolling, although maybe less impactful, is probably more annoying.

California has some decent regulation on this. And there's an ongoing bill at a federal level, I believe!

I agree that the language needs to be clearer. People who want to sell are too happy to muddy waters around transactions. In the digital world, it's even muddier, for example, on Steam, as much as I love the service, I sure as hell don't "Purchase" when I click the Purchase button and pay. License maybe? Even then, the license is attached to my account, not my person.

Adobe uses the word 'save' instead of 'purchase'.

I don't see how that is legal.

> Or maybe there’s a warning that the item is low in stock. Those are dark patterns.

I don't agree this is a dark pattern. I understand why they say it is but as long as those items are actually in low stock I think this is fine.

I agree. This one, and the one where they indicate how hot an item is, are not dark patterns by themselves. They are signals that proved to increase sales. But that doesn't have to mean that they are also dishonest.

Thanks, this reminded me to cancel a subscription to service I only meant to sign up for for one month. Accidentally ended up 3 months. I had to click through 6 different screens to cancel.

Daydream: Sign up for $Service using the name of a near-death relative. When you want to cancel, "$Subscriber is deceased" is a pretty heavy trump card.

"We're going to need 3 certified copies of the death certificate in order to close the account. These must be original copies and will not be returned."

"Okay. That I know, the $Jurisdiction Probate Court closed out her estate a while back now. Feel free to petition that Court to re-open the estate. I was neither her attorney, nor did I handle her will, so I have no legal standing in the matter regardless. But I could tell you which cemetery to send the the bill collectors to."

"Once you send us the death certificate, we will transfer it to their youngest heir."

Adobe keeps me subscribed because there is a small window in which you can cancel without paying a hefty penalty. And I miss that small window every time.

Nitpick alert:

> In the EU, regulators like the Norwegian Consumer Council have been focusing on dark patterns and their harms since 2018 [...]

Norway is not in the EU.

Signing up for subscriptions is rarely a good idea.

What's wrong with it? One-time payments don't make sense for a lot of transactions. Apartment rent is the most obvious example, but any other continuous service that is in use is hard to imagine without subscriptions.

You are right, of course, that there are many sorts of transactions that "subscriptions" make sense for. However, subscriptions (particularly relatively inexpensive subscriptions) are dangerous and people get into trouble with them all the time.

The current fashion in our industry is to make everything a subscription even when it doesn't make sense for the product (a large portion of SaaS is exactly this). They do that because people don't tend to do well with them, and so it helps to maximize the company's revenue. Combine that with making it hard to cancel subscriptions and there's a real reason to be cautious about them.

Fixed recurring expenses are famously dangerous things, and should be avoided when at all possible.

I kind of agree. I think subscriptions are working for businesses because people don't like payment. And so in case of one time payment, they don't like it every single time. That's a lot of friction, and a lot of effort on the business part to convince people to come over that friction. Subscription is however, also a one-time friction, but the payment is then recurrent. That's not bad in itself, even though it's much easier for the business.

What I'd like to fix about subscriptions is exactly the same part you emphasized as being dangerous. People for example can't enlist all of their subscriptions. And also cannot really do anything about them from their own side, they have to go through the business entity. These both tilt the field to the businesses, quite a lot. Payment processors (and regulations) however could stop this. I really liked Paypal's solution, where they offer a page where they list all of the entities the user has enabled subscriptions for. So that is immediately a list of all the subscriptions. And on the same page, the user can cancel any of them in an instant. After which, if the business tries to take money from the account, Paypal denies it, because there's no active allowance anymore. Easy as pie and puts back the control in the hands of the money's rightful owner, the user.

Although then it raises the problem of the payment processor (such as PayPal) having more information about you, I do like that solution. And, of course, your payment processor already knows what you're paying to who anyway, so perhaps there's no additional leakage of data with it.

I was completely unaware that PayPal did this. I have a PayPal account. I think I'll investigate.

I think as of now, they know everything anyways, so this would be a simple value-add for the user.

Good luck finding the option! As far as I remember, it's at a nontrivial place, so you have to explore a bit.

May the 4th be with you in avoiding the dark side.

i bet we'll see more instances of companies like replika use chatbots to emotionally manipulate users into staying and paying.

Yeah just look at BBB reviews for subscription companies...

Or better yet, don't. One has no reason to take the Better Business Bureau seriously. There was no reason 30 years ago when I, as a business owner, signed up for it, no reason now. "Ooooh, you'll report me to the BBB, those three senior citizens that actually look at that might not do business with me!"

Plus, I looked up Amazon: A-. What was I supposed to see here?

I mean, if a company doesn't take the BBB seriously why would they take you seriously?

I think Amazon typically has a good reputation for consumers. You'd have better luck looking up Comcast [1] and if you compare that page to Amazon's you'll certainly understand that you may encounter some difficulties and perhaps choose a different provider (lol) for your service.

[1]: https://www.bbb.org/us/pa/philadelphia/profile/cable-tv/comc...

Is there anyone under the age of 50 who even knows what BBB is, much less cares about it?

damn, this site is trash.

I know we’re technically not supposed to focus on the site design, but it really is horrifically unusable.

"Deceptive patterns" is now the preferred term for what used to be called "dark patterns"

It's both more descriptive and avoids equating "dark" to "bad". I've also heard "hostile patterns" as an umbrella term that covers deceptive patterns as well as careless UX problems like a design that isn't accessible.

So...I get the reasoning, but yet another in a large string of things where I wouldn't have conflated something with race....until you brought it up, and now I do...I don't know if I should feel guilty at the inherent privilege or if people are just taking it to an extreme, or if it's just language being language.

I hesitate to drift this far off-topic, but I feel it important to point out that within my lifetime (as one approaching retirement age) the word "dark" was the root of a word to describe black people in the U. S., and it wasn't complimentary. Hell, go look up the lyrics for "Old Kentucky Home" that gets sung every year at the Kentucky Derby (though I'm confident the lyrics have changed; or maybe not).

That said, I don't make the association, either. But I'm willing to make the change, if not for basic politeness, then to use words that are more descriptive.

No need, just call them low IQ patterns and no one would be confused.

I don't think you or OP or anyone else here is trying to offend. Nor do I think most people hearing the term would find it offensive.

But like I said: the alternative is both more descriptive and avoids the issue. This feels like an easy one.

It’s not more descriptive, and it created the issue.

The patterns aren’t just deceptive — they’re underhanded, scheming, unscrupulous, perfidious … in other words, dark.

None of which has a whit to do with race.

I don't follow your point. "Dark" is obviously a much broader word that can mean many different things. It is less precise than "deceptive" and here it's being used metaphorically while "deceptive" is straightforward and literal (albeit less poetic).

Surely you would agree that someone encountering the term out of context would have a much harder time guessing what "dark patterns" means versus "deceptive patterns"?

> But like I said: the alternative is both more descriptive and avoids the issue

What issue? Dark is used in the sense that the tactics are hidden. As in, you can't see stuff in the dark.

The real issue here is people automatically conflating every usage of the words dark or black with race. Not everybody sees the world through the lens of race. In fact, you'll find the light vs the dark theme was used in cultures all over the world, not stemming from racism but from the fact that you conceal evil deeds in the night when it's dark outside[0].

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-and-white_dualism

> "Deceptive patterns" is now the preferred term

Preferred by whom though? The authors of the article preferred "dark patterns" — probably as something more commonly used in their circles.

Dark patterns is still a euphemism used to soften the blow of straight up deceptive and manipulative interfaces.

The IETF for one https://github.com/ietf/terminology/pull/9

My intent wasn't to appeal to authority though. I think Deceptive Patterns is just plain better. A term being popular doesn't prove it is precise or inoffensive.

I always took “dark” in this context to mean “subterfuge”, like they were trying to sneak something past you (like “going dark”).

“Deceptive” does seem more descriptive, if not exactly poetic.

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