I think dark patterns mostly work against the long-term interests of the companies that deploy them. But a big problem is that dark patterns drive measurable benefits but are associated with unmeasurable costs. So metrics-driven teams can end up deploying them to the long-term detriment of the company itself. Management needs to ensure that teams are not sacrificing intangible soft capital in order to meet measurable goals.

For example, a dark pattern might increase subscription conversion rate, time spent on a page, and so on -- which can be directly measured and appear in OKRs -- but may also result in people developing negative associations with your brand and gradually avoiding visiting your site in the first place, when they see it in a linked URL.

Think of a website that is relatively free of dark patterns -- maybe McMaster-Carr or something -- and notice how often you might find yourself looking there first. That's good-will, a valuable but ephemeral resource which is be very hard for a company to quantify, and therefore easy and tempting to spend down in pursuit of short-term gains.