Dark UX doesn't work in the long run | Hacker News Reader

Dark UX doesn't work in the long run

pcloadletter.dev

75 pointsankitdce35 comments

My two takes from this article are:

1. The author does a good job in explaining why certain, very concrete, pieces of UI implementation make the UI "dark"

2. The content doesn't match the title at all, there is no analysis or discussion about why dark UX would have some kind of problem "in the long run", which ... kind of makes the title (to me) a bit click-baity, which I guess is also a dark UX pattern? These are confusing times.

Edit: blank line for better numbering UX.

> Perhaps some of these dark UX patterns work in the short term. Maybe you get a couple extra email signups or some paid memberships. But longer term, I have to imagine this catches up with you

It's at least mentioned. I think this article is meant as a thought, not a thorough analytic study.

Ah, thanks I clearly read poorly. Good to know that was at least in there, that reigns in my cynicism somewhat. :)

Not really, there's a lot of "perhaps" and "maybe" in those sentences unlike in the title. And indeed there's no reason to think dark UX patterns do not work in the long run - Google, Microsoft, Facebook and many more have been doing that for decades and there's still around and striving.

Amazon!

"I have to imagine" is much softer language than "doesn't work" though...

I'm not convinced that the Feedly option is as much of a dark pattern as you might think. There are a few ways this could be addressed which would come with their own tradeoffs: 1) Remove the "x" close button since you're not a Pro user therefore setting clear expectations that you have no ability to dismiss an ad. This is clean but then the user wouldn't have known that they COULD pay to close the ad. 2) Change the "x" close button to something like "How do I remove ads?" or "Upgrade to Pro to close" - this would set expectations clearly upfront but for many users who don't mind seeing the ads this is additional information/noise.

The current experience optimizes for delivering information only when there's strong intent. The intent is derived when the behavior has been expressed by the user in the form of "I dont' want to see this ad" and then the information is delivered to explain "Here's how you can complete this action".

Another option would be to replace the X with a small (i) symbol or similar, so at least users won't be confused when it doesn't do what they expected.

There are enough alternative symbols that aren't obviously misleading. For example nowadays we often get the ellipsis as button symbol for "do something with this element". But this? This is doing exactly what shady "you're the 100,000th visitor, you get a free iPhone" online ads have been doing by punching you in the face as reward for clicking on the X button.

Just use an ad blocker. Ads aren't worth a click each to get rid of.

> for many users who don't mind seeing the ads this is additional information/noise.

Ads are additional noise, so those users wouldn't mind it.

Feels like you’re just easily triggered by it for some reason and making up arguments. Assuming not the first time on the internet, are you really surprised by x button on ads not doing it right away? Three dots are usually used to modify/report the ads tile. Their x button is crystal clear here, you’re just dissatisfied with the results.

This is doing exactly what shady "you're the 100,000th visitor, you get a free iPhone" online ads have been doing

How is that even related?

by punching you in the face as reward for clicking on the X button

“They literally attacked me by asking for a payment for an obviously extra option”

Ads aren't worth a click each to get rid of.

Pretty sure that once you pay, all ads go away, not only the ones you clicked x on.

I can’t agree on anything here except for using an adblocker. It’s the best “augmentation” software humanity ever invented.

> I'm not convinced that the Feedly option is as much of a dark pattern as you might think.

I'm not convinced any of the article's examples are dark patterns. They're annoying, but I thought dark patterns require more.

There needs to be some deception and a stronger consequence than a bad popup. Accidentally signing up for a mailing or buying something unintended, for example.

There needs to be some deception and a stronger consequence than a bad popup. Accidentally signing up for a mailing or buying something unintended, for example.

Or the classic one: anyone can sign up for an account and subscribe to the service but to cancel you need to call and speak to a retention specialist over the phone.

> There needs to be some deception and a stronger consequence than a bad popup. Accidentally signing up for a mailing or buying something unintended, for example.

To the contrary, I think that intent to inconvenience people who don't make the choices the website wants but doesn't need the user to make can be enough to make a UX pattern a dark pattern in most cases. There's no need for a strong consequence, and there's no need for users to actually fall for the deception. There doesn't even need to be a deception to fall for.

Suppose that I shop online. I add an item to the cart. Then I decide that I don't want the item anymore, so under a minute later I go to the cart and click the cancel button. Fully transparently, the website tells me that I need to wait 1 minute after clicking "add to cart" in order to remove the item. The website always does this for items in the cart, but doesn't present the waiting as a feature of the service. It's not as if having multiple items in my cart means that I have to pay for all items vs. none at all; I can select which items in the cart to buy at any given time, so there isn't any strong consequence. But making me wait to permanently remove the item from my shopping cart is a dark pattern by default. (There are ways to make it not a dark pattern, such as transparently making the advertised gimmick of the online store "You need to wait 1 minute to remove items from the cart. Shop slowly and responsibly!". Wordle uses what would normally be a dark pattern - making people wait to play a game which needs no waiting - and turns it into a core advertised feature, a core charm point.)

for me current version isn't bad, but if I would have to improve it, I would add little "pro" somewhere in background of the X

IT would be much better to put a '?' icon in its place rather than 'x'. You're abusing user expectations. It's a dark pattern when that happens. Trade off or not, a dark pattern is a pattern that tricks user into acting against their own interests or desires.

Dark ux is largely about letting for-profit business incentives take over the product process. They will always make for a worse product that in the end pushes away users.

I wrote about why nfts are dark ux here: https://www.ramijames.com/thoughts/peak-software-abuse

In my experience, Dark UX is often a symptom of a myopic, revenue-focused product team. Tricking users with dark UX patterns will almost always have a more profoundly negative effect on the company’s revenue in the long term than whatever the incremental, short term gain may be. I work for a DTC company as a FE engineer and I’m frequently having to try convince product people that implementing & maintaining dark UX patterns erodes our users’ trust in us and puts more of a burden on our customer experience team.

Dissecting the event handling of Feedly’s UI isn’t revealing the crux of the issue here. Engineers (in my experience) want to build things that provide a respectful user experience, things that they themselves would not be frustrated using. I absolutely despise seeing these types of dark patterns in the wild. I would be surprised if an engineer suggested this Feedly feature. But maybe I’m more sensitive to Dark UX than most and as a result have a more aggressive hatred for it in my work ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think it has to be some kind of ethical void in the brain of decisionmakers who think they can trick their customers into paying them. Some kind of perverse manufactured business survival tactic driving their "close at any cost" mentality.

Yup, this is EXACTLY what I wrote about.

Someone is trying to leave and you try to stop them

When I read a webpage, I usually move my cursor away to not distract me. But when this “already leaving?” happens, I never bother finding the (x) button inside the page. It’s the prefect litmus test for morons with whom I don’t want anything in common.

But regarding that $subj case, it’s not that bad. A little annoyingly misleading, but I understand the direct financial interests. It’s not a shady trick or ux abuse. They could put “to remove ads go pro” there instead or a hover popup, but wouldn’t you find reading it again and again or accidentally triggering even more intrusive? I think they did the best thing here, really.

Outfits who use dark patterns are so short-sighted. Even if the pattern results in a high-percentage of conversions or desired outcomes from the total audience, you may be pissing off a key demographic that might have otherwise driven true success (ie. The Law of the Few from Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point).

Quite frankly I don't seem many modern companies focused on their future ten years into the future, the worst don't focus beyond the next fiscal year. So yeah, if a company deliberately deploys dark patterns, then I don't see the CEO having a five or ten year goals for the company. Attempt to pump up the stock for a few quarters, congratulations on a job well done and then bail out.

I think there would be no "long run" for Feedly if people didn't buy Feedly Pro.

I don't think it makes sense to talk about dark UX when it comes to ads. The only good UX for ads is no ads, so there is no way to ever have a concession between an ad-supported business model and users who feel entitled to free internet stuff.

Think of it another way: someone who doesn't think your product is worth 6 dollars a month is going to be mildly annoyed by all the ads you placed.

Your positioning it as "entitlement" is gross. Expose yourself to "ads" that are intrusive and tracking you, deliberately deceptive to drive clicks, spread lies and bigotry because nobody curates the content, and sometimes malware vectors if you want, but it doesn't make you morally superior, it makes you stupid.

Do tell me, what are these incredible ads that users would be okay with seeing?

These incredible ads that make money to the company paying for the ads, so they must be visible, yet somehow not intrusive.

These incredible ads that are always relevant, thus never annoying, despite the fact nobody is going to buy 1 chair for every time they see an ad about chairs, and they will see 1000 ads for every 1000 pages they visit.

Do tell me what are these magical ads that people wouldn't have a problem with.

Because I'll tell you: even if such amazing ads existed, people STILL would feel entitled to getting free content without the ads!

It's just how it is. Users will never be okay with ads because ads will ALWAYS be bad UX. If you think it's possible to make good UX ads, you will revolutionize the marketing world. People who stand around distributing pamphlets will be thrilled to learn how they can hand people pamphlets and spread a message without being obnoxious and handing it to the right person 100% of the time instead of handing it to 1000 people and getting it right only once.

I think it does work in the long run: People as a statistical entity will continue to fall for things, because at the very least there are a lot of people and there are always new people (people grow up and grow old)

As a trained designer, over the years, I found "Dark UX" to be a somewhat simplistic way to think about a complex issue. As with most things in life, most of the time it's not a thing that overtly evil people do, but a mix of confusion, frustration, incompetence, lack of empathy, economic pressure and a honest believe that, surely, this is in the interest of the user that pushes us in that direction.

And that is not to say, there will always be poster-boy examples of this, but it's a continuum. Any advertisement will by design not be a 0 on the dark ux gradient.

> it's not a thing that overtly evil people do

Au contraire. Doing it makes you overtly evil. Not a single person history has considered evil has ever considered themselves evil. From Vladimir to the gas pipe fitter at the camps who went home to his wife and kids at the end of the day, none of them.

It's our choices, Harry, that show us what we truly are.

Can anyone anonymously report on the numbers of people who actually subscribe from the dark pattern of scrolling up or off the page and showing a full screen modal to subscribe?

For me that has the opposite effect, I got the back button and add the domain to my dns blocklist.

But I remember someone posting here that the tiny percentage actually signing up made up for the majority that got pissed off as they wouldn't generate any revenue anyway.

This enshitification has me down to perhaps 4-5 websites that I browse regularly, HN still being one of the better.

Yes, after all, with 1 dollar RPM, 1 user paying 10 dollars a month in a subscription is worth 10 thousand hits in ads. In other words, you can piss off 9,999 people, that last 1 guy will make it all worth it.

I just want to vent here a bit:

Feedly is the only app I ditched because I did not understand the interface. AT ALL. I tried multiple times, like really hard, over the course of 2-3 years (with some dedication, a decade in total), and all it delivered was a feeling of being insanely stupid.

I started my attempts around 2012 (kind of around Google killing Reader). I could not understand if that app even deliver that same functionality as Reader, could not understand if it allows to just add custom RSS url. I was not sure which title-description was an actual pair. I struggled to find article boundaries - I scrolled while reading and it suddenly just closed that and opened another unrelated thing. I struggled to use categories. I struggled to stabilize the layout - every week or so it switched from a list, to two-pane thumbnails, then some other weird view. I tried to set up my custom view but it just toyed with me. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to figure out how to actually browse my feeds by publish time (instead of some random metric app thrown them at me).

Dark theme just made it even harder - I had no idea what I'm looking at. I felt that I have more control over watching commercials on TV, than actually using Feedly.

It made me start hosting TinyTinyRSS [0] app on public internet for me and friends for many years. When I finally turned off tt-rss instance (due to my servers going down permanently) I came back to feedly... to just realize I don't even try to use it any more. A decade old frustration ended up with simply uninstalling.

[0] https://tt-rss.org/

Why not replace "x" (close) icon with "i" (information) icon? Result is practically the same, and it wouldn't make people angry.

And on the "in the long run" part: if dark pattern stays for too long, it risks ending up in uBlock filters list.

Tell that to LinkedIn and every single social network out there. The “successful web” is successful because of dark UX. That’s the harsh truth. HN’s success is the exception, not the rule.

Yep, it works until you've captured the market and users have no alternative.

Then after that it still works!

I thought this is related to another post [1] about dark mode, but it's something different. Even glancing at the Feedly screenshot made me this it is really about dark mode.

[1] https://www.lloydatkinson.net/posts/2024/the-dark-mode-lobby...

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