Collection of Dark Patterns and Unethical Design | Hacker News Reader

Collection of Dark Patterns and Unethical Design

hallofshame.design

190 pointsjanandonly71 comments

Zoom -> Pretending you need to install the app to join a meeting and only showing you can join from the Browser after a few seconds..

Booking.com -> Pretending other people are looking at the same property

Booking.com -> Pretending the venue is about to run out of places and there are only "2 places left..."

Any dating platform -> Anything goes...

> Booking.com -> Pretending other people are looking at the same property

Only one left! Call the hotel -> Plenty of room and cheaper (which is not allowed according to the booking.com model ...). This illegal in some places (including where I am) but they do it anyway.

Actually, booking.com has dropped that last requirement in the whole of Europe due to legislative pressure. Hotels can now offer cheaper rates if they wish. This was already the case in Belgium, Italy, and France, and is now policy for all of Europe.

If its illegal where you are, they've probably stopped doing it since July 1st.

I've heard this a lot of times and never found the hotel to actually be cheaper than whichever hotel aggregator. It's usually more by $10-$20/night. The hotel call is useful for confirming particular requirements, but I still book elsewhere (even after informing them of the online price, I'm always told to book online to achieve it).

One of the booking web sites (Trivago, I think?) is running an ad that implies that some of the other booking sites only have access to a subset of a property's available rooms, which suggests that in _some_ cases the "last one!" nudge may be accurate, if misleading. Given the history of dark patterns used in that industry, I hesitate to give any of them the benefit of the doubt, but it's something I made a mental note to dig into at some point.

When I worked for an online travel agency a decade ago (now just a brand for you-know-who) we got lots of nasty emails about Spirit Airlines, as they were always the cheapest option in our flight booking, but after you booked you found out all the extra charges they required, none of which were given to us to add in the total price. So the price we showed was not the price you would likely ultimately pay (we always joked internally that they charged for air to breathe). But we got all the grief. Also, they had their own flight reservation system, and it was dog slow (at the time it could take more than a minute to make the actual booking).

You got the grief because your company knew spirit was gaming your system but you didn't do anything to stop it, or warn your customers. You could have just stopped offering spirit flights until they fixed their pricing data. (Not maligning you personally, but the company overall deserved flak if they weren't pushing back on spirit to protect customers)

Exactly. A travel agent works for the client, not the airline. Its their job to advice the traveler of any hidden fees.

Hotels and hostels routinely overbook and when they're really out they pay for an alternative place out of pocket, so this supposed number of available places is complete bs.

> Booking.com -> Pretending the venue is about to run out of places and there are only "2 places left..."

I was buying train ticket in France yesterday (through the SNCF website) and I was shown that exact message...

It might well be true.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Yeah; when you are buying directly from the provider, such a a train ticket from SNCF, the chances that they show accurate messages about remaining space is higher than when you use a third party service which can only show second hand information.

I started noticing on the American Airlines app, because it started spontaneously crashing, that when you repeated the same search under the same account, subsequent searches would come back with higher prices. But then I had my wife search for the same flights under her account, and she was shown the original prices I'd seen on my first search. That felt particularly dirty. They were just flat-out lying to me.

> Pretending the venue is about to run out of places and there are only "2 places left..."

Lying to a potential customer to make a sale is criminal fraud, no?

It depends on your lobbying budget vs. the FTC's budget.

MS Teams: Announcing that Firefox isn’t supported and you need to use Chrome or Edge, but if you hit ‘back’ at the right time everything works fine.

Sketchy online stores: “Sale ends in <time counting down>” but the time is just a random duration generated in JavaScript.

Autodesk: “Auto-renew Fusion 360 or you’ll lose your SPECIAL PRICING!” The ‘special pricing’ is full price. Their web store has a 25%-off sale on.

Do a piece on GoDaddy - they're absolutely disastrous. Eg, when you need to do any kind of downgrade of a service, you need a 2fa over email which they intentionally delay for like 15mins. If you leave the page, you have to request a new one. Of course, when it's 2fa for something that's not negative in terms of revenue, it arrives immediately.

GoDaddy flagrantly steps over the line from deceptive practices into unethical shady business territory. Continues to amaze how they are still running.

To this day I am not entirely convinced that they did not start as something sex-industry-related and then for some strange reason switched to DNS registrar business later. Seriously, "Go, daddy!"?

I always thought the founder had a bit of a gradiosity complex and it was actually meant to be read like “god addy” as in address

Despise Godaddy. And google domains sold to Squarespace, who makes a transfer take up to 15 days. It’s faster to carve the document from wood and send it across the world than it is for them to automatically click the button to let go of a domain. I’ve never had a transfer go that slowly anywhere.

https://support.squarespace.com/hc/en-us/articles/1150117192...

Do they still do the thing where if you search for a domain name and decided not to buy it they mysterious buy it themselves a couple days later and increase the price threefold?

As of 2022, iirc yes

yes

Another fun one for godaddy: 'forgetting' to email you about a renewal, letting it lapse and then charging you literally double to "reactivate it" when the DNS stops working.

Happened to my company, I moved DNS to porkbun immediately after reactivating the domain. Wasn't a cheap one either so that cost was especially unwelcome.

As a technical term, Dark Patterns serves ok, but I think people need to be clear that what this is abusive software.

I have wondered about the merits of creating some sort of ethical software charter which companies can adhere to or face questions as to why they do not adhere.

I feel like this should exist already but I am not aware of such a thing.

> ethical software charter [...] I feel like this should exist already but I am not aware of such a thing.

Not in the current timeline, I am afraid. Neither ethical, nor secure, nor accountable in any way.

You don't even need a whole charter. You can just ask yourself "am I acting like an abusive partner?"

* I want to know everything about you and who you talk to (privacy violations)

* I can do whatever I want without your say-so (disrespecting user agency)

* You can't leave me (vendor lock-in)

Unfortunately, this is business as usual in tech.

Like doctors have the Hippocratic Oath, developers should have some kind of professional code of ethics that they sign on to and can use to push back against these terrible projects. We shouldn't get to just shrug our shoulders and deflect with "business as usual."

I think the #1 dark pattern is how cell phone makers collude with app makers to opportunistically and illegally turn the expensive devices that WE PAY FOR into bugs & telemetric devices that listen to all of our conversations and then privately snitch on us and sell that information to private companies and even individuals for all we know. These devices we buy log our conversations all day long secretly and turn them into text that can persist forever.

As phones are used in almost every aspect of our lives now, the very devices we use (even our cars) are listening to our most private conversations and leaking them to companies with the sole interest of engineering our money out of our pockets faster. It also empowers CEOs and mega-company insiders to run espionage on and leverage anyone they want in the world, as everyone, even government officials and agents use cell phones.

It's completely contradictory to every aspect of law and democracy, as well as creating a loophole that invalidates privacy and individual rights against self incrimination, and it's only going to get covertly worse moving forward unless it's totally banned with sever criminal consequences as a practice. This data can also be tapped into by any interest through data hacking, or if one can pay for the info, as it's logged across everything from the car you drive to every app you use (especially when TFA is involved).

It's sad that these practices have become the rule and not the exception and they are all over the web. We need websites like these to educate/prevent users from making undesired choices and up to a certain point fight back. Are there any browser plugins out there that actively warn the user about the nasty tricks is being exposed to?

I would also include deceptive credits systems used by SaaS which have usage-based like subscriptions. It’s a bait and switch variant. First, you think one call to the API is one credit but it always turns out that you need calls which consume 20 or 50 credits instead and you have to move to a more expensive plan and buy millions of credits every month. Second, unused credits do not roll over to the next month so your effective cost per call is orders of magnitude larger compared to what you expected.

Singtel (in Singapore) - Bundling free trails (usually 1-3 months) of some optional add on service, but NOT allowing you to unsubscribe during the trial processes, thereby forcing you to remember when the free trial ends and going in to unsubscribe manually. This happens even when you do not accept the additional services terms and conditions or complete other setup setups. I'm sure other telco's do similar - but Singtel is shameless on this.

My biggest disappointment with Dark Patterns and Unethical Design is Spotify.

I've been using spotify for over a decade, paying for premium almost the entire time. The last couple years have just been awful with ads, 'promotions', and 'suggestions' that are just more ads.

Popups for concerts every 5th time I open the ad. There's NO way of turning this 'feature' off. I turned off concert recommendations, but there is NO way of turning off concert recommendations IN THE APP. I spent about 3 weeks with their support until I got in contact with a developer who confirmed this. 100% 'nagging'

The suggestions and mixes, I am convinced, include artists that pay for promotion. Artists that I have 0 interest in, and are only tangentially related to a song in a playlist of mine. 'disguised ads'

Pushing podcasts EVERYWHERE. Why can't I remove the 'podcasts' playlist from my playlists? I didn't create it, why is it there? Also auto-playing podcast videos on the spotify home page, man that bugs me. And the spotify home used to be really useful, now it's 60% ads, and 40% useful. I think this is a form of 'nagging' too.

I've had 'recommended artists' that are from genres I don't listen to. 'disguised ads'

Spotify has gotten much more aggressive in the past couple years.

I remember it being a lot worse than it currently is, so I think they've realized a lot of that doesn't work or are doing some A/B testing on fixing things. My Spotify homepage is entirely relevant to me content outside of three sections for "popular" things. I'd say the audiobooks section is irrelevant since I don't care for them, but their recommendations are pretty much dead on. My mixes are all based around a different band I like. It used to shove a lot of "recommended" music I obviously wouldn't care for at me but hasn't for a while.

Release Radar is my only complaint, it frustrates me since it misses things from bands I listen to constantly and what it finds 90% of the time feels like they should just say "nothing new came out that you would like".

They seem to have backed up a little bit lately with that BS but their price creeping up and the sound quality (or lack thereof) is pushing me closer to Apple music every day.

adding things to a cart should be illegal

my tech savvy SO accidentally signed up for expensive subscriptions because they were hidden at the bottom of her cart, and it took threat of legal action to get customer support to cancel. never boycotted a shop faster.

I don’t know for a fact but I would guess it _is_ illegal (and i suppose so do you if you threatened legal action)

This amazon audio thing was the worst. Somehow they were able to sneak me into some free trial that turned into a paid subscription. I found out I was paying for it, and wanted to cancel. I was abroad and no access to a desktop:

1. Not possible from a mobile browser.

2. Installed the app: not possible.

3. Put mobile browser into desktop rendering, and somewhere was able to get it to unsubscribe.

The worst of it all! EU should fine such practices.

How do I contact someone to provide info on companies that do these practices? Every once in a while I help my wife and some of the clothing and fashion websites are abhorrent. It's highly disrespectful and those industries are in need of serious disruption.

They are doing it on purpose. Contacting them makes no difference.

Shaming and other negative PUBLIC attention could potentially help.

The GP wants to denounce it to a third party.

If you live in the US, you can go to https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/.

https://ihpi.umich.edu/news/social-media-copies-gambling-met...

Don’t forget all these

Fun website, but most of these really don't cross the line from "aggressive marketing" into "dark pattern." If the site reps are listening, why not let me browse the worst offenders first?

Aggressive marketing is 100% manipulation and dark patterns. There is no line to cross.

LinkedIn: presenting their "suggested" connections as if they already requested you to connect, when in fact it will be you initiating the connection if you click the blue button.

They should add offering buy-now-pay-later services like Klarna. Unless you are selling something life saving or in the realm of healthcare or other necessities, offering this only helps financially vulnerable people into debt; young people in particular¹.

Yet they all offer it, even in the Netherlands where paying via your bank account is trivial, fast, and save (IDEAL).

1: Have a look in the various national newspapers on that topic. It's distressing.

Hilarious, I was just about to suggest a monthly dark patterns thread.

Vueling airline is a my lastest candidate for misdirection.

User Goal: Buy a ticket that allows to store your carry-on in the overhead cabin storage on the plane.

They give you only two ticket options at first. Squeeze your small bag under your seat with their strictest size limitations with no overhead cabin allowance or pay extra for checked-in luggage. At that point you look around for an overhead cabin option, alas you find no such option and the lowest tier specifically states overhead cabin storage is not permitted. So since there is no overhead cabin option you're forced to select the check-in luggage option as a last resort.

But several steps later there is the seat selection step. There are some seat options that include overhead cabin storage. The price for those seats are cheaper than the checkin baggage option several steps earlier. So in order not to be the dumbass that bought both checkin luggage and overhead storage for no reason, you go back to the beginning and pick the lowest tier option and click through all the steps all over again...

Appsell - intentionally crippling or outright banning the browser client to force users installing your app in hope of better conversion or simply boosting vanity metrics.

Long logout - complete logout needs extra steps after clicking logout e.g. removing/forgetting the account. Often times the action is not even accessible from the logout screen either. On a shared machine it even leaks pii. Linkedin, Gmail, Facebook

HN hug of death? https://web.archive.org/web/20240718075133/https://hallofsha...

Also seems important to ask why these patterns became so common and the related question of why companies are so much more willing to violate people's dignity nowadays just to get an edge on the competition. Was it the rise of the MBA?

"Privacy Zuckering" has a ring to it.

> What's a Privacy Zuckering? A service or a website tricks you into sharing more information with it than you really want to.

I wonder how Zuck feels about that being the impact he left on the world.

Some of these companies practices are quite literally illegal. That goes beyond "Dark Patterns". I think it was Vonage who lost a class action lawsuit over how difficult they made it to cancel an account.

programmers must be ashamed of themselves for agreeing to implement these patterns.

"Money above everything"

What's this one called?

You do a video call on some service, like Messenger or WhatsApp or Zoom.

After the call, you get a popup asking you about the quality of the service, on a 5-point scale.

If you click 5-stars, it says "thanks" and lets you go.

If you pick one of the others, it does the whole "oh help us do better, please fill out this form" spiel which is obviously a lot of work.

Can't you just ignore it? Don't they just want feedback to improve their product?

I'm asking what it's called

It’s called user research

I wonder if they record less than 5 stars if the user doesn't submit the text box, or if their research says everyone has great quality because they close/decline to provide feedback.

Qualitative research is finicky like that. What I’ve seen happen more often is a user is frustrated yet professional enough in some moment to actually provide useful feedback, but they bail when the survey has one too many questions. UXR teams like to organize questions and answers into nice little spreadsheets that ladder back to KPIs, but that’s not how an emotional person with honest criticism wants to share it. So they bail and you lose that moment. I like to do stars or thumb up/down as a pulse check, then a textbox to spill your guts. More work for me, but useful results more often.

The thread is fishing for some kind of moral failure, but if it's the company gathering those opinions, without any obligation, for its own use, it's not hostile behavior to manipulate the data.

It's just stupid.

(There may be, of course, some behavior that is hostile to the company done by people inside it. But it's not hostile to you. Also, one can argue that "stupid" is worse.)

There's also the extended version of this, where they'll ask you about the service in-app and only prompt you to exit the app and leave a review on the store if you say you love it, pre-vetting their reviews.

Square -> Balance link goes to a list of settled transactions. Placement, color, and other tricks work to get you to click an instant deposit button, which takes additional fees from your sales deposit. There was no confirmation, and the step is irreversible.