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Acting shady hurts your brand.

Harry Brignull(the author) discusses this in a talk[1] that I found on the dark patterns website(I checked out the website after loving the article).

He makes the argument that sure, many of these tactics might increase your conversion rates or make you some money, at least in the short run. But it also causes you to come off as seedy, to come off as a back alley discount store instead of as a premium brand.

He points out that if you're doing this and you're aware of that and you're ok with it, that's one thing. But plenty of sites might not have realized what they're doing and how it comes off.

I know I personally resent it when sites leave boxes like "sign up for our newsletter" checked or when they have fake download box adds. Making it hard for me to do what I want to do, no matter how you do it, bothers me. It feels like you're the adversary of the site, not a customer or friend.

I believe he talks about it around 12 minutes in but the entire presentation is easily worth watching. He has another one aimed at designers that I plan on watching as soon as I find my headphones(the sound is too low for me to hear it on my MBP).

http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2010/12/17/dark-pattern...

.... actual premium services are usually under contract. Even when they're not they still want you to call into a real live human being to cancel because finding out about your concerns that lead you to cancel a $10,000+ contract is certainly worth the minor possibility that you'll be offended that cancellation is not a push button process.

...finding out about your concerns...

That's the benefit to the service provider. What's the benefit to the service consumer?

The point at which a user cancels a service is the last chance a service provider has to end the relationship on a positive note. The provider might earn a little more goodwill, and the consumer has a frustration-free experience.

Match.com wanted a whole herd of information when I cancelled. The information I typed in was complete fabrication. As such tactics gain popularity I suspect more people will balk at it, making it a net loss to the service provider.

Being nice to your customers is called win-win.

I was countering the notion that premium services don't do this.

Also, Match.com isn't a premium service. Real personalized match-making and concierge service (they'll take care of everything involving the first few dates) is a premium service and the pricing starts at $10,000 and only goes up from there. If you want to join up with a premium matchmaker, you need to have a phone call and at least an hour consult. If you want to quit, you need to call in---there's no automation at all.

For another example....

When you hire a corporate lawyer, it takes a phone call to engage their services, or cancel their services. Their goal isn't to make the threshold to complete an action easy, their goal is to be the best representation your money can buy.

If you go to LegalZoom.com for your incorporation services, it ought to be expected that you can cancel with a click of a button.

I understand what you're saying, but disagree (up-voted your clarification anyway).

If I'm paying $10k for a service, I'd especially expect a one-click opt-out or cancellation (assuming that's possible contractually). So the point here is that more I pay the more I expect to interact with a provider on my terms. Think about it. Rich people don't have time to fuck about. If they've an assistant who does this for them then that assistant shouldn't have to divulge personal reasons on his or her employer's behalf.

> If they've an assistant who does this for them then that assistant shouldn't have to divulge personal reasons on his or her employer's behalf.

Well in my experience, you're not forced to divulge anything. You're just asked a couple of questions, and they do try to change their service (within reason) so that you won't leave. But if your heart is set on leaving, and you don't really want to interact... you can just say so, and they'll let you go albeit with a sad sound to their voice.

> Acting shady hurts your brand.

These companies are not silly, they understand the damage to their brand can be quantified as $x and that the benefit to their bottom line can be quantified as $xx .

Sometimes you do things you know have a negative, because you believe that the positives outweigh it.

Not that I agree with these dark patterns, but I understand why companies choose to implement them.

If you scroll right to the end, you'll find a great example of a site who thought they were being smart by being shady, and instead annoyed their users enough that people just went elsewhere (experts exchange), even though the measures were easily worked around.

If, as you acknowledge, these are user-hostile patterns, using them is going to lose the trust of your users, and in the end you will flounder, even if in the short term they provide economic benefits. That's the premise of the article, and yes the companies are silly for employing these dark patterns because they're trading long-term trust in their brand (and thus long-term profits) for short-term economic advantage.

These companies are not silly, they understand the damage to their brand can be quantified as $x and that the benefit to their bottom line can be quantified as $xx.

Actually - they often are silly. It might be $x right now, but it turns into $10x later on as the consequences of that initial damage roll on and affect future interactions, recommendations, etc.

It's very easy to quantify the short-term gains being sneaky get you. It's much harder to quantify the longer term consequences.

By doing this they survived first and took place of some other honest companies. Still very large benefits.

Do you have examples of that? Because he has several examples of the opposite in his talk.

These companies are not silly

What evidence do you have for that? Even assuming perfect knowledge, humans are what run these companies, and we all know how irrational those can be. Sure, sure, "the market" will kill them off, sooner or later (maybe; that's also assuming perfect knowledge of consumers, and we know how true that is), but until then, this shadiness should be called out and shunned whenever possible.

>Acting shady hurts your brand.

The Ladders has a long history of actually being shady, viz.

"Liars at the Ladders" http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/newsletter/oe20090120.htm

Attempting to change people's minds by frustrating them rather than by actually presenting them with reasons to stay is, in a word, evil.

I'd have no problems with a page that says, "We're sorry to see you go, won't you reconsider? Here are some reasons why we think you should stay." I have a big problem with a page that says, "We're sorry to see you go, so we're going to make your life a little bit harder in the hopes that you change your mind."

Whenever two entities transact, there are four basic outcomes. The best outcome is when both parties benefit. That's what we should aim for in general. Another good outcome is when one party willingly takes a hit to benefit the other party, which we could call charity. Then there are evil outcomes where one party harms another party for their own benefit, and finally stupid outcomes where both parties come out worse off.

Trying to convince me not to cancel by wasting my time is clearly in the "evil" category. There's no attempt at mutual benefit, they're just trying to increase my cost in order to increase their benefit. An honest company tries to increase my benefit to also increase their benefit.

I addressed this pretty explicitly in my post.

I agree with everything you're saying (intentionally frustrating users is bad), but I don't agree that a simple, straightforward form that can be filled out in under 10 seconds is an attempt to frustrate anyone. I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that a significant number of people, upon seeing this form, decided not to cancel because filling it out was too much a waste of time. It's just not a plausible argument.

Another commenter mentioned going through hell attempting to cancel a gym membership. I've had the same thing happen to me: took multiple phone calls over the span of a few hours to cancel my Bally's membership. That was a deliberate attempt to frustrate. This form is several orders of magnitude better.

I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that a significant number of people, upon seeing this form, decided not to cancel because filling it out was too much a waste of time. It's just not a plausible argument.

This isn't really something that is subject to argument; it's an empirical question. It's measurable; a known quantity to people who have implemented it in an A/B fashion.

I'd be very surprised if additional friction to a cancel process had zero impact. That would be sufficiently surprising to be worthy of an article or paper.

Not true. A simple A/B testing between having a form and not having one will tell you the "what" but not the "why". If I decide to cancel my account and end up on that form page, then change my mind and navigate away, you have no idea why. You cannot accurately claim that I did so because I was frustrated or because I thought it was a waste of time.

If filling out a form is not a big deal, then why isn't it optional?

I'd have no problem with the form if you could just skip it and click Cancel at the bottom. But the moment you force users to fill out anything is the moment you turn evil.

I agree that it's not anywhere near the same magnitude as it could be. But that doesn't make it OK.

> I'd have no problems with a page that says, "We're sorry to see you go, won't you reconsider? Here are some reasons why we think you should stay." I have a big problem with a page that says, "We're sorry to see you go, so we're going to make your life a little bit harder in the hopes that you change your mind.

See also the evil AOL dialer dialogue that used weird negatives to confuse people into not disconnecting. That was so evil I think they last some law cases over it.

It's disappointing that so much effort goes into evil tweaks. But it's worse that customers reward that evil behaviour. Candy Crush is huge at the moment. I'd pay £5 for something like Candy Crush without the evil; heck, I'd buy it for all my family too to avoid the constant FB spam from it.

The freemium app craze drives me nuts. Used to be, the way to get more revenue from your game was to make it better. Now game creators are getting more revenue from their games by making them worse. That's a great example of win-win versus win-lose transactions.

Note that I have nothing against game creators charging for their products, it's just that the freemium model is pretty much inherently built such that creators make their money by making the game less fun to play.

To give an example: In line with Google's mission statement of "Don't be evil", I figure that it could extend to "Don't be annoying".

> My question is: Why should a company make it easy for people to do exactly what it doesn't want them to do?

Because its just plain annoying to users. Running a business and designing your application / system to trick people into behaving in a certain way is one thing, being transparent is another.

I think users these days are becoming a lot more educated and wiser to these techniques, as a result their loyalty is beginning to side with companies that offer a more honest level of transparency.

Would you like to send that extension to the google integration team? This is the 6th time they've asked me to merge my account with google plus.

I'm starting to think the only way to get them to stop is with violence. I wonder if those nag screens come up in a standardized way...

>What's so evil about requiring a small form to be filled out?

What's so evil about requiring a 20 minute form to be filled out in order to cancel?

>The questions are directly relevant to the act of canceling

For The Ladders, and not for the user. The user is done with questions and just wants to cancel. The website is demanding that the consumer do free labor for it in return for the privilege of canceling. It's not tricking you, it's simply extorting you. Combined with...

>[...]say, The Ladder's decision to auto-renew monthly subscriptions while hiding that fact at the bottom of the page in small gray font[...]

...it's a direct statement that if you don't participate in our consumer research program, we will withdraw $25 from your account every month until you do. I don't even think that's legal.

Easy solution: send a certified letter with your cancellation notice; any charges after that can be legally reported as CC fraud. Enough people do that, and maybe they won't be pulling that bullshit anymore.

If you can sign up on the web, you should be able to cancel on the web.

Factoring in the cost of my time, sending a certified letter costs me $200.

Eight months of billing at $25 a pop, and they won't stop until you fill out their stupid form; screwing them over with a CC fraud charge would be worth $200 to me, if they're going to be that shady.

> My question is: Why should a company make it easy for people to do exactly what it doesn't want them to do?

The problem isn't when a company makes it hard for people to do exactly what it doesn't want them to do. Apple probably doesn't want its users to electrocute themselves, so they make sure the charger is properly isolated and all that.

The problem is when a company makes it hard for people to do what they want to do. That sucks, because it's usually why people are paying money for.

In this case, some people will want to make sure they aren't tracked (the other people don't care about it, so the option's placement is irrelevant to them). Hiding that option so well is simply useless: it achieves nothing for the people who don't care about it, and annoys those who do care about it (who tend to be tech-savvy enough that they'll find it no matter how well it's hidden). It's simply a defect in design: a misfeature that was grafted there for the glorification of someone who needed a contract signed. It provides zero advantages for the contracting parties, and huge disadvantages for the users.

The distinction between the two groups is not that clear. I suspect many users don't care too much, but if they stumble upon a "don't track me" option, they'll select it.

I think it isn't moral to lower cancellation rates by making the cancel action difficult.

The best way to grow is to have users that love you. I believe the inverse is also true, having users that hate you will limit your growth.

I once had a terrifically hard time cancelling a gym membership that turned from a free trial into a 2 year, $500 membership automatically. I still express strong feelings any time I hear the gym's name.

Interfaces communicate with their users (at least, if you ask me), and I sometimes find it helpful to explicitly put into words what I think an interface is saying. I interpret The Ladder's cancellation screen as saying, "You cannot cancel your membership without giving us a reason."

Imagine if you were trying to break up with a significant other, and they told you that you were not allowed to end the relationship unless you gave a reason first. That would be horribly controlling, and totally unacceptable.

Of course, a romantic relationship is rather more significant than a subscription, but I think The Ladder's exit process is controlling in the same way, and the only difference is that it occurs in a less important relationship. It still gives me the same feeling that my wishes and agency are being subjugated, and I believe that's a bad thing to do to a person, regardless of the particular situation.

> Why should a company make it easy for people to do exactly what it doesn't want them to do?

I'm reminded of Star Wars, light side versus dark side. Neither side is stronger, and which side is "better" really depends on your POV. We do know that the dark side is "easier". Companies similarly can choose to go light side or dark side and end up with the same bottom line, but light side takes more up-front effort.

Now, let me apply the same question: if the dark side is easier and is as likely to get you results, why isn't it a perfectly valid choice?

Again, its a slippery slope. Making the user hover over for some more time over his/her decision is not very far from a dark pattern. In case you need a feedback the best you should be going for are optional fields.

We're seeing 'one-click unsubscribe' link in many emails these days. I think that is one good indication for a spam filter to let through. This is a proof that only the right approach prevail eventually.

He explained this at the end. Companies that do this succeed in the short term, but in the long run they fail.

A much better pattern for the cancelation that I've seen is to cancel your account and then present you with the feedback form, they will get a much higher rate of usefull feedback this way.

yes, all bad practices... I think of this like when you buy something at the store at the advertised price and it comes up at a different price at the register (almost always higher)... this is wrong.