Watch out, I'm about to blow your mind, bro.
Businesses want you to buy stuff.
I know, this is shocking news, but perhaps even more shocking is that online,
businesses drive to get you to open your wallets can often involve quite a bit of subterfuge
known as dark patterns.
Surprisingly, this isn't the name of a metal band. Rather, it's a tactic designed to influence you somehow,
usually into buying a product or service you might not really want to sign up
for incessant marketing emails or simply to stop you from doing something
the business may not want you to do. And dark patterns aren't one size fits all.
Just like a Stephen King monster, a dark pattern can take many forms.
One classic example is how hard it often is
to find a phone number to talk to a real human being when you need customer service.
Websites often instead direct you to fill out a form or text chat with a representative.
If a phone number even exists, it's often buried in a subtle location
that you have to click multiple links to find. A related tactic is how hard some services
make it to close your account. You've probably seen how companies will bury the unsubscribe link on an email
at the bottom in tiny font. But this is small potatoes compared to trying
to straight up cancel a membership. Typically, bringing up a settings menu
and clicking close your account isn't good enough. Sites will either entice you to stay
with a massive in-your-face offer to prevent you from cancelling a subscription
with the actual cancel link presented in a much smaller size.
Or they'll make it insanely hard to find the actual delete your account button.
Amazon is notorious for this and many other things.
The latter is a good example of what designers call a roach motel.
Easy to sign up for an account and get in, but hard to leave.
And while you might not end up dead, like an actual roach,
it makes life super annoying and may even result in a recurring charge
in your card if you don't deactivate your account in time. But even if burying the link you actually want to click
isn't a tactic a certain company is employing, there are other gotchas to watch out for.
One is how these sites will use UI elements to nudge the user in a certain direction.
For example, making a buy tokens or keep my subscription button a bright color,
or at least a color the user recognizes from other parts of the service.
This can also be done in a less subtle way called confirm shaming.
Wait, are we on Twitter? You see this a lot when you visit a retailer
travel site and get a popup to sign up for a newsletter, promising discounts and other exclusive offers.
If you're not interested in getting email spam, you can't just click on an X button
or a button that says close. Instead, you have to click a small link
saying something to the effect of no thanks, I'd rather pay full price
or some other condescending nonsense. But possibly the worst form of dark pattern
is the one that actively requires you to click an extra button to opt out of something.
This can be anything from how tedious some sites make it to reject unnecessary cookies.
Ugh, yes. To having a box to install some unwanted antivirus program
or unwanted toolbar pre-checked for you when you're trying to install something else
completely unrelated. By the time you've clicked through reflexively,
congratulations, you're now the proud owner of a trip protection package and probably some malware.
Of course, these aren't the only kinds of dark patterns floating around out there.
So while it's a pain, be sure to take a few extra seconds
to read before you click. You don't wanna end up in a position
where you agree to have your robot vacuum suck up all your loose change and hold it ransom.
It happened to me. Hey, thanks for watching guys.
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