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Watch out, I'm about to blow your mind, bro.

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Businesses want you to buy stuff.

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I know, this is shocking news, but perhaps even more shocking is that online,

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businesses drive to get you to open your wallets can often involve quite a bit of subterfuge

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known as dark patterns.

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Surprisingly, this isn't the name of a metal band. Rather, it's a tactic designed to influence you somehow,

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usually into buying a product or service you might not really want to sign up

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for incessant marketing emails or simply to stop you from doing something

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the business may not want you to do. And dark patterns aren't one size fits all.

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Just like a Stephen King monster, a dark pattern can take many forms.

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One classic example is how hard it often is

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to find a phone number to talk to a real human being when you need customer service.

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Websites often instead direct you to fill out a form or text chat with a representative.

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If a phone number even exists, it's often buried in a subtle location

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that you have to click multiple links to find. A related tactic is how hard some services

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make it to close your account. You've probably seen how companies will bury the unsubscribe link on an email

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at the bottom in tiny font. But this is small potatoes compared to trying

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to straight up cancel a membership. Typically, bringing up a settings menu

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and clicking close your account isn't good enough. Sites will either entice you to stay

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with a massive in-your-face offer to prevent you from cancelling a subscription

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with the actual cancel link presented in a much smaller size.

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Or they'll make it insanely hard to find the actual delete your account button.

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Amazon is notorious for this and many other things.

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The latter is a good example of what designers call a roach motel.

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Easy to sign up for an account and get in, but hard to leave.

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And while you might not end up dead, like an actual roach,

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it makes life super annoying and may even result in a recurring charge

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in your card if you don't deactivate your account in time. But even if burying the link you actually want to click

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isn't a tactic a certain company is employing, there are other gotchas to watch out for.

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One is how these sites will use UI elements to nudge the user in a certain direction.

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For example, making a buy tokens or keep my subscription button a bright color,

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or at least a color the user recognizes from other parts of the service.

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This can also be done in a less subtle way called confirm shaming.

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Wait, are we on Twitter? You see this a lot when you visit a retailer

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travel site and get a popup to sign up for a newsletter, promising discounts and other exclusive offers.

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If you're not interested in getting email spam, you can't just click on an X button

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or a button that says close. Instead, you have to click a small link

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saying something to the effect of no thanks, I'd rather pay full price

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or some other condescending nonsense. But possibly the worst form of dark pattern

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is the one that actively requires you to click an extra button to opt out of something.

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This can be anything from how tedious some sites make it to reject unnecessary cookies.

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Ugh, yes. To having a box to install some unwanted antivirus program

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or unwanted toolbar pre-checked for you when you're trying to install something else

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completely unrelated. By the time you've clicked through reflexively,

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congratulations, you're now the proud owner of a trip protection package and probably some malware.

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Of course, these aren't the only kinds of dark patterns floating around out there.

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So while it's a pain, be sure to take a few extra seconds

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to read before you click. You don't wanna end up in a position

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where you agree to have your robot vacuum suck up all your loose change and hold it ransom.

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It happened to me. Hey, thanks for watching guys.

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Like the video, dislike the video, check out our other videos, comment with video suggestions.

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It's all about videos here on the YouTube video channel TechWiki.

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Hey, why don't you subscribe and follow? That's an idea.