Shining a Light on Dark Patterns

Abstract

Dark patterns are user interfaces whose designers knowingly confuse users, make it difficult for users to express their actual preferences, or manipulate users into taking certain actions. They typically exploit cognitive biases and prompt online consumers to purchase goods and services that they do not want or to reveal personal information they would prefer not to disclose. This article provides the first public evidence of the power of dark patterns. It discusses the results of the authors’ two large-scale experiments in which representative samples of American consumers were exposed to dark patterns. In the first study, users exposed to mild dark patterns were more than twice as likely to sign up for a dubious service as those assigned to the control group, and users in the aggressive dark pattern condition were almost four times as likely to subscribe. Moreover, whereas aggressive dark patterns generated a powerful backlash among consumers, mild dark patterns did not. Less educated subjects were significantly more susceptible to mild dark patterns than their well-educated counterparts. The second study identified the dark patterns that seem most likely to nudge consumers into making decisions that they are likely to regret or misunderstand. Hidden information, trick question, and obstruction strategies were particularly likely to manipulate consumers successfully. Other strategies employing loaded language or generating bandwagon effects worked moderately well, while still others such as “must act now” messages did not make consumers more likely to purchase a costly service. Our second study also replicated a striking result in the first experiment, which is that where dark patterns were employed the cost of the service offered to consumers became immaterial. Decision architecture, not price, drove consumer purchasing decisions. The article concludes by examining legal frameworks for addressing dark patterns. Many dark patterns appear to violate federal and state laws restricting the use of unfair and deceptive practices in trade. Moreover, in those instances where consumers enter into contracts after being exposed to dark patterns, their consent could be deemed voidable under contract law principles. The article also proposes that dark pattern audits become part of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)’s consent decree process. Dark patterns are presumably proliferating because firms’ proprietary A-B testing has revealed them to be profit maximizing. We show how similar A-B testing can be used to identify those dark patterns that are so manipulative that they ought to be deemed unlawful.

Barriers to a Well-Functioning Digital Market: Exploring Dark Patterns and How to Overcome Them

“…One of such manipulative UI designs is dark patterns-"tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn't mean to, like buying or signing up for something" [14]. Here, consumers cannot follow their preferences and desires and become subject to exploitation [6]. Dark patterns are heavily rooted in psychology and behavioral sciences findings, applying knowledge about humans' reliance on heuristics and biases into the digital space.…”

“…One example of such abuse is dark patterns. To tackle the dark patterns and clarify their effects, researchers attempted to categorize them [7,9,10,6]. For instance, [6] summarized the existing categorizations as the main eight categories: nagging, social proof, obstruction, sneaking, interface interference, forced action, scarcity, and urgency.…”

“…To tackle the dark patterns and clarify their effects, researchers attempted to categorize them [7,9,10,6]. For instance, [6] summarized the existing categorizations as the main eight categories: nagging, social proof, obstruction, sneaking, interface interference, forced action, scarcity, and urgency. In the context of online shopping, based on a data set from about 11K websites and 53K products, [10] five-dimensional taxonomy of dark patterns: asymmetric, covert, deceptive, hides information, restrictive.…”

“…We focus on one type of barrier -dark patterns-user interfaces (UIs) purposefully designed to mislead users. As a result, users cannot follow their preferences and desires and may become subject to manipulations [6]. Over the last decade, dark patterns received much attention in multidisciplinary research, identifying many categories of dark patterns (e.g., [7,8,9,10]).…”

Dark Patterns in the Interaction with Cookie Banners

“…Besides the visual aspect, one can notice a second strategy in the above example, namely that the accept option is framed positively by stating "Yes, I'm happy", while the more neutral option leading to the privacy customization page is framed in a neutral tone as well. Recent work by Utz et al [11] and Luguri and Strahilevitz [6] showed that such design choices highly influence the decision making of users, and hence, one can assume that designers include these patterns deliberately into their work. Providing such insights is an important task, and we highly appreciate the work that is done to establish best practices and guidelines for designers to follow, such that they can avoid these malicious patterns.…”