The U.S. FTC, along with two other international consumer protection networks, announced on Thursday the results of a study into the use of “dark patterns” – or manipulative design techniques – that can put users’ privacy at risk or push them to buy products or services or take other actions they otherwise wouldn’t have. TechCrunch:
In an analysis of 642 websites and apps offering subscription services, the study found that the majority (nearly 76%) used at least one dark pattern and nearly 67% used more than one. Dark patterns refer to a range of design techniques that can subtly encourage users to take some sort of action or put their privacy at risk. They’re particularly popular among subscription websites and apps and have been an area of focus for the FTC in previous years. For instance, the FTC sued dating app giant Match for fraudulent practices, which included making it difficult to cancel a subscription through its use of dark patterns.
[…] The new report published Thursday dives into the many types of dark patterns like sneaking, obstruction, nagging, forced action, social proof and others. Sneaking was among the most common dark patterns encountered in the study, referring to the inability to turn off the auto-renewal of subscriptions during the sign-up and purchase process. Eighty-one percent of sites and apps studied used this technique to ensure their subscriptions were renewed automatically. In 70% of cases, the subscription providers didn’t provide information on how to cancel a subscription, and 67% failed to provide the date by which a consumer needed to cancel in order to not be charged again.
YouTube have been doing that sort of thing for years though. Do you remember the push to have everyone switch to a Google+ account with a real name attached?
They’d ask if you wanted to do the aforementioned, and if you said no, they responded “OK we’ll ask again later.”
No “Never ask me this again.”, just the implicit “f–k you, we’re going to pester you with this over and over again until you sign up.”
After they got enough sign-ups they quit asking. And then Google+ went down the Swanee, so they relented and decided that maybe it was OK for people to have pseudonymous accounts after all. It only took years for that to happen.
Can’t see how short-form content is going to fail in the same way, so there’ll be nothing here to teach them the lesson again.
It’s a language game too. Target recently changed their credit card reader screen - it’s been annoying about their rewards program for a while, but before it was “skip” to pass the screen, now the button is “not now”. Skip is more of a “no” than “not now”. Either way, though, they’re shoving their easier shopper tracking down everyone’s throats.