Dark Patterns in Your Everyday Apps
By: Mariana Vargas
Tags: Technology, Design, Creativity, Visual Design, UX

Do not confuse it with Dark Mode

The hype of “The Social Dilemma” made many viewers become aware of the power of technology and its influence on all of us. For UX Designers, the use of dishonest tricks in digital platforms is not a new topic. We call them dark patterns.

Evil design patterns, unfortunately, are very common. To demonstrate, I created a compilation of dark patterns we can find every day.

Youtube Disguised Ads

Author/Copyright holder: Youtube. Copyright terms and license: Fair Use.

The very first thing Youtube displays when the app is open is not a video, but an ad that really looks like a video. When a user scrolls down the app, he comes across many of these ads disguised as videos, which the user can easily click by mistake.

Spotify Roach Motel

Remember when you created your Spotify account? Probably not. Maybe you only used OAuth and immediately got logged in with your Facebook account. If not, you simply filled a small survey with your registration data and you were in. What about deleting your Spotify account? If you ever tried to do it, you probably remember how painful it was.

Spotify’s webpage makes it easy for the user to find where to Log in or to Sign up. There are clear options in the navbar, as well as a highlighted button in the center of the screen for it.

Author/Copyright holder: Spotify. Copyright terms and license: Fair Use.

Author/Copyright holder: Spotify. Copyright terms and license: Fair Use.

If you click on “Login”, you’ll find out you don’t even need to create a new account to use Spotify. You can automatically login with your Facebook, Apple, or Google account. How easy.

Deleting a Spotify Account, on the other hand, can be a painful experience. You “only” have to complete the following instructions:

Navigate to support.spotify.com/us/contact-spotify-support/. Click on “Login” in the upper right-hand corner and enter your credentials. You need to work through a series of on-screen questions. Click on “Subscription”. Choose “I want to close my Spotify account”. Click on “Contact to Close”.

Author/Copyright holder: Spotify. Copyright terms and license: Fair Use.

When you click on the “Contact to Close” button, you are taken to a support form. This means Spotify UI completely prevents a user from closing his account without having to pass through a support procedure he doesn’t have any control over.

Reddit Bait and Switch

Author/Copyright holder: Reddit. Copyright terms and license: Fair Use.

When scrolling Reddit’s feed, the user can expand the images displayed by clicking on them. However, Reddit’s feed has plenty of “promoted” posts, which are actually ads. The user is tricked into clicking on the ad’s image, but instead of the default expanding behavior, he is automatically redirected to some ad website.

Instagram Roach Motel

Instagram uses the Roach Model pattern in a different form from the one used in Spotify. In this case, besides being a mobile application, Instagram accounts are impossible to delete within the app. The user needs to access a browser, which makes the process of account deletion unnecessary harder for him.

Excerpt of Instagram Help Documentation

Skillshare Forced Continuity

Forced Continuity: When your free trial with a service comes to an end and your credit card silently starts getting charged without any warning. You are then not given an easy way to cancel the automatic renewal.

Author/Copyright holder: Skillshare. Copyright terms and license: Fair Use.

Skillshare uses one of the most common dark patterns in the subscription services. The user is asked to provide his credit card data to access a free trial, a situation that leads to automatic debts as soon as the trial period ends. The user can cancel his subscription anytime, even before the paid period begins. However, many companies do not properly notify their users that they are about to be charged until it’s too late.

Wish Confirmshaming

Confirmshaming: The act of guilting the user into opting into something. The option to decline is worded in such a way as to shame the user into compliance.

Author/Copyright holder: Wish. Copyright terms and license: Fair Use.

When someone unsubscribes from the Wish newsletter, the confirmation dialog is worded in a way of attempting to make the user feel guilty from leaving. Not only does the title state “We’re sad to see you go”, but also the user is required to choose the option “I Don’t Like Discounts” instead of a neutral “Unsubscribe”.

AliExpress Price Comparison Prevention

Price Comparison Prevention: The retailer makes it hard for you to compare the price of an item with another item, so you cannot make an informed decision.

AliExpress is an online retail service with a big product offer. In the gift above, we see the search results for a makeup brush set.

The search results screen is where the user can compare his different options. At this moment, we see how the results are displayed in individual prices. However, when the user clicks on one product details, the price changes for a price interval. The user must choose between different options of quantity, color, and shipping source to obtain the final price of his product. This way of price display makes it harder for the user to compare different products and make an informed decision.

Broadway.com Hidden Costs

Hidden Costs: You get to the last step of the checkout process, only to discover some unexpected charges have appeared, e.g. delivery charges, tax, etc.

In the capture above it is displayed how, when the user selects the seats, the price displayed is $59.50 each. However, in the checkout step, $14.88 for Service & Handling is charged for each ticket, leading to an unexpected final price. This trick is often used in ticket selling platforms, making it hard for users to plan how much they are willing to spend.

Mariana Vargas is a full-time UX Engineer and part-time singer based in Lisbon, Portugal. You can connect with her on LinkedIn.