Dark patterns: Spot and Avoid Online Marketing Traps

Dark patterns are digital practices aimed at manipulating users. These tactics rely on cognitive biases and intentionally designed ergonomic tricks. Here's how to spot them and avoid falling for them.

Recognizing Dark Patterns

These practices are very common, especially on e-commerce sites: large countdown timers or messages indicating that only one item of a product remains in stock. Their objectives can vary: getting you to buy more, buy faster, collect your data, or keep you engaged on an app for longer periods. These practices are widely used because they have been proven effective.

According to a joint survey by the FRC (Fédération Romande des Consommateurs, a Swiss consumer rights association) and Public Eye (a Swiss human rights advocacy organization), users are 2 to 4 times more likely to take action in an environment that includes dark patterns.

To identify them and better understand how they work, here they are classified into seven categories:

Social Pressure

This type of dark pattern leverages our tendency to want to belong to a group and imitate others. It highlights, for example, how popular or sought-after an item is:

• "More than 5,000 sold"
• "57 people have this product in their cart"
• "8 orders in progress!"

Or by suggesting other "popular" items:

• "What others bought"
• "Our customers also purchased"

Perception of Scarcity

This strategy emphasizes a product's scarcity to increase its desirability. Nobody wants to miss out on a great deal - and that’s often the implication when the item is about to run out:

• "Only 3 products left"
• "High demand! Complete your order before it’s gone!"
• "Almost out of stock! Only 2 remaining"

Sense of Urgency

Creating a sense of urgency to encourage purchases: this is often achieved through highly visible countdowns or discounts (indicated by crossed-out prices) available for a limited time. Common phrases include:

• "Price valid until 5:57 PM"
• "FREE pickup Saturday, May 4. Order within 1 hr 19 min"
• "Available for a limited time only, buy yours today!"
• "It’s in your cart, reserved for 1 hour"

Distraction

These techniques aim to steer you toward a particular choice. This could involve:

• Directing you to other "similar" or "frequently bought together" products.
• Prompting you to share information: "Save €1.20 on this product after signing up."
• Encouraging clicks on disguised ads that blend with the page layout.
• Guiding you toward one choice over another.

Cookie banners often fall into this category: the"accept all cookies" button is prominently highlighted (via color or larger text) compared to the"reject all" or "continue without accepting" options.

Confirmshaming techniques also aim to nudge users toward a specific choice, with messages like:"No, I don’t want to support a good cause" or"Cancel and lose all my benefits."

Negative choices or trick questions can also confuse users, such as: "Do not uncheck this box if you want to be contacted via email."

Obstruction

Obstruction makes an action more difficult than necessary to discourage it. For instance, signing up on a site might take one click, while unsubscribing requires five. This favors one action over another.

This pattern often applies to accessing personal data, such as accepting cookies or agreeing to Terms of Use.

Deception

This dark pattern involves bypassing user consent, often taking action without their awareness. One common example is adding warranties to a product at checkout without the user’s consent. Unless they notice, they’ll pay extra for an unwanted warranty.

Another example: hiding negative aspects of Terms of Use. Users may only see part of the text and need to click "View More" for full details.

Forced Action

This dark pattern forces you to perform an extra action to complete a task. For instance, some websites require you to register before viewing their content. In such cases, the requested information is unnecessary for the site to function (e.g., a cooking recipe website doesn’t need personal data to display recipes).

How to Protect Yourself from Dark Patterns?

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) protects EU citizens from the most problematic dark patterns. Websites must provide complete information about terms and conditions and offer equally visible "accept" and "reject" cookie buttons.

However, these solutions are far from perfect. Many dark patterns persist, and e-commerce sites are constantly finding creative ways to make them less noticeable.

To protect yourself, start by learning about these techniques. For example, the DGCCRF (France's consumer protection agency) offers reliable resources on this topic.

While browsing, ask yourself: Why is this e-commerce site telling you that 5 other people have this item in their cart? Why do you need to uncheck every box one by one? Why do they require your email address (or other personal data) to access the site?

If the answers to these questions are unclear—or not in your favor—it might be a manipulation tactic.

To explore this topic further:

• The site Hall of Shame (in English) documents and analyzes examples of dark patterns.
• An online game (in English) designed to raise awareness about poorly designed interfaces: UserInyerFace

References:

• Fédération Romande des Consommateurs - Dark patterns: when web interfaces manipulate us
• Arxiv - Dark Patterns at Scale: Findings from a Crawl of 11K Shopping Websites
• DGCCRF - Traps on e-commerce sites: beware of dark patterns!

[Cover photo: Getty Images]

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