Media Ethics

 Hi,

Today I am going to talk about how dark patterns trick you online. Firstly, for those who may not know what dark patterns are, here is an explanation: Dark patterns are features of interface design crafted to trick users into doing things they might not want to do, but which benefit the business in question. 

 There are many examples of dark patterns online but from the video ‘How dark patterns trick you online’ one of the examples that were mentioned that shocked me was deleting an amazon account. Amazon made it extremely awkward for a user to delete their amazon account and I’m sure this is to throw people off from deleting their account so even though they may not purchase things on this account it still benefits them as a company.

From watching this video, I also found the information that UX specialist Harry Brignull categorizes these specific types of dark patterns as a roach motel. A roach motel is a design that makes it very easy to get into a situation but hard to get out of it. According to the video Brignull also claimed the term ‘Dark Pattern’ and has since continued to catalog and lecture about the topic.

The majority of people will already have had an experience with a dark pattern, for example, spam emails. At the very bottom of all spam emails, there Is small writing that would be very easy to miss, this is done on purpose because the option to opt-out of receiving all and any emails that may come from that company and/or website can be seen within this text. 

Another Dark Pattern that may be hard to notice is the use of color in certain applications. For example, as seen in the video the game ‘Two Dots’ uses the color green for many buttons such as Play, Start Game, Different Levels, and Continue. However, if you lose a game the color scheme changes, the green button no longer means any of the above it now changes to an in-app purchase ‘Buy Moves’, and the option to continue blends into the background which may lead people to accidentally click the in-app purchase without realizing. 

From watching this video, I feel as though I have learned a lot about dark patterns that I didn’t know before such as the use of color to make people do things that they don’t necessarily want to do just out of habit. I also feel that it helped me become more aware of these dark patterns especially with the spam emails and I’m sure many would agree with me on this. 

-Megan