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.
If it is not indeed a new concept, it seems a great deal of people either didn’t know about it, or refused to care. Rather than be annoyed at the rediscovery, perhaps a better outlook would be to rejoice that these same ideas are reaching more people through the new words than it did with the old?
The problem is, they’re not actually learning about anything real, they’re learning about one specific outcome of rent seeking in the modern world that they only noticed because of their profession. By giving this very narrow and specific concept a cute name, and making that shit popular or whatever has literally prevented young people from understanding these important economic concepts on any real level.
So yeah I’m glad that a small portion of terminally online tech nerds have finally discovered a major form of rent seeking in their industry and identified it as a problem. But then they just stop there as if it exists in a vacuum. I just wish they’d read some actual books (or hell, if you don’t want to turn off the screen, audio books?) about the subject rather than just repeat some clever term over and over.
That’s my problem. I guess it’s nitpicky. But I do believe there are people who will now never learn another single thing about economic concepts that affect their lives because they’re not even aware that this “newly discovered phenomenon” is just one small aspect of a much larger problem that is endemic to all of capitalism. They just think it’s this quirky thing that only affects tech.