Dark pattern

They have a ton of lead in, but, like, Mora was work- working on multiple books.

Hayden Sherman, it's like Dark Patterns comes out while Absolute Wonder Woman is coming out.

Absolute Wonder Woman is coming out while Legion is coming out.

And, like, Mora's having JLU while Superman's coming out.

I mean, I know what the actual product is for catching disgusting insects, sure.

So the concept, how it's applied to user interface design is one of these dark patterns, which is worthy of an entire side quest all of its own.

But the Roach Motel concept is basically make it easy for people to sign up, make it completely frictionless via cheap trial rates and first stage, enter your credit card, forget about it again, but make it difficult for them to leave, make it difficult to cancel, make sure that they agreed to auto renew to start with, have all sorts of irritating steps to go through.

It's basically, yeah, easy to check in, hard to check out.

Dark patterns are a UX problem, but now courts are treating them like a legal one.

Hey, carnies, and welcome back to The Daily Carnage Show.

I'm Shannon, I'm a digital marketing strategist at Carni, and I'm your host.

But I think the litigation raises a broader question for all of us in tech and marketing.

Can the design of a digital product become the basis for legal liability? Of course, we're talking about deceptive design.

Deceptive design is sometimes called dark patterns, which describe digital interfaces and product experiences that influence users toward decisions they may not have made otherwise.

These design patterns may obscure important information or they might make certain choices unnecessarily difficult.

What does this look like? Well, a website might automatically enroll someone in marketing communications.

We got...

Well, we have Dark Patterns eventually coming up.

And we also did an episode that we already have in the can that we'll be posting probably in a couple weeks or so.

We're just trying to do these episodes of the show.

The mathematical purity of the key exchange is only as trustworthy as the closed source binary executing the code.

Third is the feature penalty dark pattern.

Notice what happens the second you enable end-to-end encryption on consumer cloud hardware.

They actively degrade your user experience.

Rich lock screen notifications get disabled, web browser portals are blocked, and sharing feeds with family members becomes a clunky, frustrating obstacle course.

Vendors intentionally design these security toggles with maximum user friction.

It's a calculated dark pattern to keep 95% of their user base on the default unencrypted or less encrypted cloud streaming pipeline.

The exact pipeline that feeds their computer vision models and automated analytics engines.

... amazing.

But Dan Waters, I mean, you know, I was singing his praises when he was writing a Dark Patterns book.

Man-

Yeah

... fuck you.

[laughs] That is, like, the definition of a dark pattern, the thing we learned in university specifically to avoid in user experience design.

Dark patterns are always nefarious.

There's always an ulterior motive.

This is horseshit.

These weren't accidents, Amanda.

Meticulously designed dark patterns, UI, UX tricks crafted to exploit psychological biases, keep users endlessly engaged, perpetually scrolling, ultimately addicted to the thrill of purchase.

Mark felt constant, subtle, almost physical pressure to buy, buy, buy.

Exhausting.

Mark's experience highlights powerful manipulative effects of app website design A hidden layer of influence, puppet master we rarely see.

For listeners, develop digital literacy.

Recognize dark patterns.

Question urgency.