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Dark patterns are everywhere (lemmy.ml)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by Charger8232@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
43 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It's pretty easy to spot dark patterns when you look out for them, but I found a pretty obvious example of this.

Stoofie is a brand that sells water fountains for your pet (I don't know what the problem with a water bowl is, but I digress). WayBack Machine

Plastered at the top of their website is "33% OFF Ends Today- Free Shipping" with no way to dismiss it. There is a scrolling text under the main image "FAST AND FREE SHIPPING 60-DAY FREE RETURNS"

If you scroll down, you're immediately introduced with a product with the option to buy two preselected. The rest of this section explains itself:

Other things are sprinkled in the main page, but it really is the prime example of dark patterns. I am personally sick of finding them, but would love to see more examples of what others have found. Please, share your favorite examples of dark patterns. Don't forget to archive them first so they can never be lived down.

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[-] pedroapero@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

my favourite is Amazon's:

  • buy without prime (2$ shipping fees)
  • buy with prime (free shipping)

exept you must pay amazon prime 10$ and it's a monthly recuring subscription.

[-] TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub 64 points 1 week ago

(I don't know what the problem with a water bowl is, but I digress)

(cats are more likely to drink moving water than still water since moving water is less likely to have bad things growing in it)

[-] illi@lemm.ee 16 points 1 week ago

Huh. I always wondered. When I'm poiring our dog water to the bowl when hiking, he always prefers to drink "from the bottle" - the bowl is there basically to catch the rest to return to the bottle (or for the other dog to drink). Guess now I maybe know why he does it.

[-] Charger8232@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 week ago

Good to know, thanks for the insight!

[-] workerONE@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago

They also (generally) don't like to have their water next to their food because when they drink they put their head down and can't see predators that might be attracted to the food.

[-] toynbee@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

For some reason one of my cats only drinks water that she scoops up with her foot.

It means we have to clean her bowl way more often than should be necessary because the debris her feet collect gets deposited in the water bowl.

[-] reagansrottencorpse@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 week ago

We have a cat that scoops her food out of the bowl, walks a few feet, drops it on the ground and eats (most of it). It's very annoying to constantly have to sweep up cat food. Maybe this is related.

[-] Pyro@programming.dev 1 points 1 day ago

I'm curious, what if you move her bowl to the place where she drops it?

[-] toynbee@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

That does sound very annoying! The first time I noticed my cat doing this, her food and litter box were in the basement, which was stone and dirt in that house. (We put them down there because it was the only place in that house where we could practically prevent the dog from getting to them.) Nowadays the cat stuff is in, essentially, a much cleaner sun porch; as a result, we still have to clean her bowl more frequently than seems reasonable, but it lasts a lot longer than it used to.

[-] TheButtonJustSpins@infosec.pub 1 points 1 week ago

We have a cat that does that too. She'll drink normally as well, though. I view it as her cleaning her little feet.

[-] toynbee@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

That could be, but the bowl is communal between our four animals. I wish she wouldn't.

[-] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 60 points 1 week ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Most cookie consent dialogues:

  1. There’s only one big accept button
  2. If the decline button even exists, it’s grey whereas the other one is green.
  3. The decline option could be buried deep under other menus.
  4. The sizes of the buttons

Most companies are trying to actively manipulate you to accept all cookies, but nowadays there are a few companies that don’t resort to any of these dirty tricks.

[-] Boomkop3@reddthat.com 2 points 5 days ago

Stupidly enough, that's illegal in the places this ruling is from. What's going on there?

[-] Samsy@lemmy.ml 27 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The one that scares me the most is:

Accept all or Settings

And you have to opt out 5-10 buttons and at the end there is a "save settings" or the "accept all" button again in green.

Who has time for this shit? Just for a stupid article? We need laws against these.

[-] original_reader@lemm.ee 19 points 1 week ago

With a heading "We care about your privacy".

🙄

[-] nous@programming.dev 12 points 1 week ago

Oh they care. They care a lot. Particularly that you don't have any so they can sell all your details to any bidder.

[-] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago

They care about it so much that they probably have a full time UI designer whose job is to figure out new ways to trick and manipulate users to hand out even more data.

[-] Gutek8134@lemmy.world 11 points 1 week ago

Pretty sure EU law says that the buttons should be identical

[-] alien@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 week ago

Exactly. It should be as easy to decline all cookies as it is to accept. And user's consent can't be implicit.

[-] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 week ago

I wish it was legal to ddos the sites that violate this law.

[-] limitsomething@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago

That's actually a nightmare

Who has time for this shit? Just for a stupid article?

Won't using reader mode ( if your browser supports it ) help you avoid this ? or those browser add-ons like " I don't care about cookies "

[-] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 week ago

Oh I remember those thoroughly cursed menus where you have to manually disable 256 cookies one by one. Haven’t seen those in a while though, so I guess some piece of legislation is doing its job.

[-] Uranium_Green@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

I'm honestly surprised no-one has built an extension to automatically opt out of them, or at least the major cookie providers interfaces.

I realise there are many extensions which outright block cookies, etc; I'm meaning specifically the annoying dialogues you describe

[-] Far@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 week ago

In ublock origin settings. There is an "annoyances" group with options. It should take care of most of those popups.

[-] Skua@kbin.earth 5 points 1 week ago

Aarhus university has done exactly that! https://consentomatic.au.dk/

It doesn't work 100% of the time but it's pretty good

[-] unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 week ago

You forgot a million switches for each "partner". More like prostitution.

[-] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 week ago

Based on the number of partners some companies seem to have, they are far more promiscuous than most humans.

[-] MonkderVierte@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Yeah, EU fixed that somewhat, it has to be privacy-by-default now, the save choice being pre-selected and obvious and etc. But most dialogues are now illegal; no legal entity complains, nobody fixes it.

[-] metaStatic@kbin.earth 5 points 1 week ago

Site has cookie consent dialogue?

immediately leave site (Most Popular)

[-] dwindling7373@feddit.it 3 points 1 week ago

That's what my mother does because she's senile.

Having the dialogue is a good thing.

[-] limitsomething@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

AFAIK this uses UX design rules

[-] muntedcrocodile@lemm.ee 26 points 1 week ago

If they sell to anyone in australia let our consumer protection agency or whatever they called know. They tend to actually follow through with fining companies shit like this.

[-] antrosapien@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 week ago

Working for a certain big fucking corpo(that I utterly hate from bottom of my heart but don't really have an option to leave), I see those patterns all over the product. Not just that, its practically impossible for non tech savvy to choose a non bundled or cheaper product or plan because it's burried somewhere out of your sight

[-] winterayars@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 week ago

Water bowls are stagnant water and animals can sense that and do not like it. In nature, stagnant water is dangerous and kind of a last resort. Heck, even humans can taste this and probably don't like it. Try leaving a bowl of water out for 24 hours and drink it yourself, you might be able to tell it's not good.

Fountains keep that water tasting fresh, though tbh they might fill it with micro plastics or something so who knows if it's really an improvement.

[-] XTL@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 days ago

Cats are also extremely sensitive to smells (and not the kind that humans can smell). Often it's just the location, especially if it's somewhere where some ghost of food long since expired lingers.

[-] dotslashme@infosec.pub 10 points 1 week ago

One of the worst shopping basket designs I have ever seen, was where they added additional items together with the thing you wanted, forcing you to remove the thing they added before paying.

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

I'm not sure what you mean by "dark patterns" in this context. Isn't this just marketing?

Is it that the more expensive choice is pre-selected? That the discounted price is likely just the real price and it's never sold at the higher price? (that one got Saatva in trouble! - https://topclassactions.com/lawsuit-settlements/open-lawsuit-settlements/11-5m-saatva-com-false-advertising-class-action-settlement/)

[-] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

I read recently that the phrase "noticing patterns" is a racist dog whistle but I don't have a firm handle on how or why.
I don't know if dark patterns are exempt but the timing is weird.

[-] drkt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 6 days ago

"noticing patterns" is a right-wing dog whistle about jews because they think jews orchestrate society and that they are 'noticing this'.

The usual meme is "stop noticing things" because they have pointed out something they think is the fault of jews, like chemtrails or whatever. In this example, there could be a jewish board member of a plane company and they also believe chemtrails are real so they are 'noticing' the supposed connection.

It is similar to the (((( )))) dog whistle, if you are familiar.

Examples can be found on the 'noticing' tag on ifunny https://ifunny.co/tags/noticing

This has nothing to do with dark patterns.

[-] GreyCat@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

Dude what are you on about lol. Wikipedia on dark patterns

[-] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

Oh hey greycat.

[-] BearOfaTime@lemm.ee 2 points 1 week ago

Those are pretty bright patterns in my book. More of the usual BS.

this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
115 points (100.0% liked)

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