In a new paper, @jonathanmayer, Mihir Kshirsagar, and I investigate a question that has been challenging researchers and policymakers: what makes a dark pattern, well, "dark"? arxiv.org/pdf/2101.04843… [thread] There's a growing academic literature on dark patterns that defines and describes types of dark patterns. There have also been govt. reports and legislation on dark patterns. We compiled and compared these, and found that dark patterns reflect many related but distinct concerns!

Mike Bloomberg's presidential campaign website (mikebloomberg.com) displays a periodic popup that states people in certain states are signing up as volunteers. How terrific!

But here’s a secret: that message is falsely generated using some good ol’ JavaScript. The message (Someone in Virginia signed up to volunteer) is a social proof nudge, and can be traced back to the famous towel reuse experiment. Researchers showed that appeals that employed descriptive social norms got more people to reuse their towels. assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/118359.…

This design is a common dark pattern so it is surprising that the CCPA modifications would recommend it. Unfortunately, opt-out dark patterns have become all too common, so here's a thread about them. 👇

https://twitter.com/omertene/status/1226146203785666560

Trick Questions is a classic opt-out dark pattern. Two statements seeking consent; the first checkbox needs to be unticked to opt out, but the second checkbox needs to remain ticked. This pattern has several variants.