design ethics
Dark patterns
Interface tricks that nudge people into choices they didn't mean to make - for the business's benefit, not theirs.
The demo
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What this demo shows (text version)
A pop-up tries to sign you up for marketing. Three tricks push you towards yes: the decline option is worded to shame you (confirmshaming); the accept button is large and bright while the decline is tiny and grey (false hierarchy); and a marketing checkbox is pre-ticked, so doing nothing opts you in (opt-out by default). Tellingly, the trick mostly works by eye - a keyboard or screen-reader user tabs to the decline just as easily as the accept, because the manipulation lives in visual weight, not structure.
The exit was there all along, just shrunk, greyed, and renamed to make you feel daft for wanting it. A dark pattern rarely lies outright; it just makes the choice the business wants by far the easiest one to take.
The tell is always the same: whose goal does the brightest button serve? If "accept all" is one tap and "reject" is three, that asymmetry is the dark pattern, whatever the cookie law technically allows.
Most of these are ordinary UX techniques aimed at the user instead of for them. Hierarchy, defaults and friction are neutral tools; turning them against the person is the choice that makes them dark.