Dark Patterns

Intimidating Patterns

Much as dark patterns of disorientation call into question cardinal ideas and their signs, patterns of intimidation rely heavily on the disruption of norms and the more cognitive aspects. These kind of patterns are more clearly caused by content elements than they are caused by design elements.

In cases like these, one thing does indeed become another, but its not a link or a concept: its a value proposition. What had once appeared to be a relatively quick and easy task is transformed into an overwhelmingly tedious one.

In the Figure 23, posted to Twitter by user @Millstab on May 24, 2018, we see how the designers from Tumblr have taken the creation of multiple categories to unsubscribe from to the extreme. A user coming to unsubscribe finds a clear enough listing of options using the familiar toggle style.

However instead of there being three or four options that need to be disabled, there are more than three-hundred and fifty different messaging services that need to be unsubscribed from, and there is no way to deactivate all of them at once.

Instead, the user must scroll through a lengthy list, manually unselecting each toggle. For many users, this will simply exceed the threshold for tedium and the user will instead choose the path of least resistance and leave them all selected, resulting in unstoppable emails.

The metis of this category of dark patterns, as illustrated by this example, is of a different order than others we’ve seen so far, yet it still exhibits all four aspects of cunning. Nothing in the interface per se has been deceptively transformed, there’s no hidden link, no confusing toggle.

As before, the interface must reverse the user’s intent and to decide to remain subscribed. As before, the interface creates an opportunity by redirecting the user to a page where the act of unsubscribing has been broken into separate components. But now, the disguise is revealed: what had seemed a simple task (opting out) has been turned into an extremely tedious one; an interface ostensibly designed to assist users is reveal as actively hostile.

The extreme multiplication of objects, of settings that must be configured to unsubscribe totally from the service, amounts to a kind of emotional intimidation. “Don’t even try it”, the interface seems to snarl. The regular relationship with the text has been reversed: instead of the interface as a helper, or as pretending to help at least, this interface is overtly malignant, threatening.

Visually, this intimidation is supported and enabled by an absurdly overloaded, though otherwise entirely conventional layout. Various psychological and visual principles are at work here, from the relatively small number of objects humans can hold in working memory, to the undifferentiated length of the list itself, so long and so internally similar a user could easily become lost.

Collectively, these understandings can be represented by what UX designers know as Hick’s Law, which is “The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices” (Yablonski, 2019, p.??). For each item on the list, each other item becomes measurably more difficult to complete.

Taken to the extreme of “350+” (I could not independently verify this number) amounts nothing short of a slap in the face of the user. From a the visual and informational design perspective, such a list is the equivalent of a cadre of thugs showing up to muscle you out of your money.