Resist. Unsubscribe. Monetize.
Dark Patterns
Have you ever struggled to cancel a subscription you didn’t know you were enrolled in? Or have you been invited to join a platform by a friend only to discover that it was the site impersonating someone in your contact list? If so, you’ve encountered a dark pattern.
“Dark patterns” or “deceptive design patterns” are choices embedded into the design of technologies and digital interfaces that impact users’ navigation, decisions, and behaviors in ways they may not want or be aware of. Over the last two decades, researchers studying contexts like social media, eCommerce, and virtual and extended reality, have documented these patterns and their impacts on users and consumers.
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It sounds like jargon because it is. Roach motel, confirmshaming, rage clicking, churning ... the labyrinth of buttons and pop-ups and taps designed to make unsubscribing so painful that you give up and stay.
Big Tech and AI are spiraling into a perfect storm at the moment. They are fighting for us to become creatures of their habit. They want our loyalty to our brand, They want to be the muscle memory that creates our routines.
With billions invested in behavioral psychology, they charm us. Who are they? They are not people. They are corporations. Made of shareholders. Who are people.
But their vulnerability is our power:
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They need us to stay engaged
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They need metrics to justify AI spending
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They need to perform
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They need growing MAU/DAU to satisfy investors
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They need our behavioral data to train AI models
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They need ad inventory to sell to brands
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They need to report growth in earnings
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They need to meet projections
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They need to win the game.
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Take any of that away—at scale, visibly, coordinated—and the trillion-dollar valuations built on engagement metrics start to crack.
They are needy. We are the thing they need.
We are not the people in their eyes. We are users.
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They measure what we use.
To reports growth in earnings
They need to meet projections
They need to win the game.​
Knowing what and when and how and where we use --
is what they need to win.
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MORE...
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Our Attention Is All They Need
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The Math They Don't Want You to Do
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