Episode 20: Dark Patterns

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Episode Description:

Confirmshaming, Sneak into Basket, Roach Motel… there are a million and 1 ways businesses manipulate humans online, and we promise, it’s not with your best interest in mind.

This episode, Prerna deconstructs the methods used on you (and everyone) to get and/or keep your money, time, and attention. It’s a careful game of psychological manipulation for profit, and it happens more regularly than we all think.

Tune in to learn all about:

  • Confirmshaming

  • Sneak into Basket

  • Roach Motel

  • The psychology of online shopping carts and digital spaces

  • And more...

All in all, there is a difference between creators, and companies, those who are taking the time to add value to your life and build trust and community, and those who are sneakily trying to trick you into subscribing to something or selling your private data that you didn’t even consent to them having…

Engaging with companies, brands, blogs, websites can all be great things and we should be able to enjoy them without fear. But with the dark patterns woven into our World Wide Web, there’s a lot of control we need to reclaim.

Listen to learn how to defend ourselves against these tricks and what we as a collective can do about making our experiences online more ethical & honest.

Show Notes:

Dark Patterns: Features of interface design crafted to trick users into doing things they might not want to do, but which benefit the business in question. - A term coined by user experience specialist Harry Brignull in 2010.

Visit his website www.darkpatterns.org for a full overview. Tweet @darkpatterns to publicly call out companies who use dark patterns (and/ or scroll through their feed to see some of the companies who have been called out already)!

Additional Sources cited:

https://uxdesign.cc/the-12-types-of-dark-patterns-and-why-you-should-care-38a7b584777b

https://youtu.be/kxkrdLI6e6M

https://www.cnn.com/2019/11/29/business/tricks-online-shopping-buy-more-trnd/index.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/08/how-dark-patterns-online-manipulate-shoppers/595360/

Reminders

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Grateful for YOU!

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Episode 21: Finding Enlightenment in a Digital Age

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Episode 19: I Can’t Meditate Because…