"Dark patterns" come back to bite publishers

On a recent “people vs. algorithms” podcast, the boys talks about “dark patterns.” I’m not sure where that phrase came from, but it refers to the tricks companies use to manipulate consumers to do something the company wants them to do.

An example from the publishing world would be a very low introductory rate that autorenews at a much higher rate, and then making it hard to cancel before the renewal.

Another would be the various tricky ways publishers make advertising dollars look like circulation dollars.

On the web side of things we can see “dark patterns” in phony statistics about traffic, views, reach, and so on. Not only is most web traffic from bots, but sometimes you hear claims about users that would require every human on the planet to have seen something or done something.

Here’s a quote from Brian Morrissey.

The Federal Trade Commission [has] signaled a move against dark patterns … to show “how companies are increasingly using sophisticated design practices … that can trick or manipulate consumers into buying products or services or giving up their privacy.” The FTC goes on to name such horrors as disguising ads to look like independent content, making it difficult for consumers to cancel subscriptions or charges, burying key terms or junk fees, and tricking consumers into sharing their data.”

Here’s the worst part of the quote. Morrissey says, “This sounds like just another day in the media business.”

He’s exactly right. Too often it’s an adversarial relationship.

Publishers need to quit doing this stuff. The wise man says “One who digs a pit will fall into it, And one who rolls a stone, it will come back on him.”

But leaving karma aside, some people doubt publishing can survive without these dirty tricks.

Maybe we’ll have a chance to find out about that, because it’s not just the FTC that’s coming down on these “dark patterns.”

Apple is positioning itself as the defender of user privacy against these forces of wickedness in high places. It started with their initiative to block a sender’s ability to get meaningful open rates on emails, and it’s continuing with new efforts to block tracking codes. See the articles below for the details.

Publishers will gnash their teeth, but hey … what goes around comes around.

If publishers hadn’t been such sneaky bastards for decades, maybe they wouldn’t have this trouble now.

But the past is the past. What do we do now? Here are three simple suggestions.

Don’t try to hide the ugly parts of your offer. Make the offer plain and intelligible.
Don’t make it hard to cancel. There’s nothing wrong with reminding people of what they’ll be missing, but don’t do something horrible like requiring people to call, or making people have to hire a detective to find the cancel process.
Explain why you’re collecting customer data, and why it’s a benefit to the user for you to have that information. For example, let’s say you promote your e-newsletter on your website. There’s no point in promoting it to people who already get it, so it’s perfectly reasonable to set up some tracking and data capture for that purpose.

Or how about a really simple rule, like do unto others as you would have them do unto you?

Resources

https://www.therebooting.com/p/dark-patterns

https://www.niemanlab.org/2023/07/for-better-and-for-worse-apples-about-to-make-your-readers-harder-to-track-again/

https://painepublishing.com/measurementadvisor/your-guide-to-measuring-events-and-experiential-marketing/

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/impressions-arent-impressing-anyone-katie-delahaye-paine/