Recently, sites like Facebook and Twitter have begun to give their users more fine-grained control of their privacy on the website. Facebook’s newly rolled out Privacy Checkup, for instance, guides you through a series of choices with brightly colored illustrations. But Gray notes that the defaults are often set with less privacy in mind, and the many different checkboxes can have the effect of overwhelming users. “If you have a hundred checkboxes to check, who’s going to do that,” he says.
Last year, US senators Mark Warner and Deb Fischer introduced a bill that would ban these kinds of “manipulative user interfaces.” The Deceptive Experiences to Online Users Reduction Act— DETOUR for short—would make it illegal for websites like Facebook to use dark patterns when it relates to personal data. “Misleading prompts to just click the ‘OK’ button can often transfer your contacts, messages, browsing activity, photos, or location information without you even realizing it,” Senator Fischer wrote when the bill was introduced. “Our bipartisan legislation seeks to curb the use of these dishonest interfaces and increase trust online.”
The problem is that it becomes very difficult to define a dark pattern. “All design has a level of persuasion to it,” says Victor Yocco, the author of Design for the Mind: Seven Psychological Principles of Persuasive Design. By definition, design encourages someone to use a product in a particular way, which isn’t inherently bad. The difference, Yocco says, is “if you’re designing to trick people, you’re an asshole.”
Gray has also run into difficulty drawing the line between dark patterns and plain bad design.
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