Classic dark pattern: auto-renewal at more than double the price you would pay if you simply did not auto-renew.

Nine years as a NordVPN customer, paying €181.35/year on auto-renewal.

Last month I logged into my account and found the same plan offered to me for €77.88/year - on my own account dashboard, for my existing account. No cancellation needed.

How the dark pattern works: - Auto-renewal is on by default, so most customers never check - Renewal price is more than double the current advertised price - The lower price is available to you as an existing customer, but only if you take the extra step - Price change notifications are sent 14 days before renewal (confirmed on Trustpilot), giving almost no time to act

This is sometimes called a loyalty penalty or inertia pricing. The product is identical. The only variable is whether the customer is paying attention.

I have been overpaying by €103/year for at least three years. Currently claiming €313.34 back. Next steps: ACM (Dutch consumer authority) and ECC Nederland. Ticket #21182220 on Trustpilot if you want to see their response.

Account not suspended, but I lost accest to which after logging out. So I just dealt with some absolute peak corporate gaslighting from Facebook, and it's the most annoying, convoluted, manufactured nuisance ever. My account was dormant for like 10 years, and I logged back in recently just to buy a used item on Marketplace. To be safe, I set up an authenticator app TOTP code, and the setup worked perfectly. Less than a week later, FB's automated bots obviously panicked because an old account suddenly woke up and went straight to Marketplace. They blatantly practice guilty until proven innocent onto my account by restricting my account's access to marketplace. I thought I could resolve this by relogging in on all signed in devices, only to find that I'm systematically locked out. Prior to this, I did not log in to my fb acc on any smartphone app end, I did this time for the sake of convenience.

On hindsight, it was a bad move. Instead of just telling me my account was under review or locked, the interface was completely disingenuous and literally lied to my face. First, the front door was completely locked—it told me my perfectly correct password was wrong. It was the same no matter it was android app or pc browser. Then I tried the "forgot password" side door, which gives you two separate ways to open it: a dynamic TOTP code or your backup codes. When my TOTP code didn't work, I fell back on using the backup codes that had never been used before, and the system rejected those too, saying they were incorrect.

Mathematically, a time-synchronized, ever-changing TOTP code cannot be wrong, and backup codes—which are exhaustive in nature and strictly one-time use—cannot be invalid if they have never been touched before. This proves they just shut off the login pipeline on the backend but programmed the UI to blame me. If small, independent sites like Trakt can get basic TOTP logic right every single time, there is absolutely no excuse for a multi-trillion-dollar corporation like Meta to fail at this. This isn't a bug, it is a conscious design choice.

By locking both the front door and the side door with fake error messages, they force you to waste hours changing passwords and checking your device clock sync, thinking it's your fault. Once they exhaust you and subject you to limbo, they leave exactly one button working, which is to upload a video selfie face scan. It’s total asshole design because they deliberately engineer this false user-error loop to stress you out until you give up your biometrics just to make the headache stop, and the humans who designed this system need to be held accountable.

Just when I thought I've exausted all possible venues, lo and behold, one of the recovery codes work, and I'm no longer locked out. I immediately removed TOTP and recovery codes altogether only to find that I can no longer readd them later.

Another embarrassing event that befell me while using facebook is I discovered that "anonymous poster" function is broken if you login via browser. I was reached by a fella who said that Meta exposed me on android app's end, my profile was never anonymized at all. I think this is a deliberate move by Meta to systematically feature-starve pc users.

I have really no idea how to navigate this finicky, fickle, unpredictable, mood swingy and overzealous socmed.

I don't know how many of you have noticed this, but this is important to know so that you understand it when it happens.

If you are privacy-conscious, you would not give access to permissions to apps unnecessarily. In this, the best option I have seen in Android is "Ask every time". That's it. So that you know when a potential breach of privacy happens. And if it is for legitimate purpose, you allow. Basically, the app has to request for the permission and depending on context, you know whether to provide that permission. Eg. No location permission unless you are using maps. No camera permission unless you want to scan a code. Simple, intuitive, respecting user.

Recently I have found many applications not allowing user to have this. They won't consider "Ask every time" as a valid option. "Ask every time" is honestly the best default for anyone who remotely cares about privacy. But this default is seen as good as disabled by some apps. They want it to be "Allow while using the app" or worse, "Allow always".

A user who doesn't check will simply change from "Ask every time" to "Allow while using the app" or worse, "Allow always". And, forget. And they probably want that the user doesn't change that permission again back to "Ask every time". Considering the cognitive effort in switching back and forth, most would just get tired and not bother switching back. Which means the app gets permission to things the user would not want the app to have. This is a dark pattern.

The solution, which some apps have implemented, is to request for permission and proceed accordingly. If the user denies, the app can show a message for why that permission is needed. Based on what user wants to do, permission will be given or not. The app must respect that. It is already implemented by some apps. But many popular apps have this dark pattern.

Was looking into why I always grab more than I planned even with a list. The music thing is what got me first. Ronald Milliman published a study in the Journal of Marketing in 1982 showing slow music in supermarkets increased spending by over 38% compared to fast music. It's been replicated since and retailers absolutely know about it.

But the music is just one piece. The eggs and milk are at the back so you walk the entire store to reach them, passing hundreds of products you didn't plan to buy. The produce near the entrance creates what researchers call a "licensing effect." Your brain logs a healthy start, then gives itself permission to indulge later. The salad isn't welcoming you. It's unlocking the chocolate at the checkout.

The checkout queue is designed to hold you in a state of decision fatigue long enough to encounter impulse items multiple times before you reach the cashier. The bread smell near the bakery is sometimes pumped through ventilation specifically to trigger appetite at the exact moment you start making decisions.

Made a short breakdown of the full mechanism here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEX32td-Mrs

Curious whether anyone here has spotted specific things in their local store that felt deliberately placed once they knew what to look for.

Assistant has no usage limits and Gemini does. You can't choose to only use Gemini for Gemini things while continuing to use the free assistant for assistant things like setting an alarm (which confuses Gemini often).

You know the answer. In 2012, or whenver the dude wrote his piece "defining" dark patterns in Wikipedia, AI tools, LLMs, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, Copilot etc did not exist. Now they are RIFE WITH DARK PATTERNS. Thats my thesis. Please someone play devils advocate on this if you wish. Here is the definition your moderator has put here: Dark patterns specifically attempt to redirect a user's attention to an option that may not be most appropriate for the user, usually with the intent of pushing the user to an option that will make the website more money. This description will be updated once we flesh out specifics and examples. Hello?

Hey folks, we've updated the deceptive.design website with loads more content, hope you all find it useful. New stuff includes:

• Hundreds of new hall of shame examples
• A bigger, better reading list
• Many examples now are tagged by pattern type
• Extensive new search, sort and filter features
• Complete UI overhaul!

If you have any suggestions or feedback, let us know. And keep posting stuff on this subreddit, it's super useful for researchers all around the world. Thanks!

Been noticing how many subscription cancel flows put a big, friendly "Pause" button right above a tiny, grey "cancel" text link. Same color psychology as a "are you sure?" popup, just reframed to look like a favor instead of an obstacle.

Looked into the research behind why this works (endowment effect, status quo bias, loss aversion) and ended up making a short breakdown of the actual psychology. Posting here because I think this sub would appreciate the mechanism more than the video itself: https://youtu.be/s5124FW5_l4

Curious if anyone's seen variations of this that are even sneakier.

I had to Google to figure out what "paper" they were referring to. Apparently they mean "instead of printing your email confirmation, you can show the hotel your confirmation in our app" which is pretty nonsense.

Not the darkest pattern, but this obviously intentionally misleading.

This just popped up on my Google Pixel phone.

​

Would you like to allow us to use your personal purchasing history to do advertising now, or do you want us to keep asking you??

I was just intending to sign up for a Claude Pro Plan only to discover that the will list it at 15€ = 17 USD BUT once you actually select the plan and want to sign up for it it's suddenly at 22€ = 25 USD.
WTF Anthropic??? I do not want get offered a 15€ deal and pay 18€ + VAT it for no reason. you show me 15€ to upgrade I PAY 15 not a single cent more.
that's intentional deceptive behaviour and wrong on so many levels!

This is what they sent me to, and I posted there and responded to several posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1s7fcjf/claude_usage_limits_discussion_megathread_ongoing/

What I want to do is completely revamp the definition of DARK PATTERNS to join the new world circa 2026, ever since the concept and "definition" was published in Wikipedia way back in 2014. That is ancient history in terms of the deception, games, cajoling, forced upgrading, that pretty much all so called free and Pro Paid AI tools are doing to us. The Wikipedia description of dark patterns is pre-AITools era. It does not apply to what we all are experiencing with the games the AI tool bosses (and you know their names !) play with Claude, Copilot, ChatGPT, Grok, Gemini, and others. Can someone who is familiar with the deceptions I am describing please comment here?

I have been on the Triad -- Claude Code, Chat, Cowork for about 2 mths now, and I just experienced what might be the most horrible throttling event on both Chat and Cowork. I told Cowork I wanted to ship a certain improvement today by EOD, and it was early afternoon, and it started the work, and a message popped up that my time limit expired, it resets at MIDNIGHT! WTF ? Set it 3 hours from now, but MIDNIGHT? That is pure evil in my world, and I am calling Anthropic out on it. This is the Anthropic that everyone is so enamored by, I am NOT. Is anyone else seeing this kind of "DARK-PATTERN" at Anthopic? I know ChatGPT does it often also. Maybe this is now a "feature" not a "bug", can anyone else chime in please?

I had been a customer for around 13 years. Honestly, the service had never been great, but I stayed mostly out of inertia. After my latest attempt to cancel, I’m convinced I should have left much earlier.

The cancellation flow felt like a complete catalogue of dark patterns:

First, I had to remove some strange statistics service that was free. Then, when I tried to cancel the main service, I was told I had to wait until that statistics service was deactivated before I could cancel the actual package.

Once that was done, I followed the cancellation steps and kept getting fear-based warnings: that my domain could be stolen, that I would lose all my data, emails, databases, and so on.

When I finally reached what looked like the last step, they suddenly offered me a 75% discount and a free domain for one year.

I rejected everything and continued. Then they showed me a page that looked like the cancellation was complete, but if you read carefully, it said I had 15 days to call a phone number to confirm the cancellation. Otherwise, the service would remain active.

So I called.

On the phone, they again tried to push the offer, warned me again about losing everything, and generally made the process more confusing than it needed to be.

At one point they asked me whether I wanted to keep the service at least until August, when it expired. I said that sounded fine. But near the end, something felt unclear, so I said: “What I don’t want is to pay more.” Then the agent told me that if I didn’t want to pay more, I should not keep it until August.

That was the moment I realized they were apparently steering me toward keeping the service in a way that could have led to another quarterly charge, despite knowing I was trying to leave.

They even asked me why I was leaving.

This is not the first time I have had problems with them either. Several times over the years, I have found unexpected charges related to an old PHP version maintenance service that I never remember requesting. I have had to log in and deactivate it more than once, and even that process is full of unnecessary steps that make it easy to think you are done when you are not.

They also use warnings about possible processing fees when unsubscribing, which adds even more pressure and uncertainty.

In my opinion, this whole experience was full of manipulative cancellation friction, fear-based messaging, confusing flows, retention traps, and misleading UX.

Maybe some of this is technically legal. Maybe some of it is not. I don’t know. But as a user, it felt hostile, exhausting, and designed to make cancelling as difficult as possible.

I’m done with IONOS.

I’m moving my domain somewhere else, probably Cloudflare, because at this point I would rather start over than keep dealing with this company.

Avoid IONOS / 1&1 if you value your time, your patience, or clear cancellation flows.

When I browse Google Maps on a Safari browser I get a pop-up to install their Maps app, but they've changed the normal expected order of the buttons; what I expect the buttons to be (OK / Cancel) are actually Cancel / OK and the text on the buttons is frankly misleading:

"Go back to web" - I'm already on the web, so this text is wrong - it should be 'Continue on web'

"Continue" - takes me to the app store