16
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Dark Patterns at Scale: Findings from a Crawl of 11K Shopping Websites

      Preprint

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Dark patterns are user interface design choices that benefit an online service by coercing, steering, or deceiving users into making unintended and potentially harmful decisions. We present automated techniques that enable experts to identify dark patterns on a large set of websites. Using these techniques, we study shopping websites, which often use dark patterns to influence users into making more purchases or disclosing more information than they would otherwise. Analyzing ~53K product pages from ~11K shopping websites, we discover 1,818 dark pattern instances, together representing 15 types and 7 broader categories. We examine these dark patterns for deceptive practices, and find 183 websites that engage in such practices. We also uncover 22 third-party entities that offer dark patterns as a turnkey solution. Finally, we develop a taxonomy of dark pattern characteristics that describes the underlying influence of the dark patterns and their potential harm on user decision-making. Based on our findings, we make recommendations for stakeholders including researchers and regulators to study, mitigate, and minimize the use of these patterns.

          Related collections

          Most cited references28

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: not found
          • Article: not found

          Specious reward: a behavioral theory of impulsiveness and impulse control.

            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: not found
            • Book Chapter: not found

            Density-Based Clustering Based on Hierarchical Density Estimates

              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: not found
              • Article: not found

              Multifaceted Nature of Intrinsic Motivation: The Theory of 16 Basic Desires.

                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Journal
                16 July 2019
                Article
                1907.07032
                41a9896b-6b84-4e56-a1df-c9b80579825c

                http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

                History
                Custom metadata
                Draft: July 16, 2019
                cs.HC cs.CY

                Applied computer science,Human-computer-interaction
                Applied computer science, Human-computer-interaction

                Comments

                Comment on this article