Comments on: Dark Patterns: An Overview For Brand Owners

By: Annie

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 18:25:00 +0000

Twifficiency’s Dark Pattern was actually even more sinister. They were actually pioneers of the “Persistent Friend Spam:”

When I tried Twifficiency, I knew full well it would tweet my score. So I had my Twitter page open, ready to delete it the moment it tweets on my behalf.

The *catch* though, was that Twifficiency would _repeat_ the spam tweet on to your timeline should you delete it.

This idea of spam that would “keep coming back” until you actually remove the OAuth permissions was the secret to Twifficiency’s success; and also a new dark pattern.

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By: Harry Brignull

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 01:06:47 +0000

Hi John, that is also a sensible approach, but as with any design it has strengths and weaknesses. On the up-side, it would keep the mail list “clean”, and would ensure that subscribers definitely do want to receive emails. It would also avoid firing repeat emails at spam honeypots (i.e. a user, either mistakenly or maliciously sets up an email alert to be sent to a spam honeypot email address).

However, email activation steps always involve a certain drop out rate. As soon as someone switches to looking at their email inbox, they may become distracted by something more important and never complete the action.

The best approach is to experiment to find out what’s best for you. We have had good results from our current approach, and we are keeping a close eye on the impact.

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By: John

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:49:47 +0000

As always, a really interesting article.

@ Harry: How much do you think it would affect the rate of people subscribing to job alerts if at the moment they did that, they received an email with something alone the lines of: “Please click here to confirm that you want to subscribe” or something a little more thought out?

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