It's pretty easy to spot dark patterns when you look out for them, but I found a pretty obvious example of this.
Stoofie is a brand that sells water fountains for your pet (I don't know what the problem with a water bowl is, but I digress). WayBack Machine
Plastered at the top of their website is "33% OFF Ends Today- Free Shipping" with no way to dismiss it. There is a scrolling text under the main image "FAST AND FREE SHIPPING 60-DAY FREE RETURNS"
If you scroll down, you're immediately introduced with a product with the option to buy two preselected. The rest of this section explains itself:
Other things are sprinkled in the main page, but it really is the prime example of dark patterns. I am personally sick of finding them, but would love to see more examples of what others have found. Please, share your favorite examples of dark patterns. Don't forget to archive them first so they can never be lived down.
Huh. I always wondered. When I'm poiring our dog water to the bowl when hiking, he always prefers to drink "from the bottle" - the bowl is there basically to catch the rest to return to the bottle (or for the other dog to drink). Guess now I maybe know why he does it.
They also (generally) don't like to have their water next to their food because when they drink they put their head down and can't see predators that might be attracted to the food.
If the decline button even exists, it’s grey whereas the other one is green.
The decline option could be buried deep under other menus.
The sizes of the buttons
Most companies are trying to actively manipulate you to accept all cookies, but nowadays there are a few companies that don’t resort to any of these dirty tricks.
Oh I remember those thoroughly cursed menus where you have to manually disable 256 cookies one by one. Haven’t seen those in a while though, so I guess some piece of legislation is doing its job.
Yeah, EU fixed that somewhat, it has to be privacy-by-default now, the save choice being pre-selected and obvious and etc. But most dialogues are now illegal; no legal entity complains, nobody fixes it.
If they sell to anyone in australia let our consumer protection agency or whatever they called know. They tend to actually follow through with fining companies shit like this.
Working for a certain big fucking corpo(that I utterly hate from bottom of my heart but don't really have an option to leave), I see those patterns all over the product. Not just that, its practically impossible for non tech savvy to choose a non bundled or cheaper product or plan because it's burried somewhere out of your sight
One of the worst shopping basket designs I have ever seen, was where they added additional items together with the thing you wanted, forcing you to remove the thing they added before paying.
Water bowls are stagnant water and animals can sense that and do not like it. In nature, stagnant water is dangerous and kind of a last resort. Heck, even humans can taste this and probably don't like it. Try leaving a bowl of water out for 24 hours and drink it yourself, you might be able to tell it's not good.
Fountains keep that water tasting fresh, though tbh they might fill it with micro plastics or something so who knows if it's really an improvement.
Cats are also extremely sensitive to smells (and not the kind that humans can smell). Often it's just the location, especially if it's somewhere where some ghost of food long since expired lingers.
I read recently that the phrase "noticing patterns" is a racist dog whistle but I don't have a firm handle on how or why.
I don't know if dark patterns are exempt but the timing is weird.
"noticing patterns" is a right-wing dog whistle about jews because they think jews orchestrate society and that they are 'noticing this'.
The usual meme is "stop noticing things" because they have pointed out something they think is the fault of jews, like chemtrails or whatever. In this example, there could be a jewish board member of a plane company and they also believe chemtrails are real so they are 'noticing' the supposed connection.
It is similar to the (((( )))) dog whistle, if you are familiar.