“Majority of websites and mobile apps use dark patterns”

A global internet sweep that examined the websites and mobile apps of 642 traders has found that 75,7% of them employed at least one dark pattern, and 66,8% of them employed two or more dark patterns.

Dark patterns are defined as practices commonly found in online user interfaces and that steer, deceive, coerce, or manipulate consumers into making choices that often are not in their best interests.
↫ International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network

Dark patterns are everywhere, and it’s virtually impossible to browse the web, use certain types of services, or install mobile applications, without having to dodge and roll just to avoid all kinds of nonsense being thrown at you. It’s often not even ads that make the web unusable – it’s all the dark patterns tricking you into viewing ads, entering into a subscription, enabling notifications, sharing your email address or whatever, that’s the real reason.

This is why one of the absolute primary demands I have for the next version of OSNews is zero dark patterns. I don’t want any dialogs begging you to enable ads, no modal windows demanding you sign up for a newsletter, no popups asking you to enable notifications, and so on – none of that stuff. My golden standard is “your computer, your rules”, and that includes your right to use ad blockers or anything else to change the appearance or functioning of our website on your computer.

It’d be great if dark patterns became illegal somehow, but it would be incredibly difficult to write any legislation that would properly cover these practices.