Question 1

What is a dark pattern in an app or website?

Accepted Answer

A **dark pattern** — increasingly called a **deceptive design pattern** — is an interface deliberately designed to make you do something you did not intend, by exploiting how people actually behave rather than how they would behave with full attention.

The term was coined by Harry Brignull in 2010, and the field now has a recognised taxonomy.

**Common types:**

**Roach motel.** Easy to get in, deliberately hard to get out — signing up takes one click, cancelling requires a phone call during office hours. One of the most common and most criticised.

**Confirmshaming.** The decline option is worded to make you feel foolish: "No thanks, I don't want to save money."

**Misdirection.** Visual hierarchy steering you to the choice the company prefers — the accept button large and coloured, the decline small and grey.

**Forced continuity.** A free trial requiring card details, converting silently to a paid subscription.

**Hidden costs.** Fees appearing only at the final checkout step, after you have invested effort.

**Sneak into basket.** Items or add-ons pre-selected.

**Privacy Zuckering.** Complex settings nudging you toward sharing more than intended, with privacy-protective options buried.

**Disguised ads** that look like content or navigation.

**Fake urgency and scarcity** — countdown timers that reset, "3 people are viewing this" figures that are invented.

**Nagging** — repeated prompts until you relent.

**Why they persist.** They measurably increase conversion in the short term, and A/B testing rewards whatever produces clicks without measuring regret or trust.

**Regulation is catching up.** The EU's **Digital Services Act** explicitly prohibits dark patterns on online platforms. The **Digital Markets Act** requires certain choices to be presented neutrally. GDPR requires consent to be **freely given**, which invalidates cookie banners where refusing is materially harder than accepting. The UK CMA and US FTC have both taken enforcement action.

**The practical defence:** slow down at exactly the moments an interface wants speed.

Question 2

How do online marketplace and second-hand selling scams work?

Accepted Answer

Almost all of them exploit the same structural weakness: getting one party to give up money or goods before the other side of the exchange is irreversible. Recognising that pattern identifies nearly

Question 3

What is shadowbanning and is it real?

Accepted Answer

Shadowbanning describes having your content quietly suppressed — still visible to you, but shown to far fewer people — without notification or any stated violation. The term is used loosely, and

Question 4

What actually works for reducing your own social media use?

Accepted Answer

Changing the environment rather than relying on intention — because the products are designed by large teams to capture attention, and willpower is not a fair contest against that. The interventions

Question 5

Why do platforms get worse over time?

Accepted Answer

Because the incentives change as a platform matures, in a pattern regular enough to have been named — enshittification, Cory Doctorow's term for a three-stage decay from serving users, to serving

Question 6

How do you spot fake followers?

Accepted Answer

Through patterns that are difficult to fake convincingly at scale — and the signals are consistent enough that auditing an account is genuinely possible without specialist tools. The most informative

Question 7

How do fake reviews actually work, and how do you spot them?

Accepted Answer

Through an industrial supply chain rather than isolated dishonesty — brokers, private groups, refund schemes and reviewer farms — and the scale is large enough that regulators in several countries

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