Bringing Dark Patterns to Light¶
Federal Trade Commission. (2022). Bringing Dark Patterns to Light.
Retired. This entry was not a citation. Our extractor stored an inline prose definition from the article as though it were a bibliographic record: the title names a concept rather than a published work, and the citation text names no work at all. The page is kept because links to it still resolve, but it is withdrawn from the reference list. This entry is kept so the citations that pointed at it still resolve, and so the correction is visible rather than silent.
Cited by¶
3 citations across 3 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Mechanisms¶
- Data Consent Settings
- Its failure mode is the placebo switch — a toggle that flips in the interface while collection continues underneath, so the tool performs control it doesn't deliver.
This sourceWarns that privacy interfaces can subvert consumer choices and that those choices must be respected and implemented.
- Its failure mode is the placebo switch — a toggle that flips in the interface while collection continues underneath, so the tool performs control it doesn't deliver.
- Opt-In Flow
- Its failure mode is the dark pattern — the same surface engineered to manufacture the "yes," through pre-checked boxes, confirm-shaming, asymmetric buttons, or bundling essential access with an optional permission so refusal is punished.
This sourceDescribes dark patterns as interface designs that manipulate choice through tactics such as prechecked defaults, asymmetric presentation, confirm-shaming, and obstructive refusal or cancellation paths.
- Its failure mode is the dark pattern — the same surface engineered to manufacture the "yes," through pre-checked boxes, confirm-shaming, asymmetric buttons, or bundling essential access with an optional permission so refusal is punished.
- Safe Default or Preselected Path
- Burying it is exactly the move that turns a default into a dark pattern.
This sourceShows that obscuring or visually de-emphasizing an alternative can steer a user into a preselected choice and constitute a dark pattern.
- Burying it is exactly the move that turns a default into a dark pattern.
Verification¶
Does it exist? Not checked yet. This entry carries no identifier to resolve. It was extracted from the citation as written in the article, normalized, and deduplicated against the rest of the registry.
Does it back the claim? Not recorded. Neither this nor any other of the 3 citations of this work carries a recorded support check.
Was it audited? Yes. A second, independent pass read the citation against the article text and recorded a verdict.
Support is checked per citation rather than per work — the same source can be cited soundly in one article and wrongly in another. Per-citation recording began recently, so a citation with no recorded check is a gap in the record rather than evidence it went unchecked.
See how references were verified.
Links previously used in the corpus¶
Before the registry existed this work was also linked 2 other ways.
- https://www.ftc.gov/reports/bringing-dark-patterns-light ×2
- https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/P214800%20Dark%20Patterns%20Report%209.14.2022%20-%20FINAL.pdf ×1
Registry ID ref:f74ee23f3cd2 · see in the full table