I've been immersing myself into the realm of ethical design for the past year and I've formed a lots of observations — I'll write a separate post on that — and opinions. I have been trying to understand the role and importance of dark design and dark patterns and the pieces finally fell onto place. I won't be adding any references but I need to get these thoughts out of my system; it's only opinions and you should treat it as such.
A Little Background
Looking back, humans are poor at acting before it's too late. It's like we need a disaster to change our habits as a society. You'll probably remember some examples such as the hole in the ozone layer or 911. In the case of the ozone layer incident, we foresaw it but did not act until the damage was done. However, we managed to recover from both cases and change our habits for good. Currently, the climate crisis seems to follow the same pattern.
Relevance To UX Design
You cannot have avoided hearing about the late policy changes on various big-tech platforms: Twitter (or X but no-one calls it that, right) introducing premium membership, Netflix restricting access from different locations, YouTube desperately trying to fight ad blockers and making the “skip ad” button smaller, Facebook (or Meta, who cares) introducing premium subscription and threatening to steal your data. The examples are in plenty and ethically speaking very alarming.
Why did they all change the way they operate simultaneously? That I cannot answer but the changes themselves should spark discussion. All of the examples listed above could be considered as dark patterns; they reduce the freedom of the user, enforce stuff the user didn't agree to or straightforward attack the user personally. The big-tech is causing a similar situation as the anticipation of any physical world disaster.
The Controversy
Hear me out, I see this rise of dark design as a good thing in the grand scheme of things. All the times in human history when we have faced darkness, there has been a spark in the dark; an idea that starts to grow or awakening. Thusly, I see the situation — as bad as it is — the best time for ethical design, the counter movement that already exists, the awakening. We the people hold all the power in the world. No company can survive without customers. We can demand change. We can refuse to give in to the big-tech.
I don't see this era a dark one. I see an opportunity.
