2025-10-23
6 分钟The Economist. Hi, this is Ethan Wu, co-host of Money Talks, our finance and business podcast.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
We've handpicked an article we recommend from the most recent edition of The Economist.
I hope you enjoy it.
Digital design sounds innocuous enough.
Dark patterns, less so.
That's the term for user interfaces which nudge or manipulate consumers into making choices they otherwise wouldn't.
You will recognise many of them, the button to turn down an offer that says something like,
yes, I would like to miss out on the bargain of the century.
The Enroll Now for Awards option.
which is three times bigger and much brighter than the one saying,
I just like the thing I came here for.
The cancellation journey, so biz and time that people forget what it was they were trying to do,
the message that implies three hundred people are looking at the same hotel room as you.
Such practices can be very effective, at least in the short term.
A study published in 2021 by Jamie Luguri and Leo Strahilevitz of the University of Chicago Law School exposed samples of American consumers to dark patterns when promoting a free trial of a service.
Mild dark patterns,
such as a choice between one button marked accept and continue brackets recommended and another marked other options,
made participants more than twice as likely to proceed than members of a control group exposed to a simple accept or decline choice.
Aggressive designs,