Last week, the New York Times highlighted the Trump 2020 campaign’s use of deceptive web designs to deceive supporters into donating far more money than they had intended. The campaign’s digital donation portal hid an unassuming but unfair method for siphoning funds: a pre-checked box to “make a monthly recurring donation.” This caused weekly withdrawals from supporters’ bank accounts, with some being depleted.
The checkbox in question, from the New York Times April 3rd piece.
A pre-checked box to donate more than you intended is just one example of a “dark pattern” a term coined by user experience (UX) designer Harry Brignull to define tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn t mean to, such as buying a service. Unfortunately, dark patterns are widespread. Moreover, the pre-checked box is a particularly common way to subvert our right to consent to serious decisions, or to withhold our consent. This ruse dupes us into “agreeing” to