In June 2023, The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) took a proactive step against Amazon, alleging that Amazon employed dark patterns which are often explained as manipulative, coercive or deceptive techniques that may be used by user interface (UI) designers. At LiT.RL, Dominique Kelly and Victoria Rubin have been documenting, analyzing, describing and categorizing dark patterns in the context of social media platforms. Dominique is a Doctoral Candidate in the Media Studies at FIMS, Western, who is completing her doctoral thesis on dark patterns and users’ privacy choices. She saw an immediate connection between the FTC actions covered in the news and her own thesis research in the context of intentionally designed UI difficulties with the cancellation of unwanted services.

We wrote a short article which was published for the general audience in The Conversation, a respectable non-profit news outlet that popularizes research. Our article explains what dark patterns are, what motivations may drive such UI choices, and what people may want to do to resist dark patterns, if they run into these difficulties when attempting to close up their accounts or unwanted online services.

Here is the link for the Conversation piece along with suggested citations:

Kelly, D., & Rubin, V. L. (2023, July 6). Struggling to cancel an online service? You’re not alone. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/struggling-to-cancel-an-online-service-youre-not-alone-208419 

Our article was generously received by the readership (with over 15,000 reads by mid-November 2023). It also generated quite a bit of interest from the local Canadian media, as evident from the follow-up radio interviews with Dominique.

Here are the three audio-recordings, if you want to learn more about this topic:

Kelly, D. “Getting out of an online subscription.” CBC Radio, September 21, 2023. https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-90-columnists-from-cbc-radio/clip/16010986-getting-online-subscription 

Kelly, D. “Why is it so tough to cancel an online subscription or service.” A little more conversation with Ben O’Hara-Byrne, Global News, July 11, 2023. https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/a-new-collection-of-canadian-true-crime-stories/id1604604064?i=1000620959149 

Kelly, D. “Struggling to cancel an online service?” Chelsea on CHED, Global News, July 10, 2023. https://open.spotify.com/episode/291WQRuSVSAO8NvPMd3mDP

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