Detecting Deception: An AI-Driven Approach to Identify Dark Patterns

Authors

  • Sakshi Taaresh Khanna, Anukool Johri, Vashu Tangri

Keywords:

Artificial intelligence, Dark patterns, Deceptive design, User experience, Machine learning, Natural language processing

Abstract

Dark patterns, which are deceptive design approaches used by websites and applications to affect user behavior, raise important ethical and user experience issues. This work presents an artificial intelligence (AI) system designed to identify many forms of dark patterns, such as coerced activities, social manipulation, diversion, obstruction, limited availability, deceitful tactics, and time pressure. Using machine learning algorithms and natural language processing techniques, our system examines website and application interfaces to detect aspects that indicate the use of dark patterns. The authors showcase the effectiveness of their approach in precisely identifying and classifying dark patterns through thorough experimentation and validation. This enables regulatory compliance and promotes a digital world that is more transparent and ethical.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

“Deceptive Patterns - Home.” Accessed: Jan. 23, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.deceptive.design/

“The ultimate list of 70+ eCommerce facts and statistics for 2024 - AppMySite.” Accessed: Jan. 23, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://www.appmysite.com/blog/ultimate-ecommerce-facts-and-statistics/

W. C. Koh and Y. Z. Seah, “Unintended consumption: The effects of four e-commerce dark patterns,” Clean. Responsible Consum., vol. 11, no. 3, p. 100145, Dec. 2023, DOI: 10.1016/j.clrc.2023.100145

“Dark Patterns at Scale: Findings from a Crawl of 11K Shopping Websites.” Accessed: Jan. 23, 2024. [Online]. Available: https://webtransparency.cs.princeton.edu/dark-patterns/

“dark-patterns/data/final-dark-patterns/dark-patterns.csv at master · aruneshmathur/dark-patterns.” Accessed: Jan. 23, 2024. [Online]. Available:https://github.com/aruneshmathur/dark-patterns/blob/master/data/final-dark-patterns/dark-patterns.csv

Brignull, H. (2013). Dark Patterns: Inside the Interfaces Designed to Trick You. Retrieved from https://darkpatterns.org/

A. Bhattacherjee, “Understanding consumers’ aversion to deceptive online advertising: A model and its validation,” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, vol. 71, no.10, pp.1264-1278, 2020.

Z. Zhang, S. Han, S and Y. Li, “Detecting dark patterns on the web using machine learning and human computation,” In Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, pp. 1-11, 2020.

P. Garaizar, J. F. Bonnefon and E. R. Igou, “A roadmap for the study of dark side phenomena in information systems,” Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 86, pp. 387-396, 2018.

A. Hakkak, T. Latham and L. Hines, “Designing and evaluating a dark patterns detection browser extension,” In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-13, 2018.

J. Bergstrom and A. Blomberg, “Designing to evade dark patterns: Investigating how designers perceive and cope with unethical persuasion attempts,” In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-13, 2020.

Q. V. Liao, Y. Yuan, and S. Wang, “Dark patterns at scale: Findings from a crawl of 11K shopping websites,” In Proceedings of the 2018 World Wide Web Conference, pp. 1053-1062, 2018.

C. Hansen and F. Motti-Stefanidi, “Understanding and mitigating the impact of dark patterns in user interaction design,” In Proceedings of the 2021 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-15, 2021.

E. Luger and T. Rodden, “Exploring deceptive interfaces that manipulate task completion times,” In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 3609-3618, 2015.

A. Mathur, A. Vance and M. Neff, “Evaluating dark patterns in games: A first empirical study,” In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 1-11, 2019.

P. Garaizar, J. F. Bonnefon and E. R. Igou, “Crowdsourcing the detection of dark patterns in user interfaces,” ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), vol. 27, no. 5, pp. 1-27, 2020.

A. Nasr, “Dark patterns: The story of deceptive design,” In Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Pattern Recognition, pp. 1-7, 2019.

S. Mills and R. Whittle, “Detecting Dark Patterns Using Generative AI: Some Preliminary Results,” Oct. 2023 Available at SSRN:https://ssrn.com/abstract=4614907 or DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.4614907

S. R. Kodandaram, M. Sunkara, S. Jayarathna, and V. Ashok, “Detecting Deceptive Dark-Pattern Web Advertisements for Blind Screen-Reader Users,” J. Imaging., vol. 9, no. 11, 239, 2023. DOI: 10.3390/jimaging9110239.

Quigley-Simpson. Understanding Dark Patterns, and How They Impact Your Brand’s Consumer Experience, 2021.

Axelerant. Design Ethics: Navigating Dark Patterns and Building Trust. Retrieved from https://www.axelerant.com/blog/design-ethics-navigating-dark-patterns-and-building-trust, Jan. 2024.

Downloads

Published

12.06.2024

How to Cite

Sakshi Taaresh Khanna. (2024). Detecting Deception: An AI-Driven Approach to Identify Dark Patterns. International Journal of Intelligent Systems and Applications in Engineering, 12(4), 1658–1669. Retrieved from https://ijisae.org/index.php/IJISAE/article/view/6464

Issue

Section

Research Article