Why is this called &quot;dark patterns&quot;? It seems that it can be more accurately described by calling it deliberately misleading or deceptive design. Clicking the link I had no idea what it meant. Terminology like this makes sense when the concept can&#x27;t already be described using two words.<p>As for the content of the article, it has always seemed anti-user to me for a website to prompt for a subscription 30 seconds into browsing a page. I wonder if anyone has actually investigated the effect it has on traffic properly, because I always go back whenever I get prompted to subscribe.<p>If someone had told me in 2005 that in the future, intrusive popups would work its way back into the domains of acceptable design to the point where people will gladly have them on their personal blogs I would have laughed in disbelief. Together with &quot;You have an outdated browser&quot; (&quot;Please view this in Netscape 4.0&quot;), &quot;Rotate your device&quot; (&quot;Best viewed in 800x600&quot;) this is all a terrible setback in acceptable practices.<p>Add to that some more recent design patterns like a &quot;share on &lt;social media&gt;&quot; button taking up 1&#x2F;5 of the screen estate following you through the page only for the benefit of the publisher and the handful of users that also actively use twitter, weird overloading of scrolling behavior, &quot;Continue reading&quot; buttons... It&#x27;s an awful mess and especially for websites that ideally would just present plain written text with some pictures it seems like designers are over-engineering their solutions for goals that in no way aligned with those of the users.