Deceptive Patterns
‹ All examples MuseScore

MuseScore’s deceptive design

Author
Deceptive Patterns
Date
9 Nov 2021
Type
Hard to cancel, Hidden subscription

“…the free trial is deliberately hard to cancel — it’s easy to get into the free trial, but it’s hard to get out.”

I’m a little embarrassed to write this post as I’m normally very careful about stuff like this, but this week I was successfully tricked by a deceptive pattern. […] The site that got me is musescore.com, which is the online music score sharing platform that complements the free MuseScore scorewriter program. […] It turns out the free trial is deliberately hard to cancel — it’s easy to get into the free trial, but it’s hard to get out.

Disclaimer: examples in the Hall of Shame are generally drawn from public submissions and cited sources; they have not been independently verified and may contain inaccuracies. They are presented as illustrations of design patterns, not findings of fact, unlawful conduct, or intent.