Deceptive Patterns
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Why is the User Interface a Dark Pattern?: Explainable Auto-Detection and its Analysis

Author
Yukiharu Yada, Tsuneo Matsumoto, Fuyuko Kido, Hayato Yamana
Date
15 Dec 2023
Publisher
BigData Congress [Services Society]
Focus
AI & Automation
Category
Academic Scholar

This paper trained a model using transformer-based pre-trained language models, BERT, on a text-based dataset for the automatic detection of dark patterns in e-commerce, and applied post-hoc explanation techniques to the trained model, which revealed which terms influence each prediction as a dark pattern.

Dark patterns are deceptive user interface designs for online services that make users behave in unintended ways. Dark patterns, such as privacy invasion, financial loss, and emotional distress, can harm users. These issues have been the subject of considerable debate in recent years. In this paper, we study interpretable dark pattern auto-detection, that is, why a particular user interface is detected as having dark patterns. First, we trained a model using transformer-based pre-trained language models, BERT, on a text-based dataset for the automatic detection of dark patterns in e-commerce.