Online Edition '25

Consecutive

2025

When you enter a company’s website, perhaps to buy a product, it is common to receive a pop-up message that asks you to enter your email address to receive promotional materials. The options presented to you in this pop-up may read something akin to “I like to stay informed,” and “I like to be left out.” However, if the website is attempting to make you feel bad about declining to provide your personal information, then you may have experienced a dark pattern.

A recurring joke in the TV series Arrested Development is that a real estate mogul beset by hard financial times refrains to his son, “there’s always money in the [family-owned] banana stand.” Every time he does, the son—who has taken over the family real estate empire—expresse

I. Introduction