A term coined in 2010 by Harry Brignull, a user-experience expert, to describe tricks used online to "make you do things you didn't mean to". Since then, the research field has progressively mapped the systematic weaponisation of cognitive science against the people interfaces are supposed to serve.
Dark patterns exploit the hundreds of cognitive biases—mental shortcuts that lead to predictable, irrational decisions—that all humans share. Addictive design goes further, targeting the brain's reward architecture directly. Dopamine neurons respond not to rewards received but to the uncertainty of whether a reward will arrive: the more unpredictable the outcome, the stronger the signal. Digital platforms have replicated this architecture with greater precision and at incomparably larger scale. Infinite scroll removes natural stopping-points. Algorithmic feeds withhold and then deliver content in unpredictable sequences. The pull-to-refresh gesture replicates, almost exactly, the physical act of pulling a slot machine lever.
Marie Potel-Saville, a former competition lawyer and co-founder of FairPatterns, calls such techniques "predatory design". She argues that cognitive exploitation undermines the conditions a market economy requires: the ability to see and choose alternatives deliberately, compare them on undistorted dimensions, form preferences that reflect actual interests and switch freely. She has compared the structural harm to price manipulation in securities markets, and argues the burden of proof should fall on platforms to show a product is not predatory by design before rolling it out—the standard already applied to drugs, medical devices and aircraft.
In a landmark case, KGM v Meta Platforms, a Los Angeles jury on March 25th 2026 found Meta and YouTube liable for designing addictive products. In 2023 America's Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon over its Prime subscription programme, alleging the company used dark patterns to enrol consumers without meaningful consent and make cancellation deliberately difficult; Amazon settled for $2.5bn in September 2025.
economist, n: Someone who's good with figures, but doesn't have enough personality to become an accountant.