- Introduction
- Dark Patterns Overview
- Covert Surveillance
- Dark Pattern 1 EMAIL PIXEL INJECTOR
- Dark Pattern 2 STEALTHY INPUT LOGGER
- Monetization at all costs
- Dark Pattern 3 AGGRESSIVE ADVERTISER
- Dark Pattern 4 AD BLOCKER DETECTOR
- Dark Pattern 5 PAY TO WIN
- Dark Pattern 6 ADDICTION PEDDLER
- Dark Pattern 7 ARTIFICIAL SCARCITY HOARDER
- Dark Pattern 8 DRM RUG PULLER
- Dark Pattern 9 OBSOLESCENCE PLANNER
- Digital Fraud
- Dark Pattern 10 CYBERSQUATTER
- Dark Pattern 11 SNEAKY TERMS DEGRADER
- Dark Pattern 12 REVERSE IMPROVER
- Dark Pattern 13 INTEROPERABILITY BREAKER
- Ranking Manipulation
- Dark Pattern 14 FAKE REVIEW GENERATOR
- Dark Pattern 15 SEARCH RANKING KICKBACKER
- Malleable Truth
- Dark Pattern 16 WILLFUL IGNORANT
- Dark Pattern 17 REAL VIRTUALITY ESCAPIST
- Unethical Artificial Intelligence Practices
- Dark Pattern 18 TRAINING DATA HARVESTER
- Dark Pattern 19 BOT PRETENDER
- Dark Pattern 20 FACELESS ASSISTANT
- Dark Pattern 21 DECEPTIVE DEEPFAKER
- Conclusion
- Dark Patterns Summaries
- Acknowledgement
- References
- Introduction
Unethical Software Engineering
Dark Patterns
In unethical software, not every line of code is written with good intentions. Unethical Software Engineering: Dark Patterns exposes how to manipulate users, drive profits, and evade accountability. From covert surveillance, monetization at all costs, digital fraud, ranking manipulation, all the way to unethical artificial intelligence practices, this scary book unveils how these "dark patterns" exploit human beings, erode trust, and disrupt digital ethics.
Whether you're a developer, an architect, a tech enthusiast, or simply a concerned user, this book will change how you think about your daily apps — and inspire you to demand better. By helping you to draw the line between what is acceptable and what is questionable, Unethical Software Engineering: Dark Patterns shines a light on the digital dark side of software engineering where profits are prioritized over people.
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In unethical software, not every line of code is written with good intentions. Unethical Software Engineering: Dark Patterns exposes how to manipulate users, drive profits, and evade accountability. From covert surveillance, monetization at all costs, digital fraud, ranking manipulation, all the way to unethical artificial intelligence practices, this scary book unveils how these "dark patterns" exploit human beings, erode trust, and disrupt digital ethics.
Whether you're a developer, an architect, a tech enthusiast, or simply a concerned user, this book will change how you think about your daily apps — and inspire you to demand better. By helping you to draw the line between what is acceptable and what is questionable, Unethical Software Engineering: Dark Patterns shines a light on the digital dark side of software engineering where profits are prioritized over people.
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About
About the Book
In an age where digital innovation shines, the murky practices behind the screens often remain shrouded in mystery. Unethical Software Engineering: Dark Patterns exposes how to manipulate, exploit, and deceive users for profit and control. From aggressive advertisers to bot pretenders, this book collects the dark patterns behind unethical software engineering practices, explains their consequences and their impact on our lives.
The book is structured in 6 parts:
- Covert Surveillance: break through the boundaries of privacy to extract data for marketing products improved by exploiting their users.
- Monetization at all costs: profit-driven design trumps user experience and vendor reputation.
- Digital Fraud: deception, bait and switch and impersonation erode trust in digital ecosystems.
- Ranking Manipulation: distort user choice by corrupting the integrity of once trusted recommendation platforms
- Malleable Truth: weaponize information to escape from reality.
- Unethical Artificial Intelligence Practices: harvest human creativity, create the illusion of flawless machines while dodging accountability and deeply spread misinformation.
Each chapter draws not just the context, problem and solution of these dark patterns but also unveils the profound ethical dilemmas they raise. This book serves as a wake-up call to engineers, developers, architects, regulators, and users alike. It urges the tech industry to rethink its priorities. It helps every engineer — just doing their job — as it challenges them where to draw the line and craft software that respects and empowers users rather than exploiting and disrupting them.
Unethical Software Engineering: Dark Patterns is an essential read for anyone, whether you're an industry insider or an everyday user. Prepare to confront the darkness behind some of the code and demand an ethical future for digital technology.
Listen to a podcast interview of the author here.
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Author
About the Author
Cesare Pautasso
Cesare Pautasso is full professor at the Software Institute at USI, Lugano, Switzerland. Previously he was a researcher at the IBM Zurich Research Lab. His research group focuses on the Architecture, design and engineering of next-generation Web information systems. He is co-author of "SOA with REST" (2012), "Just Send an Email: Anti-Patterns for Email-Centric Organizations" (2015), the "BPMN Sketch Miner" (2019), "Software Architecture: visual lecture notes" (2020), "Business Process Modeling, Management and Mining: visual lecture notes" (2021), "Beautiful APIs" (2021), "Beautiful API Evolution" (2021), "Beautiful Big APIs" (2022), "RESTful Dictionary" (2022), "Web Atelier: visual lecture notes" (2023), "Patterns for API Design : Simplifying Integration with Loosely Coupled Message Exchanges" (2023), "Unethical Software Engineering: Dark Patterns" (2024).
Episode 198
An Interview with Cesare Pautasso
Contents
Table of Contents
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