hello everyone my name is akash chaudhary and i'll be presenting our paper are you still
watching exploring unintended user behaviors and dark patterns on video streaming platforms
what are dark patterns dark patterns are deceptive ui that push people to one spend money on products
they didn't intend to buy two install apps they don't need or divert attention or three give away
their personal data more generally as pointed out by harry brignel we can say a dark pattern is a ui
carefully crafted to trick users into doing something they might not otherwise do
the image on the left shows the black colored close button that is conveniently hidden in the
black hair of the person in the graphic the image on the right shows instagram message notifications
when indeed there is no unread message all these ui are intentionally designed to manipulate users
into doing something that they didn't intend while grey et al talk about categories of dark patterns
in general zagal et al and mathur et al talk about dark patterns in gaming and shopping respectively
in this paper we explore dark patterns in the digital activity of video watching
a phenomenon which has become an important aspect in our daily social life discussions
squid games on netflix after its september 17th premiere in 2021
posted a record high of 1.65 billion watching hours of the season within 28 days
here we can see some video streaming ui like autoplay timestamps and a long recommendation
scroll which might appear innocuous at the outset but through our paper we find
that these ui patterns are indeed problematic and promote overwatch and regretful behaviors
to find out trends in user behavior related to video streaming app ui we conduct an
online diary study we enroll 22 participants who are encouraged to video watch naturally
subsequently they are required to fill diary entry after finishing a viewing session we analyze users
for the state of mind and emotional responses at the video selection phase that is the interaction
phase as well as the video completion phase both at the start and the end of a viewing session
as these figures indicate we find that auto play recommendations increase compulsiveness from
the start to the end of session we also observe interesting user behaviors at the start and end of
a viewing session with respect to ui interaction used while at the start of the session autoplay
users had a mindful viewing session recommendation users were usually in a margin of uncertainty
user interviews revealed that this might be because autoplay users see desired content
initially while recommendation users are unsure about what to watch in the beginning
however autoplay users very soon become mindless interviews revealed that the reason behind this
might be that while watching a series users do not have enough time in the autoplay timer
to pause to reflect and discuss about the recently concluded episode in a story clearly
or to make a conscious decision to stop watching since recommendations continuously keeps
recommending on the basis of previous watching history users start liking the suggestion as
it starts matching their current mood however towards the end of a viewing session users are
usually exhausted and bored with the presented recommendations and hence become mindless
we similarly find that auto play recommendations increase user regret after users complete a video
further our paper similarly reports interesting trends related to users emotional responses
at the video completion phase where we classify four different types of feelings based on
desirable or undesirable content watched as well as the duration or amount of videos watched
these results lead us to further investigate uis containing dark patterns
we then conduct a study for investigating dark patterns on video streaming platforms
we analyzed the ui features on four famous platforms in india the research
team identified 44 problematic ui instances on these platforms we then conduct interviews with
15 participants for gathering evidence on the state of these ui artifacts from a user-centric
perspective with the help of user validations we find that ui dark patterns are responsible for
the reduction in user autonomy and self-control on video streaming platforms and then present
a novel taxonomy consisting of five categories of dark patterns which we term as the following
our first dark pattern feature fog refers to ui patterns that induce unawareness by
reducing autonomy of monitoring user time spent the figure on the left is a symbolic
representation of this pattern and the figure on the right is an example of ui on netflix
which only displays the time remaining and not the time elapsed these ui patterns are designed
so that the user is less able to get feedback on time spent while engaged in a viewing session
here we can see some user quotes that talk about this pattern the strategy is similar
in effect to the psychological trick used by restaurants called menu engineering
where costly items are hidden so that they are not in direct visual contact of customers
our second dark pattern is extreme countdown extreme countdown refers to ui patterns that
have a timer and that execute automatically if not interrupted within the short period of time
here i'd specifically like to point the naming of these patterns is done to reveal
certain situations of use and their consequent effect on a user's state of mind for example
extreme countdown not only represents the timer in an autoplay functionality but also the pressure
situation induced by it for the users to make a decision here on the right we have an example of
autoplay on netflix the ui automatically makes a decision to play the next video
participants pointed out how such patterns induce pressure situations to make decisions instantly
especially when present in a social setting here we can see some quotes representing
user sentiments on this pattern though such a pattern is useful when making uh when watching
the desired content it is also responsible for enforcing a sunk cost fallacy when users have
invested some time in a season that they might not necessarily even enjoy watching
our next dark pattern is switch off delay switch off delay refers to ui patterns that promote
strategies of hiding restrictive features in the default ui of streaming platforms
the logout feature as seen in the as seen in the figure on the right is not readily available on
many streaming platforms as observed from the previous user study we know that recommendations
enforce extended viewing due to specific recommendations based on user watching history
over long length video sessions users pointed that there could be advantages to logging out
on video streaming platforms in that the recommendations become neutral and become
less potent in enforcing compulsiveness such ui interventions act as design frictions that reduce
unnecessary viewing behaviors by providing the user with some necessary time to think
our next dark pattern is attention quicksand attention quicksand refers to ui patterns that
instantly start without any conscious user action they instantly grab user
attention and divert them from what could otherwise be a different online behavior
example of this pattern is instant gif starting or instant gif starter on video thumbnails due
to mouse server or a single touch scroll on mobile devices as seen on the image to the right
users found these ui elements to be intrusive and irritating at times psychologically these
platforms use the power of animated visual content consumed through the path of least
cognitive resistance that causes instant gratification through a simple hover interaction
again this is misused by most platforms for capturing attention our final dark pattern is
bias grind bias grind refers to ui patterns that disproportionately overload user interests and
biases an example of this pattern is providing an infinitely long scroll of recommendations
based on previous watching history as seen here on the image to the right
this pattern contains two psychological tricks one choice overload this is a phenomenon of
presenting too many choices to users which has been associated with unhappiness decision fatigue
choosing the default option and choice deferral and two reinforcing user biases and interests
this makes it difficult for users to make the right choice if these patterns are not optimized
and effectively categorized essentially sometimes leaving them in a state of choice paralysis
with the help of this study we provide the initial proof for the presence of dark patterns on video
streaming platforms and that they reduce user autonomy and self-control we present
a comprehensive list of dark patterns shown through the red marked symbols on the four famous
video streaming platforms in india on laptop pc mobile tablets and television through this table
as per our current norms we find usable design as per current standards is not necessarily an
ethical one we need to re-evaluate ease of use as not as not just providing convenient functionality
rather how it affects us as individuals we finally present some design suggestions
that can enhance user well-being on streaming on streaming platforms one way to achieve this is by
introducing effective design frictions or nudges that provide users some time to think another way
is by introducing more conscious interactions on the default ui to increase user autonomy and
a sense of self-control for example the default option in autoplay for video watching is selecting
play next after a brief amount of time the default option could instead be changed to skipped edits
and then require a conscious interaction in order to begin playing the next episode of the series
some features like recommendations could be presented to enhance more diversity of choice
while enabling better state of mind by reducing unnecessary and unlimited recommendations
finally there should be an option for users to easily refresh their
recommendations that takes users away from their previously defined biases and interests
to sum up our taxonomy is based on a user-centric perspective considering
salience of digital wellbeing parameters such as self-control and autonomy as most important
we use a temporal short and long term behavioral based perspective
for classifying dark patterns in video watching platforms thank you