Talk:Disguised Ads
From Dark Patterns
Joe August 16, 2010
Facebook is especially guilty of this. “This pretty girl sent you a message.” Even if it is a third party developer that did it, Facebook allowed it. I guess that’s a bait and switch too huh? Man, fb is evil.
Kadin August 16, 2010
Softpedia is definitely sleazy, along with all the other low-added-value “download” sites. Most of them don’t even host files themselves, they just link to other people’s content and try to grab some eyeballs for their ads by inserting themselves between a search engine results page and the thing that users actually want.
The unfortunate part is that Google could do away with them as a class with a stroke of a keyboard, but chooses not to. My suspicion is that Google and many sleazy/blackhat sites have a sort of symbiotic existence: Google allows them to pollute search results because they create ad revenue, which Google gets a cut of.
Google has a motive to be the best search engine around, but once it reaches that mark it doesn’t have much reason to go beyond it and really clean up its results — and it shows in the amount of obvious SEO spam and low-value content that is allowed to remain in Google’s results.
Paul August 17, 2010
Good point. Google need to address this. They should realize that linking to better sites will always increase their worth in the eyes of users, and keep them #1. That’s how they got there.
Kevin August 17, 2010
Yep. SpeedTest.net (an otherwise good site) does this too.
Anton Babushkin August 18, 2010
Absolutely hate these sort of sites.
This one of the many reasons why so many people install useless junk on their computers.
This is why I love AdMuncher or AdBlock =).
Nalie September 14, 2010
This feels a lot of like the tricky “continue” button at the end of a ticket purchase from TicketMaster. You are actually done with your transaction but you see a “continue” button as though you still need to do something. However, if you click on it you will agree to some subscription or other ad. Very tricky, very wrong!
cheezfri September 17, 2010
That is pretty sleazy. It looks like at least 3 or 4 big DOWNLOAD links, plus the one real one. I’m a novice at downloading apps, but thankfully I do realize that you’ve got to look for that “mirror” verbiage to get the real link.
Speedtest.net ALMOST fooled me though.
Will September 22, 2010
sendspace.com does this also
nkemp15 September 22, 2010
To Kadin, google wouldn’t get rid of any type of site with the “stroke of a keyboard” because they give you results based on what people click on and what sites link to that site. The ads on google is the only way google makes money. You don’t pay for any of your google services do you? No, neither does anyone else. They have to make money somehow or they wouldn’t exist.
This particular type of Dark Pattern is exactly what brought me to this wiki. A few moments ago, I came across what's apparently an incredibly elaborate pop-up ad disguised as a news site. They even went so far as to try and make realistic comments for the "article." This is the site: [1]
So far as I'm aware, that is the only article at this "News 11 Today" and all other links on the site redirect to whatever the hell it is they're trying to scam you into. That's how I ended up here. The sleazy ad pissed me off in enough that I actually decided to google "disguised ads" hoping to get some kind of mild satisfaction from reading other people trash them. >_>
(And on an interestingly similar note, I've also seen some cheap, low-budget TV ads pretending to be news broadcasts, using stock footage of Obama or Ben Bernanke or whatever.) --Bohboh 21:29, 9 January 2011 (PST)
In the Softpedia example, it's actually Google's fault for another reason: the ads are from Google AdSense, and they've let ads through that explicitly violate their policy (imitating user-interface elements of sites they're displayed on). --CodeMan38 12:02, 17 May 2011 (PDT)
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Charlie August 16, 2010
I HATE THIS. Very common on most download and torrent sites.