It's all down to dark patterns, those design tricks used online to convince you to do things you may not have originally planned, write Prof David Malone of MU's Department of Mathematics and Statistics and Ashley Sheil, cyber security researcher at Munster Technological University.

    If you have noticed how much more difficult it is to cancel a subscription compared to signing up for one, you are not alone. This is an example of a dark pattern, or deceptive design, tricks used online to convince you to do things you may not have originally planned.

    Tricks where companies deliberately make it difficult to cancel a subscription are sometimes known as Hard to Cancel or, more colourfully, Roach Motel. The term was coined by user experience consultant Harry Brignull and gets its name from a trap where cockroaches can easily get in but cannot get out. This is often how people feel with online subscriptions.

    These patterns take several forms, from making it hard to find how to unsubscribe to using emotional pressure to dissuade people from leaving. For example, you might be asked 'Are you really sure you want to cancel?' or you may be asked to phone to cancel, which requires a bigger emotional investment than clicking a button.

    As consumers and regulators are starting to become more aware of them, rules around the world are starting to address dark patterns online. For example, Amazon was sued by the US regulator in June 2023 for one dark pattern when leaked data revealed they deliberately made it difficult for customers to cancel their subscriptions.

    However, dark patterns have an ability to technically comply with regulations such as GDPR while still making it cumbersome to decline cookies or cancel a subscription which makes it difficult to regulate. Germany is one of the few countries that have started to expand regulation of dark patterns online. Their regulation is quite strict and direct. It states you must be able to cancel online with a button click and goes as far as describing what this cancel button should look like and what should happen after clicking it.

    These changes inspired us to investigate how these regulations are affecting the subscription process in different countries. We created five imaginary customers to subscribe to newspapers in four different countries: Germany, the Netherlands, the UK and the United States. In the US, regulations vary from state to state, so we created a customer from California where there are regulations to allow cancelling online and Texas where there are none. We attempted to sign up to a list of the top ten news sites from each country, and our European consumers also signed up to the top ten news sites for the US.

    Given how much complaining appears online, our results did surprise us. One trademark characteristic of the Roach Motel pattern is having to phone the service to cancel, even though you were able to purchase the subscription online in a few clicks. We were expecting to spend a lot of time on the phone when cancelling our subscriptions.

    However, this was not the case; we only had to call to cancel four subscriptions from three different news sites from a total of 67 successful subscriptions. In other cases, online cancellations were accomplished by filling in a form or having a (sometimes lengthy) discussion with a bot. Interestingly, while one major news site required a call for both the UK and Texas unsubscriptions, we were able to cancel online for California, in line with Californian regulations.

    But despite being able to cancel online, we discovered there can be other subtle barriers to cancelling services. These include numerous promotional offers, messages asking ‘Are you sure you want to leave?’ and mandatory surveys. Navigating through all these different levels required many clicks of a ‘Next’ button, and this is how we determined how hard it was to cancel versus subscribing. We found that the number of clicks to cancel was, for all countries, more than subscribing. However, for the US, it was around double the clicks. Often, even locating the initial cancel button itself proved to be difficult.

    Despite Germany's strict Cancel Button rule, we only found a few German news sites that seemed to technically comply with the letter of the law for these new regulations. Although German subscriptions were easiest to cancel, so the regulations may still be having a useful impact.

    We saw other regional differences too. For example, the US displayed more advertisements and required the completion of mandatory surveys. After cancelling, our personas consistently received emails to resubscribe to the news site.

    Variations across countries also saw Germany offer a ‘pay for privacy’ option. This is where you pay extra per month to ensure your data is not shared with other companies. The Netherlands only accepted payment via direct debit. One curious dark pattern was where the news site requested that you type in the word ‘Cancel’ into a box to ensure you definitely wanted to cancel your subscription.

    Overall, our findings showed that dark patterns are in use, but it was possible to cancel online for the majority of papers. This could be in part due to recent changes in regulations. But perhaps it could also be because it is actually cheaper to just make the dark pattern tricks do the work to dissuade you from cancelling instead of hiring people to man the phones.

    This project was conducted in collaboration with Radboud University in the Netherlands.
    For more detail, see 'Staying at the Roach Motel: Cross-Country Analysis of Manipulative Subscription and Cancellation Flows' 

    This piece originally appeared on RTÉ Brainstorm