About

The Dark Patterns Tip Line is led by a team of designers, academic researchers, legal experts, policy specialists, and advocacy-minded individuals.

We came together to collect dark patterns to better understand how technology is exploiting people. Our ultimate vision is to leverage this data to combat manipulative practices online through policy reform.

We have grounded this work by highlighting examples from people’s lived experiences so we can best showcase how dark patterns lead to every day human harms.

Our Values

We ground our work in human-centered perspectives.
Perspectives of everyday people is missing from dense, legal, and wonky conversations about dark patterns. This project is powered by research with individuals who suffered dark pattern-instigated harms.
We collaborate across teams and functions.
People across industries are working together to better understand how dark patterns hurt people. Our team includes designers, academic researchers, legal experts, policy specialists, and advocacy-minded individuals.
We value both qualitative and quantitative data to create impact.
The Dark Patterns Tip Line was founded to serve as a crowdsourcing platform where people submit dark patterns they’ve encountered. The data collected is supplemented with qualitative analysis via one-on-one interviews to better understand the human impact of these malicious tactics.