[mknocker]

Some of these cases are not only dark patterns, they constitute was it legally known as fraud. If you deceive someone in order to gain a financial advantage, it is fraud. The problem is that going against those gigantic companies is very difficult.

[FireBeyond]

And then others aren't dark patterns. One of the first examples, British Airways, is pretty unfairly called out.

The article says that they imply "cheapest at the top". No, the flights aren't shown "cheapest at the top", and they never imply they are. They're sorted in chronological order.

There is a summary item that says the lowest fare for a booking class that day, but that's all.

[ViViDboarder]

The author used it as an example of something that may just be an unintuitive UI.

[fullshark]

" British Airways lists flights that are the second-lowest price as the lowest,"

That sentence makes it sound like they deliberately always put the 2nd lowest price as the lowest every time. It was pretty misleading or poorly written.

[yaelwrites]

See http://darkpatterns.org/british-airways-distract-from-cheape....

[FireBeyond]

I think that's still really stretching. "In fact, it's only the lowest price in that ticket class".

If I saw those boxes across the board, like in their example image, it doesn't take a second thought, it's "obvious" (to me anyway), that those are the "lowest, per class".

[yaelwrites]

Yeah, that's why I described it as an examples of a bad design choice that may be accidental rather than a dark pattern. I do still think it's misleading, though.

[fullshark]

Yeah I was struggling to understand that one. I don't even think it's bad design.