Rob Alvarez
, , , ,
0

Stop Shaming Your Users: Ethical Alternatives to Dark Patterns | Episode 421

 

Curious if Octalysis fits your engagement challenge? Quick intro chat: professorgame.com/chat

Episode Summary

Rob Alvarez breaks down “confirm shaming,” the dark pattern where opt-out buttons are worded to make users feel stupid, guilty, or irresponsible for declining a desired action. The hook: a real opt-out button from MyMedic that read “No, I prefer to bleed to death” when refusing notifications. Rob walks through three more live examples (OptinMonster’s “I’m fine with losing customers,” Cosmopolitan’s “I’m boring,” and Google’s screen-lock prompt edging into the same territory) and shows the underlying mechanic: weaponizing Core Drive 8 (Loss & Avoidance) and Core Drive 4 (Ownership & Possession) to force a click, with Cosmopolitan also pulling on Core Drive 5 (Social Influence & Relatedness) through identity shaming.

The throughline is that confirm shaming is a Black Hat technique that produces immediate action while damaging the medium and long-term relationship. As a counter-example, Rob points to Too Good To Go, which drives the same notification opt-in using Core Drive 1 (Epic Meaning & Calling) and positive surprise instead of guilt. The argument lands on a clear practitioner principle: long-term loyalty comes from trust, not traps. If users have to be tricked into agreeing, the product itself isn’t strong enough on its own merits.

Rob also references the broader ethics conversation in gamification, pointing listeners back to his solo episode on Nir Eyal and Andrzej Marczewski’s positions, and the follow-up interview with Marczewski.

About the Host

Rob Alvarez is Head of Engagement Strategy, Europe at The Octalysis Group (TOG), a leading gamification and behavioral design consultancy. A globally recognized gamification strategist and TEDx speaker, he founded and hosts Professor Game, the #1 gamification podcast, and has interviewed hundreds of global experts. He designs evidence-based engagement systems that drive motivation, loyalty, and results, and teaches LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® and gamification at top institutions including IE Business School, EFMD, and EBS University across Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

Key Takeaways

    • Confirm shaming is a dark pattern where the opt-out button is worded to make users feel stupid, guilty, or irresponsible for declining. It targets the user’s self-image to coerce a “yes,” not to motivate one.
    • MyMedic’s “No, I prefer to bleed to death” notification prompt is the cleanest case study of how far Black Hat Core Drive 8 (Loss & Avoidance) can be pushed before crossing into harm, especially when the audience is users with real medical concerns.
  • OptinMonster’s “I’m fine with losing customers” opt-out stacks Core Drive 8 (Loss & Avoidance) with Core Drive 4 (Ownership & Possession): users feel they already “have” customers they haven’t acquired yet, and shame them for “losing” them.
  • Cosmopolitan’s “I’m boring” opt-out weaponizes Core Drive 5 (Social Influence & Relatedness) by tying the user’s identity to the click. Identity-based shaming is especially manipulative because being boring is defined relative to other people, not the brand.
  • Too Good To Go is the white-hat counter-example: the same opt-in moment can use Core Drive 1 (Epic Meaning & Calling) plus positive surprise to motivate the click, instead of guilt. Same desired action, different long-term relationship.
  • The diagnostic question for any opt-out screen: when the user understands what’s happening behind the curtain, do they laugh and stay, or feel pushed away? If it’s the second, the technique is buying short-term wins at the cost of long-term loyalty.
  • Long-term loyalty comes from trust, not traps. If users have to be tricked into agreeing, the product isn’t solving a real problem strongly enough on its own.

Topics Covered

Mentioned in This Episode

Free Resources and Get in Touch

And it is time to say that it’s game over.

Full episode transcription (AI Generated)

Did this app just ask if I want to die?

Rob Alvarez (00:02): Wait a minute. Did this app just ask me if I want to die?

Rob Alvarez (00:07): So yeah, ridiculous as it sounds, an app did kind of ask me if I wanted to die. And I’ll be sharing deeper about this and other examples of this strategy, if we can call that way, of some apps and systems to try to convince us into doing something. And as you might know, you’re watching this, this is Professor Game. This is a podcast where we usually do either interviews or episodes like this one.

In the interviews, we interview successful practitioners of games, gamification, and game thinking. We’ve been doing this for over eight years at this point, and we’ve been uncovering some of the strategies that can be used to improve customer retention, completion of courses, essentially getting people motivated into taking some sort of, at least in my case, ethical action. And I’m Rob. I’m the founder of Professor Game. I’m also the head of engagement strategy at the Octalysis Group, which is the leading premier gamification consultancy in the world. And I’m also a professor of gamification game based strategies at IE Business School, EFMD, EBS University and other places around the world. And if you find the strategies that we discussed here useful, you might want to get on a chat with us. You can do that just by clicking on the link below.

What confirm shaming is and how it works

Rob Alvarez (01:22): So let’s dive right in. What are we talking about on this particular episode? I am going to potentially make a series about deconstructing some of the not very ethical strategies that some systems use or some dark patterns that are out there. And we can see on real examples and real apps and real systems that are either live or in this case, I had to find many of the stuff in the archive because they realized it was so wrong that they had to bring it down.

And lots of credits, by the way, to deceptive.design and confirmshaming.tumblr.com. They have a lot of good examples there. And they have them stored for the fact that you make a screenshot and you can keep it there. But it is not longer in the app. And this time, we’re going to be talking about something that has been coined as confirm shaming. So this thing works by triggering basically uncomfortable emotions, especially as you can imagine from the name, guilt or shame, to influence your users decision making. So they’re employing these deceptive patterns that often present us with opt out button labels that are worded in a way that make us sound, that are derogatory or make us feel stupid, belittling or anything. They make us essentially try to make us feel bad about that potential choice if we decide to take it. And by targeting the users emotions and our own self image, they tend to get, I mean, they actually do increase the likelihood of people giving into the, what we call the desired action, rather than taking the opposite or negative action. And ultimately they benefit sort of the service provider, but to the detriment as well to the user for sure, but also to the medium and even long-term relationship that the user might have with this kind of services. And I don’t want to spend until forever until sharing with you.

MyMedic case study: “I prefer to bleed to death”

Which one is actually the one that I was talking about? This was a very public example as well from MyMedic. This was an app or is an app. I’m not sure. haven’t found it anymore. And it says literally I’m reading and you’ll find it on the screen as well. If you’re seeing this on video, MyMedic would like to send you notifications. Pretty standard, right? You’ll be notified about the latest tips, sales and discounts. So you and everyone, you know, can stay alive. It’s already started sounding, you know, a bit too much.

Can I stay alive without being in this app? I’ve never used it. And apparently I managed to secure this benefit of being alive without even being there. So they start doing a little bit of that there already. And of course you have the big blue button that says allow because you’re allowing those notifications to happen. Right. Still very standard. And it’s also flashy bigger. They are pushing you towards the desired action, which honestly, I think that part is it’s pretty normal that that’s what you do. In fact, it could be even coined as something good to be done. always give options, but of course you highlight the option that you want or you prefer the user to take. But then you give the other option, obviously, and people who don’t want the notifications, they can just click on it. In this case, as you can see on screen, if you’re seeing the video, it says, no, I prefer to bleed to death. I mean, come on. This is way too much. You’re taking it very, very far away. Of course, if you see it sort of in, in, in, the cold, I wasn’t really like, this isn’t even really my phone. This is just a case I have. I used to use a lot. If you see it in the right context, like, why are you even visiting this? You’re probably having perhaps some medical problems or something. You see that. And even though you might even still realize this is like a bit too much, it is still hitting a point or it literally can make somebody who is having some very serious medical issues sort of break down in many ways. And what are sort of the things that they’re aiming towards here or here? Essentially, to say it in Octalysis terms, which as I revealed, I will be doing this more and more because it’s part of my work. Here, you are essentially targeting Core Drive 8. Fear, you’re making people fear losing something. And here, honestly, this is the ultimate loss of your own life. Or in this case, even it’s your life and potentially of your closest circle of family, because you know, if you don’t do this, you don’t stay alive or you bleed to death or whatever the wording is. This is not like, yes, they are targeting a Core Drive. Yes, they’re trying to motivate people into taking an action, but you also have to consider the ethical implications of the way you do things and how you are almost cheating people into agreeing to whatever it is you want them to do.

OptinMonster: “I’m fine with losing customers”

Rob Alvarez (06:00): So let’s jump right into another example. Let me show it as well on screen if you’re seeing it on video. OptinMonster, probably heard of this one. have some version of this. I haven’t seen this one in my, or maybe I have to be honest. I don’t remember. But when you understand the psychology behind these things, and that’s one of the intentions of me revealing this, is that when you understand the psychology behind this, it’s easier to see what’s going on and not be triggered by the emotions that they’re trying to compel.

So anyways, OptinMonster, this, know it works with WordPress, which is what I use. says, grow your email list. wow, okay, that sounds interesting. I have an email list. Okay, grow your email list. Help, we help transform your site into a lead generation powerhouse. wow, I have a site, I have an email list. Very good. Get more email subscribers. Fantastic, yellow, highlighted, bold. Well, it’s not bold, the letter is . It’s bigger, it’s very visible, very clear. I want to take that desired actions. But what happens if it’s a paid service or I just don’t want it? I have something else. You know, I don’t just don’t want it. You go down to the no option and you said, no, thanks. I’m fine with losing customers. They’re trying to shame me into saying, you either want my solution or you’re losing customers. It’s trying to kind of validate what they do. I get it.

I can understand that is what is going on. I can understand that they’re trying to get you to do the desired actions, which is get more email subscribers. Is that wording being used ethically? Again, I am not very sure of that. We can see once again, a very clear use of Core Drive 8. Usually these, the Core Drives here, since they want you to take action immediately, they tend to be Black Hat most often. Or one of the quote unquote neutral ones, Core Drive 4 or 5, that can go either White or Black Hat, they do a Black Hat use of how you can use these Core Drive motivations. Core Drive 8, losing customers. I don’t really want to lose customers. I wanna have them. You also have some Core Drive 4 ownership and possession. I don’t wanna lose what I have or I quote unquote, have these customers because they came to my site. I don’t wanna lose them.

It’s targeting those Core Drive motivations. It’s trying to drive you into immediate action. It’s not necessarily making me feel good about it. Maybe I click there. And that’s the other thing. I’m not sure about this one. This is just an image what I’m showing. It’s not pop-up that I got on my website. problem is you click on that and then potentially you have a paywall where, oh, you do this and you have to do this through a pay. So it’s like, I do that, but then I have to pay. So, you know, all that motivation, that drive, I got there. I already forgot about you telling me I’m going to lose customers if I don’t do this. If the pricing structure is not right for me or the benefits or something is not there, that doesn’t really get you too far. If you do it that way, we can do another episode. We can do another time where we review places and ways in which this can be done ethically.

Too Good To Go as the white-hat alternative

In fact, I just had an email I got from this webpage that does analysis of UX on websites. And they were actually doing this strategy, but ethically, because this was about, you know the app Too Good to Go? I don’t if you’ve heard of it. The concept behind it is that you are purchasing food that otherwise would go literally to waste. So the desired action is you want to activate, like this one, want to activate, well like the previous one, you want to activate the notifications.

What is a good way to do that? You highlight the positive benefits like here, get more email subscribers. There it’s something like, get notified about, because you have to mention in that one that there’s few of these boxes every day. So you don’t want to miss out. you’re not saying activate notifications. It’s just like, don’t want no more notifications. I’m tired of that. It’s, make sure you get notified on time so that you don’t miss out on these deals. There was a short way in which they put it.

And the other one, the other option was, it’s not as desirable. It’s like, no, I don’t want, I don’t want the notification or something like that. Simple one. You’re still driving the desired action strongly. You’re using the motivation because you’re using Core Drive 1 because the app is also helping the planet because you’re not wasting food. It has, it gives you a lot of, it gives you surprise as well. So it’s, still Black Hats would get drives immediate action, but it makes you feel good about it because it’s positive surprises. It’s not like, I have this sense of, I’m out of control. It’s like, it’s out of control, but it’s fun because I’m going to receive a package of something I like. It’s a store I like. So it’s exciting. It’s nice. It’s still driving that desired action by highlighting that you don’t have to shame people into not doing it.

Cosmopolitan: identity shaming with “I’m boring”

So let’s dive into one more example. What about that? And this one I like a lot, not because I don’t like this magazine Cosmopolitan. I honestly never actually read it. Maybe because of the word that they use and say, do you want to stop say on top of all the, you know, curse word you actually care about sign up now. Okay. So they’re using like strong language, you know, it’s like, this is part the, that’s probably part of the tribe of the way that they speak the slang that they use internally. Yeah, that’s fine. Obviously. Okay. Obviously I want that. Yeah. It aligns with me. If I’m watching this page and probably I’m very interested in this. So, know, obviously aligns very well. And the other one is I’m boring.

It’s not, I don’t want to stay on top of things or it’s because I’m boring. I don’t identify as a boring person. I don’t know if I am or not, but I don’t identify as a boring person. So I feel initially, I don’t want to click on that button. And that’s exactly what they’re aiming for. You want me to shame me into clicking, obviously just because I’m not boring, not because I want the notifications, not because I want, I’m motivated towards doing that desired action, but it’s because like, I don’t want to be boring. So it is not about whether or not you can use these, these Core Drives and these things that drive identity. And this, you could almost say it’s part of also a bit of that, that social, the Core Drive 5 of social. Influence and relatedness because I don’t want to be boring. You know, being boring is not, you’re not usually just boring to yourself. You’re boring with relation to other people. So I don’t want to be a boring person. But here you’re saying you’re shaming me because I’m boring and because I don’t want to get updated on Cosmopolitan or whatever. It doesn’t really align to what they’re saying. And again, know, the obviously I would say it’s a good one. Maybe they can do even better than that. But the no button, even though they want to discourage you somehow to not doing this, you want to make sure you keep it ethical. it’s transparent.

Because deep down, and we’ve had an episode where we analyze the ethics on gamification. Well, two actually. One where it was a solo episode where I was analyzing both what Nir Eyal and Andrzej Marczewski say about this. And then I had actually Andrzej Marczewski discussing about this. So you can find the references on the show notes if you’re interested in that too. It is about when the user understands what is going on behind that.

Are they just going to have a laugh and still take the desired action? It’s like, ha ha. Ha ha. Yeah. Yeah. I’m obviously not boring. Ha ha. I’ll do it. I was going to do it anyways. I understand where you’re trying. I was going to click on obviously, or, Hmm, you know, I don’t want to be boring, but I also don’t want notifications anyway. So, you know, screw you. I’m still going to click on boring, or I’m going to feel pushed away from your brand because you’re trying to trick me. And I don’t like that. when you’re making those kinds of decisions and you’re using, these patterns that you can definitely use there, bear in mind that this could be a way to maybe win very quickly in the short run, but also lose in the long run. And usually businesses don’t survive just on, doing the best that they can on the short run, but also, doing the best for them in the long run. That’s what makes businesses be businesses.

Google’s screen-lock prompt: justified intent or shaming?

So keep that part in mind and I’ll share a very quick one. Last one. this is actually from Google, If your phone is lost or stolen, your private info won’t be protected. Why don’t you want a screen lock? This is after you say, I do not want a screen lock for whatever reason. I keep this phone at home. Okay. Maybe that’s a reason. Nobody really leaves a phone fully at home all the time. Phones are not for that usually at least.

Unlocking my phone is a hassle. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So I prefer to leave my personal info unprotected. Okay. I don’t have time to set this up and I’m okay with leaving my private info unprotected for now. I keep my personal info unprotected in case someone needs to use my phone in an emergency. Ah, come on. Or other, right? They’re showing you these options so you revert your decision you took before. so that you actually do lock your phone. I understand cybersecurity is important. You’re trying to push you back into that. They don’t really have to push it all the way to make it sound like you’re stupid. So you, I don’t want to be stupid, so I’ll go back into this. It’s taking it a little bit too far. At least if you ask me, just by seeing this, of course, I don’t have the full context. I’m just showing this, as I said before, because I want you to realize what is going on so that when you see these things, something is triggered in your mind and you start realizing what is going on. How is motivation being triggered on me so that I take these desired actions? And you take a look behind the curtain and say, well, even with or without these techniques, they’re trying, they’re pushing me for a reason, right? Like here, they’re pushing me because they really want me to lock my phone, secure my data. All right. So that does that mean I’ll revert my decision? Okay. Maybe I will or no, I just won’t. So I’ll make my choice. but I don’t want you to be making choices out of feeling shamed. And keep in mind what I’m saying, make sort of front of mind. You’re being shamed by an app. This is literally a bunch of code. You can’t be shamed by an app. If you’re being shamed by a person, it’s like, well, you know, that’s not great, but at least it is a person. Don’t let yourself be shamed by an app.

White-hat alternatives and the trust-over-traps argument

Rob Alvarez (16:35): So let’s wrap this up. How can you take a different route to that instead of using very strongly Black Hat techniques into shaming people into not taking that action you don’t want them to take? How about you use maybe a little bit of those Black Hat, but you also balance it with White Hat into what you want them to do rather than shaming them for not to not do this action. Show them what are the good things, how you can do some Core Drive 1 epic meaning and calling. how you can use some Core Drive creativity and feedback so that people can actually do those actions because they want to do the action. You convince them of doing those actions. Keep in mind that using the White Hat way in these ones will not necessarily drive immediate action. So you maybe combine a little bit of Black Hat ethically towards taking the action, not away from not taking the desired action by shaming.

people into feeling stupid. You want people to feel smart and to not regret that decision later. This is very, very important. It doesn’t sound like it’s quick, but you do not want to bully people into using your product or accepting your notifications. You know, you can have the no button say, not right now, I’m good. That also opens the door for maybe in the future, I want this, you you respect the user’s agency. Long-term loyalty does not come from tricking people. It comes from trust, not traps. the final concept I want to leave you here with is if you need to trick people into using your product, then the problem is your product is not good enough or it’s not there to solve any real problems. So don’t trick people into doing it. use these techniques to increase their motivation towards it, towards making the desired actions.

but if they still don’t wanna get notifications, fine. You don’t need to shame people into doing something like that. And if any of this content has been interesting for you, I think you might find having a chat with us on Professor Game about what this can mean for your products very, very useful. So just go to the link on the description, click there, and let’s talk about how we can make your product even a lot better. increase that retention, make better loyalty and do it ethically with the right techniques and strategies for motivation. And at least for now and for today, it is time to say that it’s game over.

End of transcription