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About Dark Wiki

Exposing the design tricks that manipulate billions of users daily.

Our Mission

Dark Wiki is an investigative exposé platform dedicated to identifying, documenting, and analyzing dark patterns — deceptive design techniques used in digital interfaces to trick users into actions they didn't intend to take.

We believe that understanding manipulation is the first step to resisting it. By documenting every known dark pattern with real-world examples, severity assessments, legal analysis, and remediation guidance, we give consumers, designers, regulators, and researchers the tools they need to fight back.

What We Cover

Our encyclopedia currently documents 23 dark pattern categories, each with:

  • Real-world examples — Named companies and documented cases, not hypotheticals.
  • Severity assessments — A 1-10 severity score based on financial harm, scale of impact, and regulatory attention.
  • Legal analysis — How EU, US, and UK regulators have addressed each pattern through legislation, enforcement actions, and fines.
  • Detection checklists — Practical guides for identifying whether you're being manipulated.
  • Remediation guidance — Ethical alternative designs that respect user autonomy.

Our Approach

Dark Wiki takes an investigative journalism approach to UX analysis. We don't soft-pedal. When a company uses a dark pattern, we name it, document it, and explain exactly how it works psychologically and why it may violate consumer protection law.

Our analysis is built on:

  • Published academic research (Princeton, University of Chicago, Carnegie Mellon)
  • Regulatory enforcement actions (FTC, EU Commission, UK CMA, ICO, CNIL)
  • Court records and settlement agreements
  • Industry reporting and investigative journalism
  • Direct observation and testing of interfaces

Who We Are

Dark Wiki is a property of Garnet Grid Consulting LLC, a technology consulting firm specializing in software engineering, AI, and digital strategy.

We practice what we preach. Dark Wiki itself is designed with zero dark patterns:

  • No cookie consent tricks — we only use analytics cookies and disclose them transparently.
  • No confirmshaming — our newsletter signup says "No thanks" not "No, I prefer to be manipulated."
  • No fake urgency — our content is always available.
  • No hidden costs — everything on Dark Wiki is free to read.
  • No obstruction — if you want to leave, just close the tab.

Contact

For press inquiries, research collaboration, or to report a dark pattern:

If you're a designer or product manager who wants to audit your interface for dark patterns, we offer professional UX compliance audits.

Our Sister Projects