Okay, Iâ(TM)m thinking of the strippers.

Did the article have the wrong planet name when OP copied the text?

And now I’m putting junk characters in my editorial metacomments. Look, gimme a break. I just finished my taxes.

âoePatterâ? I left off the âoenâ? Huh. Well, in my defense, the legalese does qualify as dark patter.

I used TaxAct for the last two years and ran into this, and the way they implemented it, it’s absolutely a dark pattern. The page where they harvest your consent to share information with third parties has extremely roundabout, legalistic wording that overall looks like they’re asking for your consent to simply process your taxes. The true details are in there if you read very carefully, but good luck if you don’t have training in logic or law. The form includes inputs for “Signature” (your name) and the date. The big, obvious “I Agree” button accepts their terms; a smaller “I Don’t Agree” text link skips forward and lets you finish your tax filing without approving third-party info sharing.

Text from a screenshot of last year’s consent form:

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Consent to use your tax information.

Plain Talk: In order for TaxAct to personalize your refund options, we need your permission to use some of the tax information you entered.

Federal law requires this consent form be provided to you. Unless authorized by law, we cannot use your tax return information for purposes other than the preparation and filing of your tax return without your consent.

You are not required to complete this form to engage our tax return preparation services. If we obtain your signature on this form by conditioning our tax return preparation services on your consent, your consent will not be valid. Your consent is valid for the amount of time that you specify. If you do not specify the duration of your consent, your consent is valid for one year from the date of signature.

By clicking “I Agree", I, [your name], authorize TaxAct to use the information I provide during the preparation of my 2021 tax return along with my prior year refund funding rate and similar information from prior years as needed to communicate with me and to evaluate and present refund and payment options available to me. By completing this form my consent will be effective until December 31, 2025.

[pre-filled input: "Signature"] [pre-filled input: "Today’s Date"]

If you believe your tax return information has been disclosed or used improperly in a manner unauthorized by law or without your permission, you may contact the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) by telephone at 1-800-366-4484, or by email at complaints@tigta.treas.gov.

[button: “< Back"] [text link: "I Don’t Agree"] [highlighted button: "I Agree"]

An example: I was a front-end developer for the Wall Street Journal five years ago. The home page was a shifting multi-column stack of dozens of internal content modules (developed by different programmers) that had no awareness of each other (also often the case with the programmers), along with dynamic ads and an astounding amount of additional crud that included externally-sourced content like spammy Taboola and Outbrain links. To conserve bandwidth, the module containers triggered just-in-time content loading when the user scrolled down to within a certain number of pixels. There was effectively no way for any part of the page to know the position of any other part. Sure, I declared the sizes for images within my module, but it had no effect on the rest of the page.

And as for American Football, it's just silly. You have 1 point, 2 points, 3 points and 6 points depending on what's done. And the stuff that scores 1 point CAN score 3 points and the one that usually scores 6 points can be 2 points instead. The only reason it makes sense is that you're used to it.

I suppose so. Now try to explain Cricket to an American. No, go ahead, I'll wait here.

Here in 2009, we have apps!