Staying at the Roach Motel: Cross-Country Analysis of Manipulative Subscription and Cancellation Flows
Sheil and colleagues characterise the subscription and cancellation flows of popular news websites in four countries and read them against recent regulatory changes. The premise is the asymmetry anyone who has tried it will recognise: subscribing is usually a few clicks, cancelling is often neither quick nor clear, and the gap is a recognised dark pattern named the roach motel. The paper catalogues the design features that make cancellation difficult and reports flows with deliberate barriers, among them requiring a person to telephone a representative or to type out a set phrase before the subscription will end. It also finds subscription flows that do not adequately tell a person they are agreeing to a recurring charge. The authors treat the findings as evidence that regulation of manipulative design is needed rather than as a measurement of how much money the practice moves, which the study does not attempt.
Sheil and colleagues characterise the subscription and cancellation flows of popular news websites in four countries and read them against recent regulatory changes. The premise is the asymmetry anyone who has tried it will recognise: subscribing is usually a few clicks, cancelling is often neither quick nor clear, and the gap is a recognised dark pattern named the roach motel. The paper catalogues the design features that make cancellation difficult and reports flows with deliberate barriers, among them requiring a person to telephone a representative or to type out a set phrase before the subscription will end. It also finds subscription flows that do not adequately tell a person they are agreeing to a recurring charge. The authors treat the findings as evidence that regulation of manipulative design is needed rather than as a measurement of how much money the practice moves, which the study does not attempt.
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Sheil, A., Acar, G., Schraffenberger, H., Gellert, R., & Malone, D. (2024). 'Staying at the roach motel: cross-country analysis of manipulative subscription and cancellation flows.' CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Characterises subscription and cancellation flows of popular news websites in four countries; finds cancellation flows with intentional barriers such as forcing users to call a representative or type in a phrase, and subscription flows that do not adequately inform users about recurring charges. doi:10.1145/3613904.3642881
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https://doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642881
DOI: 10.1145/3613904.3642881