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When a person got free tomatoes while online shopping, he got angry. She wrote about it on social media and called it a dark pattern. What was this person’s problem?
Deepak , BengaluruMon, 14 Oct 2024 03:48 AM share
A man from Bengaluru got angry after getting free tomatoes while online shopping. The name of the person doing the shopping is Chandra Ramanujan. He is a product designer in Bengaluru. He had shopped from Swiggy Instamart. In return he got free tomatoes. He says that he did not want tomatoes and he wanted to remove this free item from the list. Despite this he could not do so. The engineer has described it as a dark pattern. He has posted about this on X, which is going quite viral. Chandra Ramanujan has shared the screenshot of getting half a kilogram of tomato on Instagram. Along with this, he has written in the post that Swiggy Instamart has a very poor design. An item was automatically added to my cart. I don’t want a tomato, but I can’t seem to remove it from the cart. Ramanujan further wrote, ‘Okay, I am not paying for this. But still, it’s a peek into my purchases. This is a dark pattern.
Social media users have expressed surprise at this post of Ramanujan. However, many people have also agreed with him. So far this post has been viewed 68000 times on X. An ex-user wrote, ‘I am trying to understand this. It’s free, yet it’s being called a dark pattern? Although I can understand that it cannot be removed. In response to this, Ramanujan wrote that even what I do not want is being given, this is the dark pattern. Even if it is free. He wrote that the problem is not that I am getting tomatoes. The problem is that expectations from an eCommerce are not being respected. As a consumer I should be in control of what I want, which is not happening.
Commenting on social media, a user wrote that customers should have the right to take the final decision. You’re giving away free stuff, okay. But let the customer decide whether he wants to take it or not. He further took on both Swiggy and Zomato and wrote that we want a brand which earns its profits but keeps customers on priority. Another person advised Ramanujan that he should give this tomato to someone else who needed it.
What is dark pattern?
The dark pattern is a design trick by websites and apps. In this, people have to follow things like making additional purchases, signing up for something, giving personal information etc. In this dark pattern, customers have no option to opt out, subscribe, spend additional money or protect their privacy.
