MADNESS DOESN'T PLAY

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If you’ve tried to delete your Facebook account and found yourself mysteriously lost and frustrated, welcome to the world of Dark Patterns, the website and app trickery designed to make you agree to things or otherwise fool you into doing something other than you intend.

The video uses closing an Amazon account as an example. It’s essentially impossible: even if you find the one deceptively-titled link three layers down through the most irrelevant-seeming menu options on the site, all it gives you is a generic “live chat” window. You cannot close your account without a fundamentally adversarial interaction with a person whose job depends on stopping you.

Pictured here, though, is something this week from Facebook, promising “text anyone in your phone” but really a ruse to let the company track your phone calls and texts–a fact you might be able to figure out from the tiny, unreadable silver-on-white text it doesn’t want you to read.

The Decision 

Watercolor on Bristol 

5x12