About Engaging and Governing Strategies: A Thematic Analysis of Dark Paterns in Social Networking Services

Research in HCI has shown a growing interest in unethical design practices across numerous domains, often referred to as "dark patterns". There is, however, a gap in related literature regarding social networking services (SNSs). In this context, studies emphasise a lack of users' self-determination regarding control over personal data and time spent on SNSs. We collected over 16 hours of screen recordings from Facebook's, Instagram's, TikTok's, and Twitter's mobile applications to understand how dark patterns manifest in these SNSs. For this task, we turned towards HCI experts to mitigate possible difculties of non-expert participants in recognising dark patterns, as prior studies have noticed. Supported by the recordings, two authors of this paper conducted a thematic analysis based on previously described taxonomies, manually classifying the recorded material while delivering two key fndings: We observed which instances occur in SNSs and identifed two strategies-engaging and governing-with fve dark patterns undiscovered before. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Empirical studies in HCI; HCI theory, concepts and models; Empirical studies in interaction design; Interaction design theory, concepts and paradigms; • Security and privacy → Usability in security and privacy.