CX Strategic Knowledge · CX Methods
How Bad KPIs Create Dark Patterns
Dark patterns are rarely designed on purpose. They are what shallow KPIs produce under pressure.
When teams are pressured to raise shallow metrics, they resort to dark patterns: gamified likes, notification spam, blocked exits, buried account deletion. Facebook's 'active users' north star incentivized fake accounts, bots, and friction around leaving. If customers feel pushed, your KPIs are the cause.
Dark patterns are usually a symptom, not a strategy. When the target is a shallow number, teams find shallow ways to move it: gamifying likes, spamming notifications, blocking easy exits, obscuring account deletion, prioritizing quantity over quality.
Facebook's north star of active users shows how this compounds. The metric quietly rewarded fake accounts, tolerated bots, and made deleting an account harder than it should be — because every departure hurt the number.
- "Why are they pushing this?"
- "Why won't this go away?"
- "Why is this so hard to stop?"
When customers start asking those questions, the diagnosis is not a design problem. Your KPIs are driving anti-customer behavior. Fix the incentive, not just the interface.
Apply this
Reading about how bad kpis create dark patterns is one thing. Seeing where it applies in your journey is the useful part.