Algorithmic Manipulation – How systems use hidden code to control your choices and outcomes without your knowledge.
Banking Dark Patterns – Deliberately confusing interface designs that trick you into spending more or paying hidden fees.
Bureaucratic Jujitsu – Using an organization’s own rules and paperwork against them to achieve your goals.
Compliance Hacking – Finding legal ways to meet technical requirements while subverting the system’s intent.
Consumer Sabotage – When companies deliberately make products harder to repair or maintain.
Data Gaslighting – Using your own information against you to make you doubt your perceptions or memories.
Default Slavery – The economic trap of always accepting pre-selected options that benefit corporations.
Digital Sharecropping – Creating value for platforms without receiving fair compensation.
Fee Fishing – The practice of charging small, hard-to-notice fees hoping customers won’t challenge them.
Fine Print Warfare – Burying important terms in documentation most people never read.
Forbidden Knowledge – Information that’s legal but suppressed because it reduces institutional control.
Friction Engineering – Deliberately making certain actions difficult while making others effortless.
Gamified Exploitation – Using game mechanics to manipulate behavior for corporate benefit.
Gatekeeper Economics – Creating artificial scarcity or barriers to maintain price control.
Informed Consent Bypass – Getting agreement through overwhelm rather than understanding.
Interface Manipulation – Designing screens to guide users toward profitable but disadvantageous choices.
Legal Loophole – A technicality in laws or regulations that allows unintended but legal advantages.
Loyalty Tax – Charging existing customers more than new ones, knowing they’re less likely to switch.
Manufactured Urgency – Creating false time pressure to prevent careful consideration.
Mental Model Hijacking – Exploiting how people naturally think to lead them to wrong conclusions.
Nudge Economics – Subtle design choices that influence decisions without outright coercion.
Opt-Out Hunting – Making beneficial options require active effort while harmful ones are default.
Pattern Obscurity – Hiding systematic exploitation by making it look like random occurrences.
Permission Architecture – Systems designed to make requesting rights difficult while granting them easy.
Price Anchoring – Showing artificially high prices first to make actual prices seem reasonable.
Procedural Exhaustion – Wearing down opposition through complex, lengthy processes.
Psychological Pricing – Using specific price points to manipulate perception of value.
Regulatory Arbitrage – Exploiting differences between how various governing bodies regulate the same activity.
Reverse Engineering Rights – Discovering your actual legal protections by studying how systems try to limit them.
Rulebook Revolution – Fighting oppressive systems using their own documented procedures against them.
Scarcity Engineering – Artificially limiting supply or access to increase perceived value.
Silent Consent – Treating inaction as agreement to unfavorable terms or changes.
Sludge Design – Intentionally creating friction for actions that benefit consumers but cost companies.
Subscription Traps – Making cancellation difficult while sign-up is effortless.
System Literacy – Understanding how institutional systems actually work rather than how they claim to work.
Technical Compliance – Meeting legal requirements literally while violating their spirit.
Terms of Service Warfare – Using platform rules creatively to achieve unintended but permitted outcomes.
UI/UX Exploitation – Manipulating user interface design to guide behavior against user interests.
Value Extraction – Systems designed primarily to remove wealth from users rather than provide service.
Vanity Metrics – Meaningless numbers designed to create false sense of progress or success.
Dark Pattern – Interface designs that trick users into actions they don’t intend.
Choice Architecture – How presenting options influences decisions regardless of content.
Privacy Zuckering – Tricking users into sharing more information than they intend.
Roach Motel – Easy to enter, hard to leave systems.
Forced Continuity – Charging users automatically without clear reminders.
Friend Spam – Accessing contacts under false pretenses.
Bait and Switch – Advertising one thing but delivering another.
Confirmshaming – Using guilt to prevent users from opting out.
Disguised Ads – Making advertisements look like content or navigation.
Sneak into Basket – Adding additional products to cart without clear consent.
Systemic Obfuscation – Deliberate complexity that prevents understanding of true costs or terms.
Weaponized Incompetence – Organizations pretending inability to solve problems they created.
Information Asymmetry – When institutions know rules you don’t, creating inherent advantage.
Contractual Ambiguity – Deliberately vague language that allows multiple interpretations.
Procedural Entrapment – Systems designed to make violations easy and consequences severe.
Consumption Engineering – Products designed to require ongoing purchases or services.
Planned Obsolescence – Designing products to fail or become obsolete prematurely.
Regulatory Capture – When industries control the agencies meant to regulate them.
Legal Plausible Deniability – Creating systems where responsibility can’t be clearly assigned.
Behavioral Profiteering – Monetizing user behavior patterns without compensation.
Digital Redlining – Algorithmic discrimination that replicates historical exclusion patterns.
Attention Mining – Designing experiences to maximize engagement regardless of user benefit.
Consent Manufacturing – Creating the appearance of agreement through complex processes.
Fiduciary Betrayal – When trusted advisors act against client interests for profit.
Institutional Gaslighting – Organizations making customers doubt their own experiences.
Liability Laundering – Using intermediaries to avoid legal responsibility.
Moral Hazard – When institutions take risks because they won’t bear the consequences.
Predatory Inclusion – Offering access to essential services under exploitative terms.
Rent-seeking – Generating income through control rather than value creation.
Surveillance Capitalism – Business models based on commodifying personal data.
Triple-speak – Language that means one thing to regulators, another to customers, and another internally.
Value Transfer – Moving wealth from consumers to shareholders without equivalent exchange.
Weaponized Bureaucracy – Using administrative processes as punishment or deterrent.
Zero-sum Architecture – Systems where user gains necessarily mean institutional losses.