  Designers' use of deceptive and manipulative design practices have become
increasingly ubiquitous, impacting users' ability to make choices that respect
their agency and autonomy. These practices have been popularly defined through
the term "dark patterns" which has gained attention from designers, privacy
scholars, and more recently, even legal scholars and regulators. The increased
interest in the term and underpinnings of dark patterns across a range of
sociotechnical practitioners intrigued us to study the evolution of the
concept, to potentially speculate the future trajectory of conversations around
dark patterns. In this paper, we examine the history and evolution of the
Twitter discourse through #darkpatterns from its inception in June 2010 until
April 2021, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to
describe how this discourse has changed over time. We frame the evolution of
this discourse as an emergent transdisciplinary conversation that connects
multiple disciplinary perspectives through the shared concept of dark patterns,
whereby these participants engage in a conversation marked by socio-technical
angst in order to identify and fight back against deceptive design practices.
We discuss the potential future trajectories of this discourse and
opportunities for further scholarship at the intersection of design, policy,
and activism.
