design ethics
Roach motel
What is a roach motel dark pattern?
A roach motel is a flow that is easy to get into and deliberately hard to get out of - one click to subscribe, a buried maze to cancel. The asymmetry is the trick: the friction only ever runs one way.
Also known as: hard to cancel, easy in hard out
The demo
Join in one click - then try to cancel. Watch the step counter, and switch modes to compare a roach motel with a flow where leaving is as easy as joining.
Steps to join: 0 · Steps to cancel: 0
Start by joining - it only takes one click.
What this demo shows (text version)
A subscription with a single "Subscribe" button that joins you in one step. Once subscribed, a "Cancel subscription" option begins the cancellation flow. In roach-motel mode that flow is a gauntlet: a "are you sure" warning, a guilt-worded choice, a retention discount offer, and a final confirmation - several steps, each counted.
In symmetric mode, cancelling takes one click, the same as joining. A tally compares the number of steps to join with the number to cancel. The lesson is the asymmetry: a roach motel makes entry trivial and exit deliberately laborious, taxing people for trying to leave.
Signing up took a single click. Cancelling took you through warnings, a guilt trip and a retention offer before it would let go - five steps to undo what one step did. Flip it to symmetric and leaving is as quick as joining. That difference, not any single screen, is the roach motel.
The tell is always the asymmetry. If joining is one click and leaving needs a phone call, a postal address or a five-screen gauntlet, the friction was designed in. Regulators have noticed - "click to cancel" rules increasingly require that leaving be as easy as joining, precisely because this pattern is so common.
My test: put the sign-up flow and the cancel flow side by side and count the steps. If they don't roughly match, you are not protecting revenue, you are taxing exit - and the people worst hit are the ones least able to fight through it. Make leaving easy and let the product be the reason people stay.