Outhouse › Dark Patterns › Credibility

Says one thing, does another

A page that says one thing about itself and was measured doing another.

Why it matters

Every site values its visitors' privacy, hates spam and has no hidden fees. Saying so costs nothing, and visitors find it reassuring. Doing so would cost a great deal. Leading sites have resolved this by doing both: one in the copy, the other in the code.

The most advanced sites block AI crawlers in robots.txt and publish AI-written articles.

How Outhouse measures it

Outhouse pairs claims with measurements: we value your privacy with trackers loaded; no hidden fees with fees or was-prices; ad-free with ads; no spam with pre-ticked marketing boxes; a request to disable your ad blocker with ad networks and trackers; independent reviews with affiliate links or ads among the results; AI crawlers blocked in robots.txt with AI-written phrasing on the page. Two contradictions score in full.

This audit counts towards Dark Patterns, with a weight of 3. A category is 75% its two highest-scoring audits and 25% all of its audits, weighted, so a site is judged mostly on what it does most and partly on how many things it does.

How to improve your score

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