I'm not used to stopping mid-sign-up flow to appreciate good UX.
But earlier today, I was creating a new Spotify account—your typical, streamlined, “just enough to get started” kind of flow. Then I hit the second screen, the one with the terms and privacy disclosures.
And I saw this:
A single checkbox.
Grayed out.
Already unchecked:
“Share my registration data with Spotify's content providers for marketing purposes.”
And I paused.
Most of us know what a dark pattern looks like:
Pre-checked boxes you forget to uncheck
Confusing double negatives
Gray-on-gray opt-outs buried in legalese
"Skip" buttons that mysteriously vanish
But this was different.
Spotify showed me the box they were not checking. They surfaced the decision they were making on my behalf—and gave me the option to change it.
At first, I thought it was a bug.
Then I realized: they're showing me the thing they’re choosing not to do to me.
And in doing so, they’re quietly saying:
“Hey. We respect your decisions about your data.”
That’s rare.
That’s trust by design.
That’s an anti-dark pattern.
Whether Spotify follows through on that promise—I can’t say. But showing me that unchecked box was a subtle little bet on trust. And I’m more likely to give it to them because of it.
This one detail did more to earn my confidence than an entire page of polished PR copy ever could.
✨ The Takeaway
If you build products:
Transparency isn’t just what you show—it’s what you choose not to hide.
Sometimes the most powerful thing you can do in a UI is highlight the thing you aren’t doing to the user.
That unspoken restraint?
That quiet choice?
That’s where trust begins.
And sometimes, it starts with a grayed-out box.
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