Confirmshaming

Unfortunately, sometimes it is in a company's best interest to keep you away from what you want. Sometimes this can be done out of legal obligation. Pharmaceutical commercials used to speed through potential harmful side effects of a drug to emphasize the benefits (though this is now illegal). Gambling companies still print their terms in miniscule fonts to obscure the detriments of the experience they sell. This is just a common practice in American business.

Confirmshaming is the more generalized digital variant of that. It represents any form of coercion that can make a user feel bad about their decision to do something.

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The hallmark example of this is in unsubscribe dialogs. Companies are legally obligated to provide a way to unsubscribe from their services. But, many companies will use long and drawn out flows to wear you down before allowing you to leave. The hope being, if it is difficult enough to unsubscribe, you'll just stay subscribed and eat the cost of the service.

Take a look at the buttons, too. See how the "No, keep me subscribed" button is the highlighted button? This is a subtle way to encourage users to click the button that says "No", when they are used to the primary button being the one that says "Yes".

Both of these mechanisms work in tandem to nudge you to stay subscribed as much as is legally possible. It's all about keeping revenue flowing in.