This goes way beyond dark patterns and ux strategies to push people towards paid options. This is manipulating search engines to hide their services when searching for "free tax filing". If they're going to offer free services, but hide them from potential customers, they might as well not be offering them. if they're not offering them, then they're not holding up their end of the bargain with the IRS.
Yeah, this isn't just a dark pattern, this is a black hole pattern, this is a scam. With a dark pattern there is a way, if you're careful, to navigate through things and get to the desired outcome. Here there was no such route, you had to have entered from the correct starting place to begin with to have a chance at all, and that entrance was hidden from the public.
