Government seeks public comments on draft guidelines on dark patterns

livemint.com:

New Delhi: The government has sought public feedback on draft guidelines aimed at preventing and regulating "dark patterns" - digital design interfaces used to manipulate customer behaviour. These draft rules have been developed after consultations with stakeholders including e-commerce platforms, law firms, and consumer organizations, the ministry of consumer affairs said in a statement on Thursday.

These draft guidelines define dark patterns as deceptive design elements that manipulate consumers, using user interface, user experience interactions on any platform, into actions they did not originally intend, subverting consumer autonomy, decision making or choice, potentially violating consumer rights. The draft guidelines have specified about 10 dark patterns, which include false urgency, basket sneaking, confirm shaming, forced action, subscription trap, interface interference, bait and switch, drip pricing, disguised advertisement and nagging.

‘False urgency’ refers to falsely stating or implying a sense of urgency or scarcity to mislead a user into making an immediate purchase or take an immediate action, which may lead to a purchase. 'Basket sneaking' means inclusion of additional items such as products, services, payments to charity/donation at the time of checkout from a platform, without the consent of the user, such that the total amount payable by the user is more than the amount payable for the products/services chosen by the user.