Govt seeks public comments on dark patterns
NEW DELHI : The government has sought comments from the public on its draft guidelines for the prevention and regulation of dark patterns, which are digital design interfaces used to manipulate customer behaviour, the ministry of consumer affairs said on Thursday. These draft guidelines have been framed after detailed deliberations with all stakeholders including e-commerce platforms, law firms, government and voluntary consumer organisations (VCOs).
The draft guidelines define dark patterns as “practices or deceptive design patterns using user interface and user experience interactions on any platform, which are designed to mislead or trick users to do something they originally did not intend to do by subverting the consumer autonomy, decision making or choice, amounting to misleading advertisement or unfair trade practice or violation of consumer rights". The guidelines have specified 10 dark patterns -- false urgency, basket sneaking, confirm shaming, forced action, subscription trap, interface interference, bait and switch, drip pricing, disguised advertisement and nagging.
“Guidelines would be made applicable to all the persons and online platforms including sellers and advertisers," it added. According to the guidelines, ‘false urgency’ means falsely stating or implying the sense of urgency or scarcity so as to mislead a user into making an immediate purchase.
‘Basket sneaking’ is the inclusion of additional items such as products, services, payments to charity/donation at the time of checkout, without the consent of the user. ‘Confirm shaming’ means using a phrase, video, audio or any other means to create a sense of fear or shame or ridicule or guilt in the mind of the user, so as to nudge the user to to make a
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