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Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns on online platforms
Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns on online platforms

December 4, 2023

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On December 1, 2023, the Department of Consumer Affairs published the Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns (The Guidelines).

Nasscom was a part of the task force set-up by the government, to give suggestions for the formulation of the dark pattern guidelines. A set of draft guidelines were released for public consultation, on which nasscom had submitted feedback in October 2023. We find that some of our feedback is not reflected in the final Guidelines, especially:

  • Amending the definition of ‘dark pattern’ to make it clearer and unambiguous.
  • Amending the meaning of ‘subscription trap’ to ensure that legitimate business practice, such as, not include collection of card details with the user’s consent for a free-subscription with the objective of reducing friction at a later stage of paying for the subscription, as a dark pattern.
  • Amending the illustrations under ‘interface interference’ to ensure that legitimate business practices (maximising user engagement without any objective of misleading/deceiving) are kept out of the scope of dark pattern.
  • Amending the illustrations under ‘baith and switch’ to ensure that a situation where the price of a product goes up or the product goes out of stock while the user was deciding to complete the payment, is not a dark pattern unless the availability of that product was falsely stated in the first place.
  • Amending the definition of ‘drip pricing’ to account for different types of goods and services offered on e-commerce platforms, where elements of price may vary based on user choices and therefore cannot be revealed upfront.
  • Amending the definition and illustrations on 'nagging' to make it unambiguous, account for legitimate reasons for repeated reminders to a user.

 

Applicability: The Guidelines will apply to all platforms, advertisers and sellers. These terms have the same meaning as under the e-Commerce (Consumer Protection) Rules 2020 and the Guidelines for Prevention of Misleading Advertisements and Endorsements for Misleading Advertisements, 2022. For reference, platform means an online interface in the form of any software including a website or a part thereof and applications including mobile applications.

Prohibition: The Guidelines prohibit any person, including any platform, from engaging in any dark pattern. Any person, including any platform, shall be considered to be engaging in a dark pattern if it engages in any specified practices.

Defining Dark patterns: dark patterns have been defined as “any practices or deceptive design pattern using user interface or user experience interactions on any platform that is designed to mislead or trick users to do something they originally did not intend or want to do, by subverting or impairing the consumer autonomy, decision making or choice, amounting to misleading advertisement or unfair trade practice or violation of consumer rights.”

13 specified practices have been defined as dark patters, along with illustrations:

  1. False urgency
  2. Basket Sneaking
  3. Confirm Shaming
  4. Forced Action
  5. Subscription Trap
  6. Interface Interference
  7. Baith and Switch
  8. Drip pricing
  9. Disguised Ads
  10. Nagging
  11. Trick questions
  12. SaaS billing
  13. Rogue Malwares

A copy of the Guidelines is attached below for reference. We are seeking industry’s feedback on the Guidelines and the likely impact. Kindly share your inputs by writing to garima@nasscom.in with a copy to policy@nasscom.in.

 


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Download Attachment

Dark Patterns Guidelines 2023.pdf

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Garima Prakash
Manager, Public Policy and Government Affairs

Reach out to me for all things policy about e-commerce, international trade, export controls, start-ups and fintech

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