To protect the interest of consumers, the government has banned the use of “dark patterns” on e-commerce platforms that intend to cheat customers or manipulate their choice.
A gazette notification in this regard was issued by the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) on 30 November as a guideline for the prevention and regulation of dark patterns “that applies to all platforms that offer goods and services and even advertisers and vendors in India.
Resorting dark patterns will lead to an advertisement or inappropriate business practice or violation of consumer rights violations. The penalty will be imposed as per the provisions of the Consumer Protection Act.
Consumer Affairs Secretary Rohit Kumar Singh told PTI, “In emerging digital commerce, dark patterns are being used by platforms to manipulate consumers by manipulating their purchase options and behavior.”
Notified guidelines will ensure clarity in the minds of all stakeholders – buyers, sellers, markets and regulators – as is not acceptable as unfair trade practices, later responsible under the Consumer Protection Act, he said.
According to the notification, the dark pattern is defined as any practice or misleading design pattern using a user interface or user experience on any platform, designed to mislead or trick users, which they basically do not intend to do or wanted to do so, affecting consumer autonomy, decisions or choice.
For example, ‘basket secret’ is a dark pattern that includes additional items such as products, services, payments, or donations at the time of checkout from a platform, such as the total amount payable by the user is higher than the amount payable for the product or service selected by the user.
Another dark pattern called “Forces Action” means forcing the user to take an action, which will require the user to buy any additional goods or to subscribe or sign up for an unrelated service or share individual information, so that the user is basically purchased or granted by the user.
Similarly, CCPA has only specified 13 dark patterns to provide a guidance to the industry.
Initially, CCPA identified 10 dark patterns but consisted of one and three after public consultation.
(This story is not edited by NDTV employees and auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
