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To protect the interests of consumers, the government has banned the use of “dark patterns” on e-commerce platforms that are aimed at deceiving customers or manipulating their choices.
In this regard, a gazette notification was issued by the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) on November 30 as “Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns”, which is applicable to all platforms offering goods and services in India and even advertisers and sellers.
Resorting to dark patterns would be treated as misleading advertisement or unfair trade practice or violation of consumer rights. Penalty will be imposed as per the provisions of the Consumer Protection Act.
“In the emerging digital commerce, dark patterns are increasingly being used by platforms to mislead consumers by manipulating their purchase choices and behaviour,” Consumer Affairs Secretary Rohit Kumar Singh told PTI.
He said the notified guidelines will ensure clarity in the minds of all stakeholders — buyer, seller, market and regulators — on what is and is not acceptable as unfair trade practices, and hold regulators accountable under the Consumer Protection Act.
According to the notification, dark pattern is defined as any practice or deceptive design pattern using user interface or user experience interaction on any platform that is designed to mislead or deceive users into doing something they did not originally intend to do, by impeding or disrupting consumer autonomy, decision making, or choice.
For example, ‘basket sneaking’ is a dark pattern that involves adding additional items such as products, services, donations or payments for charities at the time of checkout from the platform, without the user’s consent, thereby increasing the total amount payable by the user beyond the amount payable for the product or service selected by the user.
Another dark pattern called “forced action” means forcing a user to take an action that requires the user to purchase additional goods or subscribe or sign up for an unrelated service or share personal information in order to purchase or subscribe to the product or service the user originally intended.
Similarly, the CCPA has specified 13 dark patterns as guidance for the industry.
Initially, the CCPA identified 10 dark patterns, but added three more following public consultation.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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