This series is designed to help people to understand modern technology, and become more confident in using computing devices. It is not designed to educate experts.
The author is involved in tutoring older students at SeniorNet, a New Zealand wide organisation. SeniorNet hopes that students will feel more confident in using their computing devices as a result of the learning opportunities offered. This series of articles shares that hope.
India is in consultation with some of the world’s largest companies, as well as many of its own companies, to identify and outlaw the use of dark patterns.
What the heck are dark patterns, I hear you ask?
These are tricky tactics designed to fool consumers as they transact online. Not sure why this is limited to online, though. There are plenty of examples of this in the bricks-and-mortar world, I would have thought.
What companies are being consulted, and what do they think about this practice?
Google, Amazon, and Facebook along with Indian e-commerce players Flipkart, RIL, Swiggy, Zomato, Ola, and Tata have been included in the consultation. They seem to have agreed that dark patterns should be prohibited, and have defined ten practices they think should be out of bounds, namely:
- False urgency – falsely stating or implying the sense of urgency or scarcity to mislead a user into making an immediate purchase or taking an immediate action, which may lead to a purchase;
- Basket sneaking – adding extra items, including charitable donations, to a virtual shopping basket before checkout;
- Confirm shaming – efforts to create a sense of fear or shame or ridicule or guilt in the mind of the user, to nudge them to buy a product or continue a subscription. The document offers the example of a message stating “I will stay unsecured” in response to declining to buy insurance as an example of confirm shaming;
- Forced action – requiring purchase of extra products or services as a condition of buying a user’s desired purchase;
- Subscription trap – making cancellation of subscriptions impossible or a complex and lengthy process;
- Interface interference – design elements that highlight, or obscure, certain information to misdirect users;
- Bait and switch – advertising a particular outcome based on the user’s action but deceptively serving an alternate outcome;
- Drip pricing – not revealing the full price, then adding to it as the purchase process proceeds;
- Disguised ads – ads disguised as user-generated content, news articles, or fake ads;
- Nagging – overloading users with options or offers to disrupt a transaction.
You will be familiar with some of these techniques if you have spent much time online. Trying to work out some of Google’s privacy and advert-limiting settings offers a master class in how this is done, so I guess the Indian Government decided to have the foxes show them how to guard the hen house, to mangle an overused metaphor.
Pity they didn’t invite some of the other masters of the dark arts, such as Microsoft with some of their past meaningless choice boxes, social sites other than Facebook/Meta, and so on.
Would we like to see some of these leak into the offline world as well? A couple that spring immediately to my mind are car prices excluding On Road Costs (try not paying this) and supermarket loyalty cards triggering a lower price (no one is forced to…).
Any movement to curb the many shady practices online is welcome, and if these curbs show in the offline world as well, that’s a win for the poor old consumer/taxpayer.
Good one, India.
PS. We have an election in full swing here in little ol’ New Zealand. Perhaps one of the parties could look at this, instead of trying to bribe us with our own money.
