Dark patterns : light to be found in Europe's consumer protection regime

Abstract

Much of the academic scholarship on the regulation of 'dark patterns' has focused on privacy and data protection legislation. The term 'Dark patterns' has been deployed to describe 'deceptive' and 'manipulative' design techniques implemented in a way that led to a user's behaviour that would not have happened without the dark pattern. Scholars use the term broadly and informally: 'tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you didn't mean to, like buying or signing up for something'. They are also defined broadly and formally: for example, Gray et al. state that dark patterns are 'interface designs that try to guide end-users into desired behaviour through malicious interaction flows. [Excerpt from the Introduction]