Consumers increasingly face “dark patterns” because on-line user interfaces are designed to deceive consumers to take decisions that are not in their favour but serve companies’ commercial interest. The use of unfair practices to distort consumers’ economic behaviour is not new, but it takes a new important dimension as a result of the massive collection of data and the use of technology to build consumer profiles and anticipate consumer behaviour. EU consumer law already has partial capacity to address these situations, but it is currently not sufficiently enforced. In addition, EU law must be updated to tackle these unfair practices and ensure consumers are not harmed by misleading user interfaces and data personalisation techniques. […] This paper provides recommendations, both for better enforcement and reform, on how to tackle this problem from a horizontal consumer law perspective.
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Dark Patterns and the EU Consumer Law Acquis: Recommendations for Better Enforcement and Reform
The use of unfair practices to distort consumers’ economic behaviour is not new, but it takes a new important dimension as a result of the massive collection of data and the use of technology to build consumer profiles and anticipate consumer behaviour. EU consumer law already has partial capacity to address these situations, but it is currently not sufficiently enforced. In addition, EU law must be updated to tackle these unfair practices and ensure consumers are not harmed by misleading user interfaces and data personalisation techniques.