Department of Consumer Affairs (DoCA) along with the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) hosted an interactive consultation with stakeholders on “Dark Patterns” in Mumbai.
About Dark patterns
- Dark patterns encompass a wide range of manipulative practices such as drip pricing, disguised advertising, bait and click, choice manipulation, false urgency and privacy concerns.
Some major types of Dark Patterns:
- Urgency: This tactic creates a sense of urgency or scarcity to pressure consumers into making a purchase or taking an action.
- Basket Sneaking: Websites or apps use dark patterns to add additional products or services to the shopping cart without user consent.
- Confirm Shaming: It involves guilt as a way to make consumers adhere. It criticizes or attack consumers for not conforming to a particular belief or viewpoint.
- Forced Action: This involves forcing consumers into taking an action they may not want to take, such as signing up for a service in order to access content.
- Nagging: It refers to persistent, repetitive and annoyingly constant criticism, complaints, requests for action.
- Subscription Traps: This tactic makes it easy for consumers to sign up for a service but difficult for them to cancel it, often by hiding the cancellation option or requiring multiple steps.
- Interface Interference: This tactic involves making it difficult for consumers to take certain actions, such as canceling a subscription or deleting an account.
- Bait and Switch: This involves advertising one product or service but delivering another, often of lower quality.
- Hidden Costs: This tactic involves hiding additional costs from consumers until they are already committed to making a purchase.
- Disguised Ads: Disguised ads are advertisements that are designed to look like other types of content, such as news articles or user-generated content.
