Dark Patterns: Light to be found in Europe’s Consumer Protection Regime

Abstract

Defined as ‘tricks used in websites and apps that make you do things that you did not mean to, like buying or signing up for something’, much of the academic scholarship on the regulation of ‘dark patterns’ has focussed on privacy and data protection legislation. The term has been deployed to describe ‘deceptive’ and ‘manipulative’ design techniques implemented in a way that led to a user behaviour that would not have happened without the dark pattern. This article analyses to what extent the current EU Consumer Protection acquis is placed to make a substantial and complementary contribution towards curtailing the use of dark patterns. We do so through the lens of the European Commission’s adoption of a ‘New Deal for Consumers’ which strengthens enforcement mechanisms of EU consumer law and modernises the EU’s consumer protection rules in view of market developments