Default decisions-prevalent and influential in areas varying from retirement program designs and organ donation policies to consumer choice. While past research has shown the reason for these no-action defaults mattering due to effort and implied endorsement, there is a dearth of this in relation to reference dependence, i.e. how the default choice can serve as a reference for determining whether the other choices will be positively or negatively evaluated. In the article, the researchers demonstrate how reference dependence can increase the effectiveness of default decisions.

The world seemingly becomes more consumer-friendly with each generation as businesses take more and more measures to ensure customers are left with a positive experience. Despite our technological advancement and understanding of human nature, it’s still common to see deception in digital products. To understand digital deception (and better define it), we surveyed 536 people to measure and discuss people’s understanding of this matter.

The research conducted for this study is significant because it shows that dark patterns are prevalent and increasingly used by traders of all sizes and not only large platforms. According to the mystery shopping exercise, 97% of the most popular websites and apps used by EU consumers deployed at least one dark pattern and more importantly identified that it was rare to find one dark pattern used in isolation as multiple were often featured on a site. Altogether, it sheds light on the prevalence of dark patterns in the digital world and how a large number of internet players have a hand in this phenomenon.

The Guidelines offer practical recommendations to designers and users of social media platforms on how to assess and avoid ‘dark patterns’ in social media interfaces that infringe on GDPR requirements. It is important to note that the list of dark patterns and best practices, as well as the use cases, are not exhaustive. Social media providers remain responsible and accountable for ensuring the GDPR compliance of their platforms.

In this report, an analysis of a sample of settings in Facebook, Google, and Windows 10 was undertaken. It was shown how dark patterns, techniques and features of interface design meant to manipulate users are used to nudge users toward privacy intrusive options. Based on this, the findings reveal privacy intrusive default settings, misleading wording, giving users an illusion of control, hiding privacy-friendly options, take it-or-leave it choices, and choice architectures where choosing the privacy-friendly option requires more effort from users.

In the past years, regulators around the world found a new focal point in addressing online information asymmetries. This focal point is dark patterns. As this inspired a widespread interest that brings together human-computer interaction, web measurement, data protection, consumer protection, competition law, and behavioral economics – to name a few relevant disciplines – the authors decided to focus this consumer update on this topic. With the help of Cristiana Santos, who is an expert in the conceptualization and detection of dark patterns as privacy violations, they have written a short summary of the research in the field, regulatory concerns, as well as brief critical reflections showing where more attention should be paid.

In two preregistered online experiments the authors investigated the effects of three common design nudges (default, aesthetic manipulation, obstruction) on users’ consent decisions and their perception of control over their personal data in these situations. In the first experiment (N = 228) they explored the effects of design nudges towards the privacy-unfriendly option (dark patterns) and in the second, they reversed the direction of the design nudges towards the privacy-friendly option, titled “bright patterns”. Through this and overall, findings suggest that many current implementations of cookie consent requests do not enable meaningful choices by internet users, and are thus not in line with the intention of the EU policymakers. They also explore how policymakers could address the problem.

This article outlines and explores the limits of dark patterns- which it describes as the specific ethical phenomenon which supplants user value in favour of shareholder value. It also analyses the corpus of practitioner-defined dark patterns and determines the ethical concerns raised in these examples. Additionally, it identifies the examples which simply fall under a wide range of ethical issues raised by practitioners that were frequently conflated under the umbrella term of dark patterns. At the same time, the researchers acknowledge that UX designers may be complicit in these manipulative or unreasonably persuasive techniques and concludes then, with implications of educating user experience designers and a proposal for broadening research on the ethics of user experience.

Dark patterns are common in everyday digital experiences, and they present a new challenge to emerging global privacy laws, particularly the European Union (EU) data protection framework and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The author contends that while there is an apparent lack of legal tools to deal with dark patterns, the current framework can be amended to identify and curb them, especially through a refinement of the requisites for lawfulness of consent and the reformulation of the fairness principle in data protection.

The author in this paper takes an interesting stance relating to dark patterns and the subject of online privacy- that the current online consent mechanisms do not permit data subjects to think, decide, and choose according to their internal beliefs, therefore impairing essential individual freedoms or capabilities. Cognitive limitations, information overload, information sufficiency, lack of intervenability and lack of free choice are identified as major shortcomings of consent in privacy. Based on these findings, the author proposes a methodology to evaluate old or new design measures to improve consent and reinstall freedoms of thought, decision and choice.