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Learn about dark patterns, fair patterns and much more

Willing to dig further on dark patterns? Here are curated resources, including hundreds of publications we analyzed in our R&D Lab, conferences, webinars and job opportunities to fight dark patterns.

noyb

None of your business’ is an EU- focused nonprofit whose activity against dark patterns includes not only research endeavours and raising awareness, but also filing complaints against erring organisations and companies. They have in the past instituted 422 formal GDPR complaints against websites featuring cookie banners which employed dark patterns to gain user consent. Noyb also responded to the EDPB’s call for feedback on the Guidelines 3/2022 on Dark Patterns in Social Media Platform interfaces: How to Recognise and Avoid Them. Its project on dark patterns which raises awareness, takes legal steps, and reaches out to erring organisations about their shortcomings have led to an increase in compliant cookie banners. noyb’s comments on the Draft Guidelines 3/2022 on Dark Patterns In Social Media Platform Interfaces: How To Recognize And Avoid Them (2022) Cookie Banners Project (2021-) noyb files 422 formal GDPR complaints on nerve-wrecking “Cookie Banners” (2021) noyb has an ‘Exercise Your Rights’ series which informs users about their rights and ways to enforce them.

World Wide Web Foundation

Founded on the ideals of open, safe, and empowering access to the web, the Web foundation has actively worked against dark patterns through raising awareness and other activities including hosting a hackathon focused on solutions to dark patterns in fields such as e-commerce, e-transactions, and flight aggregation platforms. These Initiatives provide an environment for experts, regulators, and other stakeholders to participate in building a suitable legal framework for dark patterns. In collaboration with stakeholders across Africa, they developed a policy brief which can be adopted by regulators the world over in tackling dark patterns. Its Tech Policy Design Lab also aims to conduct a range of workshops to design policies and prototypes to tackle deceptive designs and publishes takeaways of its workshops on the Design Lab’s website. World Wide Web Foundation Tech Policy Design Lab on Dark Patterns Contact: techlab@webfoundation.org

CPDP2023 (Organised by Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT), University of Luxembourg)

This event is scheduled to hold on the 24th of May, 2023 at 08:45 a.m.

This discussion will address concerns about how we might detect, test, measure and regulate digital influences reliably when they are so varied, while identifying what constitutes manipulation is often based on more or less paternalistic views. It also will aim to consider • Attributes we can leverage to reliably measure the presence of dark patterns in digital services • Which legal, technical and design instruments we need to quantify dark patterns’ harms at large • How we might determine the risks engendered by dark patterns and whether there are particularly vulnerable users • How might we detect manipulation and potential for harm in emerging technologies?

CPDP2023 (Organised by ALTI - VU Amsterdam (NL))

This event is scheduled to hold on the 25th of May, 2023 by 17:15

This panel contextualises deceptive design through the lenses of regulation and fundamental rights, while offering insights into how the EU’s digital design acquis could be enforced to fight online manipulation. It considers: • Is the emerging legal regime of the EU for regulating digital design (e.g. DSA, UCPD, GDPR, AI Act) sufficient to regulate manipulation? • How do we develop a test for courts to determine if users are affected by the use of deceptive design or in the alternative, should regulators embrace the development of a legal test to determine online manipulation? • What is the relationship between profiling and deceptive design, and how does this relationship affect the regulation of deceptive design? • What is the role of fundamental rights in regulating deceptive design?

#CPDP2023 (Organised by Inria)

This event will hold on the 26th of May, 2023 by 08:45

This panel aims to discuss the unified definitions of dark patterns and analyze which evidence can be legally relevant for regulators to protect data subjects from such manipulative practices. It will consider: • How do existing and upcoming Data Protection and Consumer laws regulate the presence of dark patterns? • Are there unified and acceptable definitions of dark patterns for policy makers and regulators? • What kind of evidence of dark patterns has been so far acceptable for policy makers and regulators? • Which empirical research insights can be useful to gather evidence of dark patterns?

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