The Department of Consumer Affairs of the Government of India published draft guidelines for the preventing and regulation of dark patterns. Responses can be submitted until 5th October, 2023.
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Personal comments - the draft guidelines are great place to start. If you’re interested in reading further, please look into Deceptive Patterns - Types of Deceptive Pattern and the existing laws around such dark patterns - Deceptive Patterns - Laws.
The only meaningful comment I have is to double check that the “Specified Dark Patterns” in Annexure I of the draft law fully overlap with existing categorizations in the deceptive.design website. For example, at first read, it looks like “False Urgency” from the “Specified Dark Patterns” should actually be split into “False Urgency” and “False Scarcity”.
See Collection of Dark Patterns and Unethical Design and Deceptive Patterns - Hall of Shame for examples of such dark patterns in popular websites/services.
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I’d said somewhere that after the net neutrality rules, this is perhaps the first tech policy that I fully and wholeheartedly agree with.
2 Likes
I’d said somewhere that after the net neutrality rules, this is perhaps the first tech policy that I fully and wholeheartedly agree with.
In the Tech Policy topic on the FOSS United Telegram channel