By Dr. Tilottama Raychaudhuri and Ms. Shatakshi Johri

This decade has witnessed a steep hike in the use of deceptive and manipulative design techniques, broadly referred to as dark patterns. The purpose of such patterns is to play on consumer biases and coax consumers into decisions that they may not have otherwise taken, especially where such decisions entail negative consequences. To address this concern, there has been development of laws which prohibit the usage of dark patterns, including consumer, advertising and data protection laws. However, the jurisprudence in this regard is piecemeal. Dark patterns are an intrinsic feature of digital markets, and competition authorities too are addressing such practices, without calling them out as dark patterns. In this paper the authors conduct a cross jurisdictional examination of laws regulating dark patterns and point out the need for specific competition law regulation of dark patterns in India.

Keywords: Dark patterns, consumer behaviour, competition law, digital markets.

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