DARK PATTERNS IN E-COMMERCE

The consumer affairs ministry recently urged top e-commerce players "to refrain from incorporating any design or pattern in the online interface that may fall in the category of dark patterns." It is also reportedly framing guidelines against such practices. Mukesh Jagota explains what dark patterns are and why the Centre wants to impose curbs

- Mukesh Jagota

What are dark patterns

THE 'DARK WEB' are common knowledge now. A common misconception is that 'dark patterns' in e-commerce is contraband e-commerce happening over the dark web. That isn't the case. Dark patterns are the everyday "manipulative practices" (as the government sees it) customers are subjected to at the hands of e-commerce and web services they patronise.

This manipulation takes on many forms and the ultimate goal of this is to make consumers spend more than they had originally intended by inducing greed, urgency and fear. Other forms of manipulation take the form of adding extras on purchases without explicit consent, hiding full costs and making the process of opting out of the subscriptions difficult.

How it commonly works