Rossana Ducato (Université Catholique de Louvain and Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles) & Enguerrand Marique (UCLouvain) have posted Come to the Dark Side: We Have Patterns. Choice Architecture and Design for (Un)Informed Consent on SSRN. here is the abstract:
How many times have you clicked on the “Next” button of a webgallery and then discovered that you have activated a subscription for some silly ringtones? If this is your case (or the case of “that” friend of yours who told you about it), you have probably experienced the frustration of being screwed by a dark pattern.
Dark patterns are choice architectures used by many websites and apps that exploit individuals’ biases and heuristics to maliciously push users into doing something that otherwise they would not have done, if properly informed. Such practices are becoming particularly controversial in the data protection domain, where users are de facto forced to give consent and accept a specific privacy setting, decided by the operator of the website or the app. After falling in one of these behavioural design traps, the users’ trust into technology will be affected and requires therefore to be protected in order to sustain the digital revolution.
On the basis of an empirical analysis of a set of social media, e-commerce websites, sharing economy platforms and IoT devices, this contribution undertakes to outline a taxonomy of dark patterns for consent. We argue how some of such strategies for obtaining the consent do not meet the requirements established under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In particular, we will highlight how the architecture design may conflict with the principle of “freely given” consent (Article 4.11 GDPR).
However, design, as technology, is neither bad nor good nor neutral. Hence, if it could show the path pattern to the dark side, we address how to reverse engineer such processes in order to support webusers’ trust. Therefore, in the wake of the principles of data protection by design and data protection by default, this contribution proposes some good practices and examples of design and choice architecture for “bright(er) patterns”.
Very interesting and recommended.