Dark patterns – where privacy, consumer and competition laws meet

There are a lot of things to consider when designing online interfaces – not least compliance with data protection, consumer and competition laws. 

As part of a joint effort to encourage companies to design their online choice architecture (OCA) in a responsible and compliant manner, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) published a joint paper on Harmful Design in Digital Markets and announced a joint collaboration to tackle harmful practices as part of the Digital Regulation Cooperation Forum. 

Matthew Hunt, Alice Esuola-Grant and Elisa Lindemann analyse the paper, raising some concerns from the piece and discussing in more detail the Five key harmful OCA practices that featured in the paper.