“The current formulation of the Draft Dark Pattern Guidelines will increase the regulatory burden on these online, e-commerce and digital advertising services. These additional regulatory compliances may stagnate the growth of India’s digital economy by having an adverse effect on the ease of doing business,” the Asia Internet Coalition (AIC), an industry association representing companies like Google, Amazon, Meta, Spotify, etc. said in its comments to India’s draft guidelines on regulation of dark patterns.
On September 8, the Department of Consumer Affairs (DoCA) had published draft guidelines for prevention and regulation of dark patterns. The department had sought public comments, suggestions and feedback on the proposed guidelines until October 5, 2023.
The AIC in its comments has highlighted two major concerns regarding the guidelines. One is the impact of the guidelines on ease of doing business in India for companies and the other, potential overlapping of regulatory norms in context of multiple laws that govern platforms.
Batting for self-regulation: The AIC has requested the DoCA to consider a self-regulatory framework as an initial step in combating dark patterns. Highlighting the evolving nature of technological workarounds used to deploy dark patterns, the industry body has said that self-regulation enables companies to periodically adopt their internal policies in response to such changes, and ensure accountability of platforms without additional compliance-burden.
The AIC also pointed out that self-regulation can allow platforms to regulate dark patterns in harmony with laws that online platforms already have to comply with. These include the IT Act 2000, Consumer Protection Act 2019 (CPA), and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP). Further, the members have also asked the DoCA to consider extending obligations of establishing consumer grievance redressal mechanism to advertisers too, in addition to platforms.