In 2010, British designer Harry Brignull coined a handy new term for an everyday annoyance: dark patterns, meaning digital interfaces that subtly manipulate people. It became a term of art used by privacy campaigners and researchers. Now, more than a decade later, the coinage is gaining new, legal, heft.
Dark patterns come in many forms and can trick a person out of time or money, or into forfeiting personal data. A common example is the digital obstacle course that springs up when you try to nix an online account or subscription, such as for streaming TV, asking you repeatedly if you really want to cancel. A 2019 Princeton survey of dark patterns in ecommerce listed 15 types of dark patterns, including hurdles to canceling subscriptions and countdown timers to rush consumers into hasty decisions.
A new California law approved by voters in November will outlaw some dark patterns that steer people into giving companies more data than they intended. The California Privacy Rights Act is intended to strengthen the state’s landmark privacy law. The section of the new law defining user consent says that “agreement obtained through use of dark patterns does not constitute consent.”
That’s the first time the term dark patterns has appeared in US law, but likely not the last, says Jennifer King, a privacy specialist at the Stanford Institute for
Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence. “It’s probably going to proliferate,” she says.
State senators in Washington this month introduced their own state privacy bill—a third attempt at passing a law that, like California’s, is motivated in part by the lack of broad federal privacy rules. This year’s bill copies verbatim California’s prohibition on using dark patterns to obtain consent. A competing bill unveiled Thursday and backed by the ACLU of Washington does not include the term.