Unpacking The Illusion: A Legal Deconstruction Of Dark Patterns In Food Delivery Apps And India's Consumer Exploitation
Rapid digital adoption and adaptation is occurring in urban consumption on the backdrop of an expanding array of highly intricate electronic marketplace. In this new digitally-driven landscape, food delivery services and other digital interfaces are in process of dictating Indian consumer tastes by using deceitful interfaces referred to as 'dark patterns' which are cognitive-lock-in tactics utilized to influence consumer choice with the aim of cultivating impulse buying behaviors. The present legal research paper, will be discussing the wide ramifications, legal, economic, and regulatory, which emanate from the use of dark patterns in the largest food delivery services of India.
The established doctrines of caveat emptor provided scant remedies for digital manipulation which were hitherto used by market players until the introduction of the new Consumer Protection Act, 2019 1 in India and subsequently guidelines and directions from the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) 2 following, to a degree, the benchmarks for addressing platform based manipulations laid by the Digital Services Act in the European Union 3 .
Notwithstanding to the fact that, a gap in the Indian legal framework on the methods of enforcement of manipulations of interface design and hidden costs of dark patterns presented is discovered in this research paper. This paper is an attempt to observe and bring about the existence of such interface design elements which tricks and draws the Indian consumers into the forced continuity loop usage patterns and bypass the acquiring of an 'informed consent'. Such type of research is performed based on the method of doctrinal and analytical research which resulted after a critical and detailed review of the various statutes, guidelines, industry reports and by taking into account the observation of Parliament Standing Committee Report for establishing and determining the extent to which, manipulation of software and algorithmic designs can be argued to infringe upon the choices and autonomy of the Indian digital consumer based upon the efficiency and framework established under the Indian regime to counter such form of manipulation.
Through this research paper, it has been noted that the Indian competition regulators acknowledge this problem of misleading user interface design but are unable to address it due to lacuna in enforcement mechanisms and absence of concrete statutory penalties which has to some extent led to the uncontrolled proliferation of such an interface design pattern across India.
This paper finally proposes various policy interventions which must be instituted such as mandatory UI/UX Audits, establishing clear definitions of dark pattern taxonomies and imposing higher penalties and administrative fines.