CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2023
| Author | Shyshka, Semen |
|---|---|
| Title | Unfair Design Practices and "Threat Flag" System as an Alternative Approach to Regulation of Dark UX/UI Patterns in the European Union |
| Summary | Over the last decade, the sector of e-commerce has risen dramatically. The reasons for that are not only the development of products and services, but are connected to consumers spending and sharing more due to so-called “dark UX/UI patterns”, namely design and interface practices intended to influence consumers’ choices for the benefit of e-commerce businesses. After some time, the EU authorities understood the risks associated with such practices and have accordingly adopted or amended various regulations in the field of e-commerce, consumer and data protection. Nevertheless, the regulation remains unclear and fragmentary, whereas its enforcement is non-systematic and often targeted against a particular group of e-commerce businesses. In response, this thesis proposes an alternative approach to regulation of “dark patterns” in terms of its definition, categorization, and liability of e-commerce businesses for its usage. The methodology of the thesis includes (i-ii) doctrinal legal research simultaneously with policy analysis; (iii) doctrinal and empirical research in the field of IT and psychology; and (iv) comparison of regulatory approaches between the EU and some of other jurisdictions. The first Chapter of the thesis explains the notion of “dark patterns” and proposes “unfair design practices” (UDPs) as a better legal term. The second Chapter summarizes the EU approach of regulating UDPs and elaborates on its deficiencies mentioned above. The third Chapter proposes an alternative categorization of UDPs depending on the level of threat to consumers, while providing arguments for its usefulness among other taxonomies, and the ways of incorporating the proposals into the current EU legal system. |
| Supervisor | Soave, Tommaso |
| Department | Legal Studies LLM |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2023/shyshka_semen.pdf |
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