To crack down on dark patterns, European Commission needs design researchers

 

As it prepares to enforce the Digital Services Act (DSA), the European Commission should hire expertise in user design and user experience, as these skills are essential to cracking down on deceptive design practices.

Claire Pershan is the EU advocacy lead at the Mozilla Foundation, and Caroline Sinders is a critical designer and human rights researcher. 

Unlike the EU’s privacy regulation, which left enforcement to member states, the DSA will see the Commission become a regulatory authority. It will oversee the compliance of “very large online platforms” and “very large online search engines”, defined as those with over 45 million users in the EU.  (...)