Impact of Ban: Now misleading advertisements and offers will not be seen in the country. Although consumers will take advantage of this, companies have started looking for ways to deal with this ban.
Impact of Ban on Dark Pattern: The government has banned the use of dark pattern in the country to protect the interests of customers. This will greatly benefit the customers. But, a problem has arisen for e-commerce companies. According to the new guidelines, advertisements that mislead customers will no longer be visible.
Also, no such scheme will be presented to the customers, in which the terms and conditions are changed later. There is also a provision for a fine of Rs 10 lakh in the new rules. Since this directive is applicable to a very large industry, its effects will also be very wide. In the coming time, many complaints will come to the government and the work of control will increase.
What difference will it make to companies?
E-commerce companies will have to change their marketing strategy due to the introduction of these new rules. There will also be technical changes in the user interface. A lot of money will be spent on these. On Friday, the government had banned the use of dark patterns. The new guideline will be applicable to all goods and services. This will have a direct impact on advertising companies and sellers. They will also have to completely change their advertising policy.
What is dark pattern?
Deceptive advertisements and offers are called dark patterns. In this, customers are misled into making purchases. The Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) has stated in its notification that people are being fooled in 13 ways. In September the number of these dark patterns was 10. These include false promises, false claims, selling something as if it is lacking, advertising by hiding conditions, drip pricing and luring people into buying, etc.
Getting these implemented is like a mountain of work.
Implementing the new guidelines is going to prove like climbing a mountain for the government. Thousands of companies work in the e-commerce sector. These include companies ranging from giants like Amazon and Flipkart to those working at a very small level. People advertise for sales on all social media websites including Instagram. Keeping an eye on all these and acting on complaints is not going to be an easy task.
This decision is against ease of doing business
Dark pattern was used for the first time in the year 2010. In this, online platforms aroused curiosity among people by hiding half the matter. This trend became successful rapidly and after this almost every small and big company joined this game. After this, there was a flood of offers like ‘Hurry up, this discount will end in just 1 hour’. This not only increased the traffic of the website. In fact, people also started buying something or the other.
Now most of the companies are saying in hushed tones that this new decision is against the ‘ease of doing business’. However, it is feared that companies will not make technical and marketing changes on such a large scale. Most people will try to make such small changes so that the snake also dies and the stick does not break. When this issue was being discussed at the beginning of the year, the Asia Internet Coalition (AIC) had called it unnecessary regulatory strictness. AIC includes big companies like Google, Meta, Amazon and X.
