How Do You Break Free From Dark Patterns?
6 Jun 2025 6:15 AM IST
Ever found yourself in this position – you want to read something behind a paywall, so you begrudgingly sign up for a subscription. It’s so easy peasy. But when you try to cancel, it’s as if the site is actively working against you?
That’s not a coincidence, but rather, an intentional design strategy, called a ‘dark pattern’.
I’m your host Kudrat Wadhwa and you’re listening to The Signal Daily. We don’t do hot takes. Instead, we’ll bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends.
In the latest episode, we’ll learn about dark patterns. What are they and what laws exist in India to protect consumers? What can you do if you spot one?
NOTE: A machine transcribed this episode. A human has looked at this text but there might still be errors. Please refer to the audio above, if you need to clarify something. If you want to give us feedback, please write to us at [email protected].
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TRANSCRIPT
Kudrat (Host): Last year, I wanted to read this article about the mango trade in ancient India. But the problem was the piece was behind a paywall, and the only way to access it was to get a subscription to the magazine that had published it. Thankfully, they had a free trial option, so I signed up for the week-long free trial.
In my calendar, I marked the date that I would be charged the next week. A day before that particular date, I went to that website and clicked on what I thought was the unsubscribe button. I moved on with my life.
Well, that was until I checked my bank account at the end of the month and saw that the publication had charged me that hefty monthly subscription fee. Even though I thought I’d canceled it!
I was upset. I went back on the website, and tried to unsubscribe once again. This time, I couldn’t even find the unsubscribe button!
What happened to me was particularly egregious. But, companies engage in such unethical behaviour all the time. Think of that one time you added something to your cart, but when you tried to pay, you saw that the final cost was a lot higher than what you had originally signed up for? Or how some companies automatically sign you up for their newsletters, and then make it impossible for you to stop receiving their constant bombardment of emails.
That sort of user design is rather common, and it’s one an American designer Harry Brignull called ‘dark patterns,’ meaning a type of design that nudges consumers toward making choices against their own interest.
In 2023, the Department of Consumer Affairs in India published guidelines that put dark patterns under the broader umbrella of unethical advertising and forbade companies from engaging in them. But unfortunately, dark patterns are still very prevalent.
Kudrat (Host): My name is Kudrat Wadhwa and you’re listening to The Signal Daily. We don’t do hot takes. Instead, we’ll bring you deep dives into the how and why of consumer trends.
In this episode, we’ll learn about how companies engage in false advertising using ‘dark patterns.’ What regulation exists in India to stop that? What can a consumer like you do if you fall prey to such UI design?
Kudrat (Host): If you’re a person who’s used the internet, which is most of us, you’ve probably come across a dark pattern, whether you realized it or not.
Ambika, a 30-year old PhD student, says that Google essentially pushed her into signing up for a drive subscription. BTW, we were outside when I interviewed her, hence the background noise.
Ambika: I recently, uh, I tried a Google Drive subscription, uh, because, uh, my email was stuck.
I was not getting any email, uh, and. So once you get, so it's easier to get onto the payment because what they do for, uh, you to get a subscription is give you multiple nudges.
Kudrat: Signing up for the subscription was easy peasy, but when she tried to cancel it, Google made it very challenging.
Ambika: When you have to cancel that subscription, um, that is, uh, extremely complicated because you don't get, uh, an option to do that in your, uh, in the, in the kind of portion of the account. So, um, if you are doing the subscription through storage, then the cancellation of that.
Subscription is not happening through storage. It is happening through the area in which they're, uh, talking about payments. Yeah. And then you have to go onto that tab and then, uh, go on to what, uh, subscription subscriptions you've paid for. And it's not very straightforward to find at all. I mean, I am. Clearly an educated person. It took me, I think a good like 15, 20 minutes to attempts to try and find, um, the cancellation area.
Kudrat: What Google did in Ambika’s case would fall under something ASCI or the Advertising Council of India calls a ‘Subscription Trap’, meaning how companies deceive users into subscribing to a recurring service without them fully grasping the ongoing commitment, and how they make cancelling the subscription very difficult. ASCI isn’t a govt authority but rather, a voluntary self-regulatory organization of the advertising industry in India, which works closely with the govt.
In August 2024, ASCI published a very comprehensive report on dark patterns. That’s nine months after the Department of Consumer Affairs published its guidelines for prevention and regulation of dark patterns in 2023. Dark patterns, btw, aren’t just an issue in India. Even the US’s FTC or Federal Trade Commission and the EU’s Digital Services Act have tried to tackle this issue.
Now, back to ASCI’s 2024 report. The report found that despite the fact dark patterns were illegal, 52 out of the 53 apps that ASCI studied, continued to exhibit that behavior.
In total, the report studied 12 dark patterns, which include Privacy Deception, meaning manipulating users into unknowingly sharing more personal data than intended. There’s also Interface Interference, meaning highlighting certain parts of the interface and hiding others, misdirecting users into taking an action, drip pricing, meaning revealing additional fees gradually throughout the purchase process, making the final price higher than what was originally quoted. And, False urgency, meaning creating a sense of artificial pressure, based on time or stock availability, to manipulate users into making rushed decisions.
As an example, have you noticed how flight booking companies sometimes say there’s only one or two seats available, which then forces you to book asap. But a few days later, you see that there’s still seats available. That’s what ASCI would call false urgency.
I’ve only listed a couple such dark patterns, and there’s more too. We’ll link ASCI’s report in the show notes if you want to learn more.
Kudrat: Before we go further, let’s try to understand dark patterns properly. They didn’t just come out of nowhere, right? They’ve evolved alongside the digital world.
So, how did we get here? Here’s Trishaljeet Singh talking about this. Trishal is a lawyer with Lawrbit, a company that helps businesses understand regulation.
Trishal: to understand the subject, we need to really look at how digital, you know, design and business models have shifted over the last, uh, 20 years.
Right? And if you, if you are, you know, a millennial kid, you would know that most of the websites. At that time were very basic and wasn't much, you know, personalized and design was largely about usability, you know, and, and it had made it easier for the users to, you know, find what they were looking. Now when we are into, uh, today in 2025 and we see the, you know, rise of data-driven business models, particularly the advertising based ones, the more time you have spent on the platform the more data you have given up there.
So that's when the design started to become a tool, not just for helping users, but fostering them.
Kudrat: In its nascent stage, the internet was simple. But, when companies started using behavioural psychology, that’s when things became complicated. Of course, not every button out there meant to push you in a certain direction is necessarily unethical. There’s a difference between unethical ‘dark patterns’ and more ethical ‘light patterns.’
Trishal: I would say that the main difference is the intent, right? Light patterns are the designs or. Choices made to help users make informed decisions easily. Okay. It is there to guide the users to transparently use it and you know, it respects their choice. And if I have to give example of a light pattern is, you know, there has to be a clear cancel subscription button.
Uh, that's easy to find and completes the cancellation quickly because what happens these days is you are very easily able to subscribe to any, any of the apps, but you want to, if you wanna cancel the subscription you phone or you won't be able to find that button. It would be either a small, smaller in size, or maybe in some kind of color, which will merge with the background.
Kudrat (Host): Of course, it’s not that easy to identify and regulate dark patterns. Regulators have to walk a tightrope between balancing consumer and business interests.
In India, the first regulation came in 2019, when the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India or the IRDAI prohibited companies from using pre-checked boxes to sell insurance. ASCI has been researching on this topic and publishing reports for many years, and in November 2023, the Department of Consumer Affairs or DoCA published an extensive list of guidelines prohibiting companies from using dark patterns.
That’s not all. As early as last week, Union Minister Prahlad Joshi met 50 e-commerce players. In the meeting, he asked them to conduct internal audits on their usage of dark patterns and submit yearly reports to the Department of Consumer Affairs.
Kudrat (Host): Since the Department of Consumer Affairs released their guidelines in 2023, some companies have changed their behavior. But, that’s far from the norm.
ASCI’s report found that out of the 53 apps they studied 52 still used dark patterns. And, these weren’t obscure apps, but rather popular websites like Amazon, Nykaa, Myntra, Ola, Uber and so on.
So, what will make these companies change? Here’s the CEO of ASCI, Manisha Kapoor, talking to The Signal Daily on this topic.
Manisha: Greater awareness of the guidelines, uh, and understanding as to why these are not necessarily in their own long-term interest. Because eventually consumers do have a poor experience if they see these kind of, um, interfaces and therefore eventually they feel that the online space may not be as safe for them as they thought or they, they would expect to be.
So in that sense, there is, I think, a real incentive. For organizations to be compliant with these, uh, guidelines to actually create a better online experience for their own consumers.
Kudrat (Host): Dark patterns are harmful to both consumers as well as to businesses too. For us, consumers, dark patterns push us toward making decisions that go against our interests. They also make the internet an annoying place to be in.
In the long term, they erode our trust in the online space and in the companies that engage in dark patterns too.
In short, they’re not good, for anyone.
To give them their fair due, the government is doing something, as are organisations like ASCI, by conducting regular reports and keeping an eye out for people like us.
But, what can we do too? As consumers? When we spot a dark pattern?
Kudrat: Let's say I come across or I get stuck in a subscription cycle that, you know, I had only signed up for the free trial. So who can I complain to about that and what should I do?
Manisha: So depending on the dark pattern that you encounter. Uh, so as I said, advertising related, dark patterns, you know, you, a consumer could complain to asci on our website there is, you know, a button that you can press to register your complaint.
So it's quite simple. It's assisted by a bot in case you need assistance in, uh, filling out the complaint. Um, so that's something that can be done by consumers and. For both advertising and other kind of dark patterns that you encounter that are prohibited, uh, under the CCPA guidelines, then, you know, the consumers could write to the CCPA, um, or register a complaint on the National consumer helpline.
So those are ways in which the CCPA accepts consumer complaints, and those can be done for the CCPA to investigate, uh, besides this. Also has a fairly exhaustive sewer moto monitoring, uh, team, which is basically on the lookout for violations to our code. So we scan the environment, we look at various kind of violations that we are seeing, and um, in some cases, dark patterns may a part of those findings as well.
Kudrat (Host): The CCPA, btw is India’s Central Consumer Protection Authority.
Another tip that Manisha told The Signal Daily was that we should make sure to take screenshots and screen recordings of what we see. That’s also because everyone’s screen is different, and evidence like that would help ASCI’s case.
Kudrat (Host): The past two decades have seen some lightning fast changes in the online space. I remember as a kid, I would play a million games on my computer, totally uninterrupted by ads.
As companies have moved toward using and later misusing behavioural psychology, we’re also seeing them pushing us toward decisions that benefit them but go against our interest as consumers.
Thankfully, in India, we have some regulation around that and we are seeing the government taking some steps to fight dark patterns.
But, for now at least, those steps haven’t made a tremendous difference. Which means that we as consumers need to be aware of what a dark pattern is and what to do when when see one. As Ms Kapoor said, if you spot a dark pattern, make sure to take screenshots and screen recordings and go on ASCI’s website or the CCPA’s website and file a complaint.
Kudrat (Host): That’s all for today. You just heard The Signal Daily. We don’t do hot takes. Instead, we’ll bring you deep dives into the ‘how’ and ‘why’ on consumer trends.
The Core produces The Signal Daily. Follow us wherever you get your favourite podcasts. To check out the rest of our work, go to www.thecore.in.
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Thank you for listening.
