Towards Key Contributing Factors in Identifying Dark Pattern Autonomy Violations under the EU Digital Services Act

Abstract

Dark patterns refer to design practices which undermine users’ ability to make autonomous and informed choices in relation to digital systems. The recent EU Digital Services Act (DSA) aims to protect users from such dark patterns and their effects. DSA Article 25 prohibits three autonomy violation types: deception, manipulation and distortion/impairment. However, for regulation of dark patterns, it is important to reason about why an observed design practice constitutes a particular autonomy violation type, to show that it indeed violates the DSA. In this work-in-progress, two experts (with HCI, CS and legal background) mapped 59 known dark patterns onto these three autonomy violation types. We then analysed our rationale for this mapping to identify eight design factors which can help determine the dark pattern autonomy violation(s). Our analysis aims to situate existing dark patterns knowledge within the DSA legal framework, to support regulation and compliance of such design practices.