Impact of Ban on Dark Pattern: To protect the interests of customers, the government has banned the use of dark pattern in the country. 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 being implemented on 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 on the pretext that 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 ‘Hurry up, this discount will end in just 1 hour’ Like there was a flood of offers. 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 silently calling this new decision as ‘Ease of Doing Business’ Are telling against. 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 discussions in this regard were being held at the beginning of the year, Asia Internet Coalition (AIC) Had called it unnecessary regulatory strictness. AIC includes big companies like Google, Meta, Amazon and X.
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