CCPC warns about dark marketing practices online

[Paul F]

So the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission is spending some time scouring the websites of Irish retailers looking for dark patterns.

Retailer websites swept for ‘dark patterns’ by consumer watchdog

Manipulative trading practices push consumers to make choices they might not do otherwise

www.irishtimes.com

 

[NoRegretsCoyote]

From the story some detail on these shady practices:

The first is fake countdown timers, which are designed to create a sense of urgency by falsely presenting an offer as time limited.

The second is a false hierarchy, which is when consumers are nudged to click on the trader’s preferred option by making it much more prominent, whether through visual design, colours or language.


The third is the hiding of information on a product or service by making it less visible by using very small fonts or placing information in a less prominent section of the website or application.

I mean who ever heard of such evils before the internet?!

 

[Brendan Burgess]

The CCPC has no sense of priorities.

Next they will be complaining about supermarkets putting their own brands at eye-level and other brands at the bottom of the shelf.

Or the siting of the bakery close to the front door so that people are attracted in.

Or big stickers saying "price reduced."

Or the use of celebrities to endorse products which people wouldn't otherwise buy.

What about Irish borrowers paying the highest mortgage rates in the eurozone? When asked, they said it was not something they would allocate resources to. They only studied it when asked by the government and then produced a useless report.

But what about conning people with cash-back?

What about describing a product as a "one year discounted tracker" when there was no discount - just a tracker for a year?

And what about the 30,000 people who unfairly lost trackers? There wasn't a peep out of the CCPC over that.