You must be aware that e-commerce is absolutely thriving right now and there are not just companies like Amazon, Walmart and others in the industry right now as small players are also emerging and selling their own products by creating their own e-commerce stores. However, we know that while these major e-commerce companies also known as aggregators follow a lot of rules and regulations, the others don’t comply that much with these standards and that is where the problem lies. For example, there are many tactics in the world of e-commerce which can be called upsells but they are essentially done by deceiving people.
As an example, there is a term called basket sneak in e-commerce which essentially means that when you add something to the cart and something else also gets added to the cart even if its free then this is known as basket sneak. Basically, this is done so that they can give you a free sample in the hopes that you like it and order it at full price the next time. Other example of a fraudulent tactic is confirm shaming which means when you buy flight tickets and you are asked to buy a travel insurance but if you don’t want to then you are shown a message of “keep me uninsured” instead of a confirmation. This is basically confirm shaming as they are shaming you into buying that insurance.
Now, the Indian Government has sprung into action and released a draft regulation against these practices and have stated that these regulations are meant for “deceptive design patterns using UI/UX (user interface/user experience) interactions on any platform; designed to mislead or trick users to do something they originally did not intend or want to do.” It is also reported that the Indian Government consulted “Google, Amazon, and Facebook on the draft guidelines, along with local e-commerce players Flipkart, RIL, Swiggy, Zomato, Ola, and Tata. All appear to have agreed that dark patterns should be prohibited, and have defined ten practices they think should be out of bounds” which means that these practices would be regulated soon.
