Dark Patterns and the Legal Requirements of Consent Banners: An Interaction Criticism Perspective

Abstract

User engagement with data privacy and security through consent banners has become a ubiquitous part of interacting with internet services. While previous work has addressed consent banners from either interaction design, legal, and ethics-focused perspectives, little research addresses the connections among multiple disciplinary approaches, including tensions and opportunities that transcend disciplinary boundaries. In this paper, we draw together perspectives and commentary from HCI, design, privacy and data protection, and legal research communities, using the language and strategies of "dark patterns" to perform an interaction criticism reading of three different types of consent banners. Our analysis builds upon designer, interface, user, and social context lenses to raise tensions and synergies that arise together in complex, contingent, and conflicting ways in the act of designing consent banners. We conclude with opportunities for transdisciplinary dialogue across legal, ethical, computer science, and interactive systems scholarship to translate matters of ethical concern into public policy.

18 pages

References in corpus (5)

• Dark Patterns after the GDPR: Scraping Consent Pop-ups and Demonstrating their Influence
• (Un)informed Consent: Studying GDPR Consent Notices in the Field
• End User Accounts of Dark Patterns as Felt Manipulation
• Tracking Walls, Take-It-Or-Leave-It Choices, the GDPR, and the ePrivacy Regulation
• Dark and Bright Patterns in Cookie Consent Requests

Cited by in corpus (16)

• End User Accounts of Dark Patterns as Felt Manipulation
• An Ontology of Dark Patterns Knowledge: Foundations, Definitions, and a Pathway for Shared Knowledge-Building
• Defending Against the Dark Arts: Recognising Dark Patterns in Social Media
• Transparent AI Disclosure Obligations: Who, What, When, Where, Why, How
• Linguistic Dead-Ends and Alphabet Soup: Finding Dark Patterns in Japanese Apps
• Deceived by Immersion: A Systematic Analysis of Deceptive Design in Extended Reality
• Level Up or Game Over: Exploring How Dark Patterns Shape Mobile Games
• A Comparative Study of How People With and Without ADHD Recognise and Avoid Dark Patterns on Social Media
• Thou Shalt Not Reject: Analyzing Accept-Or-Pay Cookie Banners on the Web
• Regulating Algorithmic Management: A Multi-Stakeholder Study of Challenges in Aligning Software and the Law for Workplace Scheduling
• Needle in the Haystack: Analyzing the Right of Access According to GDPR Article 15 Five Years after the Implementation
• Deceptive, Disruptive, No Big Deal: Japanese People React to Simulated Dark Commercial Patterns
• Identifying the Barriers to Human-Centered Design in the Workplace: Perspectives from UX Professionals
• AccessShare: Co-designing Data Access and Sharing with Blind People
• Harmful Terms and Where to Find Them: Measuring and Modeling Unfavorable Financial Terms and Conditions in Shopping Websites at Scale
• Mind Games! Exploring the Impact of Dark Patterns in Mixed Reality Scenarios