The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution has asked e-commerce companies to not use dark patterns on their platforms.
These unethical strategies are designed to exploit certain cognitive and behavioural biases to persuade users into purchasing goods and services they would typically not pay for.
Tech firms often use deceptive tactics to make users accept, for example, certain terms and conditions or products and services.
Social media companies and tech giants like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Skype, LinkedIn, Microsoft and Google have used dark patterns.
Another example of dark patterns is the unsolicited, sponsored messages one gets from influencers.
Dark patterns affect the user experience and even make them vulnerable to financial and data exploitation.
Right now, dark patterns have been noticed as part of misleading advertisements.