The topic of ethical design of online products, especially social networks and applications, has been in the focus of the professional public in recent years, in parallel with the affirmation of the well-being and safety of users as a priority of responsible business of technological giants. In the age of the "attention economy", when every second of our time has a financial value, insisting on a balance between customer care and increasing profits has become not only a matter of goodwill for companies like Meta, Alphabet and Amazon, but also the focus of clearly defined procedures and legal regulations. .
At the end of last year, the European Parliament overwhelmingly adopted the initiative that digital platforms must make an additional effort to create a less dependent environment - specifically, to reduce the application and impact of the so-called dark templates. "Dark Patterns" refers to the various strategies, organizations and placements of content online - this can be design that manipulates or strongly influences users to make certain choices, or ways in which software can subtly trick users into doing things they did not intend to do or discourage behavior that is bad for the company.
You must have come across "dark patterns" before - they are embedded in almost every online product or service and we, as users, practically do not notice them as a problem, but just the way things work. One of the frequent "dark patterns" is the endless scrolling on Xu, Instagram or Facebook that tempts us to keep scrolling through new and new posts or autoplay streaming service options, i.e. the automatic start of the next content when the previous one we were watching ends, which often tricks us into staying longer on the platform and watching "just one more episode" - when it has already started (by itself, without our decision). These are also different forms of notifications and attracting users back to the platform or service, which we find not only in the mechanisms of social networks, but also in the applications we use to learn languages, play or test popular knowledge.
The committee of the European Parliament dealing with consumer protection has been working for some time on the resolution on "Design of addictive Internet services", which should treat - and prevent - the use of "dark templates", especially in the domain of mechanisms that are designed to retain attention of users in order to spend as much time as possible on the platforms, at the same time limiting or making it difficult for users to control.
Tim Wu, a theorist of new media and audiences, says in one of his works that it is no coincidence that this is the time of the attention crisis, which produced the so-called homo distractus, a modern man whose attention span is getting shorter, and the constant checking of different devices or applications becomes a compulsive action.
The argument for passing the law is that while there are regulations for addictions, such as drugs, alcohol, tobacco or gambling, there were none for addiction to digital platforms and social media in particular. The comparison with slot machines is not accidental - each scroll is a kind of roulette, a continuous search for the next source of pleasure and "dopamine injection" caused in our organisms and brain by likes and positive comments or progress in an online game.
Green MEP Kim van Sparrentak, who heads the group for regulating the design of online services, believes that "no amount of self-discipline can overcome the addictive design of big technologies that we are all subject to every day".
The European Parliament is the first parliament to call for action against the addictive design of apps and smartphones, and the final proposal for a resolution on this topic is expected in 2024.
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