A study by the Fédération romande des consommateurs and the NGO Public Eye denounces the practices of online sales platforms in the field of fashion. She points to the use of “dark patterns”, these stratagems used by online shops to influence the consumer.
Colorful buttons, strategically positioned enticing discounts, time-limited offers: the architecture of web interfaces is always designed to guide user actions.
But certain design techniques used by commercial platforms and called “dark patterns” would be manipulation, denounce the French Federation of Consumers and the NGO Public Eye in a joint study published on Wednesday and including the program A Bon Entendeur of the RTS had the results first.
“Forms of manipulation”
“‘Dark patterns’ increase by two to four times the probability that a consumer will perform a certain action”, note the authors of the study. In their line of sight, in particular, the techniques which push the consumer to add articles to his virtual basket, or the virtual impossibility of deleting certain user accounts.
The authors sifted through the interfaces of fifteen platforms on which clothes are sold, from Zalando to Zara via Manor or Globus, in search of these “dark patterns” intended to encourage certain actions by the visitor and to prevent them from ‘others.
“We see that we encourage people to share more data. We see that we intervene, that we influence their individual choices in a very insidious, misleading way”, points out Géraldine Viret, spokesperson for Public Eye. “The use of these forms of manipulation is ubiquitous, but still with quite considerable differences between platforms.”
Fifteen companies under the magnifying glass
The study ranks the fifteen platforms analyzed. Topping the list is Chinese clothing giant Shein. The study’s investigators spotted 18 “dark patterns” on its interface. At the bottom of the ranking, Globus and Zara, in which only 4 of these tools were detected.
Manor and Digitec Galaxus, which appear in the study, categorically refuse to be associated with the use of “dark patterns”. “The use of ‘dark patterns’ is diametrically opposed to our company values,” writes Digitec Galaxus. “To claim that we use ‘dark patterns’ is simply false and absurd.” Manor, for its part, ensures that it does not use this type of tool and claims to “refuse to manipulate its customers”.
Charles Reinmann and Linda Bourget