Arianna Rossi

Cristiana Santos, Arianna Rossi, Lorena Sánchez Chamorro et al.

A cookie banner pops up when a user visits a website for the first time, requesting consent to the use of cookies and other trackers for a variety of purposes. Unlike prior work that has focused on evaluating the user interface (UI) design of cookie banners, this paper presents an in-depth analysis of what cookie banners say to users to get their consent. We took an interdisciplinary approach to determining what cookie banners should say. Following the legal requirements of the ePrivacy Directive (ePD) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), we manually annotated around 400 cookie banners presented on the most popular English-speaking websites visited by users residing in the EU. We focused on analyzing the purposes of cookie banners and how these purposes were expressed (e.g., any misleading or vague language, any use of jargon). We found that 89% of cookie banners violated applicable laws. In particular, 61% of banners violated the purpose specificity requirement by mentioning vague purposes, including "user experience enhancement". Further, 30% of banners used positive framing, breaching the freely given and informed consent requirements. Based on these findings, we provide recommendations that regulators can find useful. We also describe future research directions.

Kerstin Bongard-Blanchy, Arianna Rossi, Salvador Rivas et al.

Online services pervasively employ manipulative designs (i.e., dark patterns) to influence users to purchase goods and subscriptions, spend more time on-site, or mindlessly accept the harvesting of their personal data. To protect users from the lure of such designs, we asked: are users aware of the presence of dark patterns? If so, are they able to resist them? By surveying 406 individuals, we found that they are generally aware of the influence that manipulative designs can exert on their online behaviour. However, being aware does not equip users with the ability to oppose such influence. We further find that respondents, especially younger ones, often recognise the "darkness" of certain designs, but remain unsure of the actual harm they may suffer. Finally, we discuss a set of interventions (e.g., bright patterns, design frictions, training games, applications to expedite legal enforcement) in the light of our findings.

Arianna Rossi, Kerstin Bongard-Blanchy

This position paper draws from the complexity of dark patterns to develop arguments for differentiated interventions. We propose a matrix of interventions with a \textit{measure axis} (from user-directed to environment-directed) and a \textit{scope axis} (from general to specific). We furthermore discuss a set of interventions situated in different fields of the intervention spaces. The discussions at the 2021 CHI workshop "What can CHI do about dark patterns?" should help hone the matrix structure and fill its fields with specific intervention proposals.