EU Digital Fairness Act consumer protection rules, Digi Mart USA News: The European Commission has unveiled its Digital Fairness Act, a package of proposed rules designed to address harmful practices online across the bloc’s 27 member states. The proposals would ban dark patterns, which are practices that manipulate consumers into decisions they would not otherwise make, such as falsely claiming a product is running low.
The rules would also curb dynamic pricing by ticket retailers such as Ticketmaster and require influencers to disclose when they are paid to promote a product. Personalized advertising and pricing targeting minors or exploiting sensitive data would be ruled out, and digital subscriptions would be made easier to cancel.
Consumers would also gain a right to interact with a human customer service representative.
Michael McGrath, the EU Consumer Protection Commissioner, described the package as the most significant reform of EU consumer protection rules in more than 20 years. He noted that existing rules were developed before ecommerce, the attention economy and the use of personal data for marketing took off.
“The digital fairness act will make sure the digital economy works for consumers and not against them,” he said at a press conference.
The bill would also allow all consumers to turn off addictive design features on digital services, such as autoplay of videos and streaks, including on apps like Strava and Duolingo. The EU has already restricted some of these patterns for children through its Kids Act, which bans under-13s from accessing social media and chatbots and targets addictive designs in those services.
Some European rights groups have called for those protections to be extended to all consumers.
President Ursula von der Leyen, previewing the Digital Fairness Act in September’s State of the Union address, said: “But it is not only minors who are at risk. Addictive design, for example, is harming everyone.
That is why we need a wider framework.”
Some of these risks are already regulated under the EU Digital Services Act. The European Commission said on Friday that ByteDance’s TikTok had breached those rules through the “rabbit hole effect” of its “For You” feed algorithm.
The regulator had previously found that TikTok’s addictive design, including infinite scroll, autoplay and push notifications, broke the rules. In July it found Meta in breach of the act due to similar features on Instagram and Facebook.
If confirmed, both companies could face fines of up to 6 percent of worldwide annual turnover.
Executive Vice President Henna Virkkunen said the new regulation is designed to fill gaps between the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and the AI Act, which took effect in August, rather than duplicate them. The package should simplify consumer protection rules across the bloc and act as a “strong safety net in the digital world,” she added.
The Commission aims to accelerate cross-border cooperation through strengthened enforcement rules. These would give the regulator direct powers to investigate large-scale impacts and fine firms up to 6 percent of their worldwide annual turnover.
Non-EU companies would be required to appoint a local legal representative to cooperate with authorities.
