Our recent investigation into online platforms reveals that they are guilty of influencing your choices. As a user, you are directed toward certain actions that are not in your best interest, but which benefit the platform. This is legally not allowed.

Users constantly make choices when they use a website or app. These choices include clicking on content or information to watch, selecting desired options, and performing certain actions. You expect the choices that you make to be free choices: you expect to be properly informed to ensure that your choices match your goals. Sadly this does not correspond with what actually happens. Your choices are often influenced by how online platforms are designed.

The research

By demonstrating concrete forms of manipulative design, regulators will be able to take more targeted actions against possible violations by platforms. This is why we performed exploratory research in which we defined specific forms of manipulative design and detected them on a selection of large online platforms: Snapchat, Facebook, TikTok, Shein, Zalando, and Booking.com.

We made a distinction between two forms of manipulative designs in our research. On the one hand we looked at misleading techniques that deceive users into making choices that they did not intend to make (deceptive patterns). On the other hand we looked at techniques that grab and hold the attention of users, which cause them to spend more time and return more often to the platform than they intended to (attention capturing damaging patterns).

Results

All six of the platforms that we looked into are brimming with forms of manipulative design. A selection of our most important conclusions:

• Almost every single type of notification is turned on by default on the social media platforms. It takes a lot of effort for users to choose which notification they do and do not want to receive, there is no proper explanation and the amount of choices can be overwhelming.
• Snapchat and Facebook use an attention grabbing red badge within the platform (a red dot, with or without a number inside of it). Usually these suggest that there is a new interaction with the user. However, they are now also used to tell the user that there is new content (such as videos or comments, that the user has not interacted with yet).
• In cookie banners users are often steered toward allowing all cookies. Platforms do this by making the 'accept all' button stand out visually. They also add text that advocates why users should accept all cookies whereas privacy concerns are focused on less.
• Certain settings are often pre-selected to increase the odds that users unknowingly agree with these settings. For example, when creating a new Snapchat account users are given suggestions for 'friends' that are preselected. This increases the risk of getting into contact and sharing content with other users that they do not know and did not intend to share information with. And when you add information to your Facebook-profile,  the privacy-setting (which is small and grey) is on ‘public’ by default.
• The order of content (including comments) on social media platforms is automatically determined by profiling recommendation systems. User data and interactions are used to predict what type of content the user might wants to see. By law, there should be a non-profiling alternative present, that is directly accesible and selectable from the same location where users see the ordered content. However, at the researched social media platforms these alternatives are not easily found, and Facebook even prevents users from setting this alternative as a default.
• Users receive numerous 'fake friend notifications' on Snapchat. It appears as if a user gets a message from a friend or a person that they follow, however, these messages are generated by the platform itself. These messages are often about new content that is available, or suggested content.
• Snapchat uses a variety of gamification elements and patterns that cause social pressure ('snap streaks' with friends, the 'snapscore', a friendship level, and sharing the user's location with their friends).
• On Facebook it is a very complex task to delete your account.
• Shein clearly uses more 'deceptive patterns' than other investigated e-commerce platforms. One of the deceptive patterns Shein uses is showing a fake timer that makes it appear as if a discount is running out. Another one is using specific language that suggests that a product is almost sold out and that users should buy it quickly.

Following up