Internet companies continue to cheat despite the ban – economy

Large Internet companies from the USA and China are still failing to comply with the new legal obligations a hundred days after the European Digital Services Act (DSA) came into force. This emerges from a study by the Federal Association of Consumer Organizations (VZBV), which was published in Berlin on Monday. Use it like this AmazonBooking.com, Google Shopping and YouTube still use illegal design tricks (“dark patterns”) to steer consumers in a certain direction.

Since August 2023, providers of very large online platforms have been prohibited from exploiting human behavior or perception patterns through design tricks – for example through the color design of buttons or long click paths. “People feel manipulated, confused or tricked by design tricks on online platforms,” said Ramona Pop, board member of the VZBV. “It’s really amazing the persistence Pursue disregard the applicable laws or only implement them half-heartedly.”

Consumer advocates also discovered serious deficiencies in the transparency of advertising criteria. Large online platforms are obliged to provide comprehensible and easily accessible information about the criteria according to which advertisements are displayed, explained the VZBV. This information should be able to be accessed directly by clicking on the advertisement. “None of the providers examined have so far complied with this obligation.” The association examined the Instagram advertisements from the Meta Group, Snapchat, Tiktok and X/Twitter. After all, all but Snapchat marked the ad content as advertising and identified the respective advertiser by name.