Dark Patterns and the Legal Requirements of Consent Banners: An Interaction Criticism Perspective

TL;DR

This paper critically examines consent banners across multiple disciplines, highlighting tensions and opportunities for better design and policy through an interaction criticism lens focused on dark patterns.

Contribution

It integrates perspectives from HCI, design, privacy, and law to analyze consent banners using dark patterns, fostering transdisciplinary dialogue for ethical and policy improvements.

Findings

Identifies tensions between design and legal perspectives.

Highlights social and contextual influences on consent banners.

Suggests opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration.

Abstract

User engagement with data privacy and security through consent banners has become a ubiquitous part of interacting with internet services. While previous work has addressed consent banners from either interaction design, legal, and ethics-focused perspectives, little research addresses the connections among multiple disciplinary approaches, including tensions and opportunities that transcend disciplinary boundaries. In this paper, we draw together perspectives and commentary from HCI, design, privacy and data protection, and legal research communities, using the language and strategies of "dark patterns" to perform an interaction criticism reading of three different types of consent banners. Our analysis builds upon designer, interface, user, and social context lenses to raise tensions and synergies that arise together in complex, contingent, and conflicting ways in the act of designing consent banners. We conclude with opportunities for transdisciplinary dialogue across legal, ethical, computer science, and interactive systems scholarship to translate matters of ethical concern into public policy.