European Union: Adopted EDPB Guidelines on deceptive design patterns in social media platform interfaces

On 14 February 2023, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) adopted the “Guidelines 03/2022 on Deceptive design patterns in social media platform interfaces: how to recognise and avoid them (version 2.0)”. The main purpose of the Guidelines is to provide recommendations to actors such as social media providers, designers and users of social media platforms on assessing and avoiding “deceptive design patterns” in social media interfaces that violate GDPR requirements. Specifically, "deceptive design patterns" (referred to as "dark patterns" in the previous version of the Guidelines) are user interfaces on social media platforms that may cause users to make unintended and harmful decisions on how their personal data are processed. The Guidelines provide examples of dark patterns and include best practices and recommendations for user interfaces designers to promote the implementation of the GDPR.