EU Drafts Digital Fairness Act to Ban Dark Patterns

By Tom Whitfield

The European Commission on Wednesday proposed the Digital Fairness Act, a consumer-protection law that would let users switch off features designed to drive compulsive online use and would fine companies up to 6% of global annual turnover for violations.

The draft rules take direct aim at the engagement mechanics that keep billions of consumers online and spending. For platforms built on attention, the proposal is the most consequential intervention since Brussels turned to competition and privacy enforcement. Now it targets the design layer itself.

Who falls under the rules?

The restrictions would hit the largest social media companies — Google's YouTube, Meta's Instagram and ByteDance's TikTok — along with e-commerce services and AI chatbots.

AI bots fall within scope too. The measures could cover chatbots that nudge users to extend their interactions, marking the first time EU consumer rules would reach conversational AI engagement tactics.

What counts as a dark pattern?

The proposal bans so-called dark patterns in online sales: design features that induce or deceive consumers into decisions they did not intend to make. The Commission cites two concrete examples:

• Telling prospective buyers that a product is about to sell out, whether or not that is true
• Making it difficult to cancel a subscription

Michael McGrath, the European Commissioner responsible for consumer protection, left no ambiguity about false urgency tactics. He told journalists: "We are making it absolutely clear that false claims about the scarcity of a product or service constitute a dark pattern and are therefore not permitted."

How would enforcement work?

Alongside the new rules, the EU is seeking new powers to supervise and enforce consumer-protection rules directly when infringements affect two-thirds of the bloc's population. Today, violations of these rules are handled by national regulators, a fragmentation that has slowed cross-border action against large platforms.

In certain cases, the Commission could impose fines of up to 6% of a company's global annual revenue — a ceiling in line with the toughest penalties under the Digital Services Act. Small companies would be excluded from this direct-enforcement mechanism, according to the Commission.

The 6% figure matters: for a platform with €50 billion in annual revenue, the maximum exposure would reach €3 billion.

What happens next?

The proposals still need negotiation and approval by European legislators. They can undergo significant changes before becoming law, and past tech files — from the DSA to the AI Act — show that lobbying typically stretches the timeline by months or years.

The direction is set regardless: Brussels has moved from regulating what platforms do with data and market power to regulating how they design the products themselves. Marketers and product teams across social media, e-commerce and AI will need to audit their engagement and conversion tactics against a standard that treats manufactured urgency as an unlawful practice, not a growth lever.