ASCI to focus on kids, education around dark patterns

India’s advertising industry’s self-regulator plans to educate children about dark patterns or strategies used by online retailers to trick users into making unwanted purchases.

“Kids are a good focus area for us over the next few months, and we have just started a pilot to look at building advertising literacy for school kids,” Manisha Kapoor, chief executive officer and secretary-general at the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), told Mint in an interview. The body will conduct classroom sessions for kids, starting with the Delhi National Capital Region, to help them understand the commercial intent of advertising.

The idea, Kapoor said, is to ensure children, who are digital natives but not exactly discerning consumers, know of the kind of questions they must ask before they believe what is said in an ad, buy these products or ask their parents to buy them.

Issues such as online safety or when children should give out details will be examined over the next 18 months as part of the programme, which aims to reach one million children in classrooms across 10-12 cities.

E-commerce dark patterns are deceptive and manipulative user interface designs that trick online shoppers into making unwanted purchases, signing up for services or sharing data by exploiting psychological vulnerabilities. Children are even more vulnerable as such interfaces can trick them into sharing personal information and purchasing items without understanding the true cost.

In India, dark patterns are regulated under the Consumer Protection Act, 2019 and, the Central Consumer Protection Authority has issued Guidelines for Prevention and Regulation of Dark Patterns, 2023.

The government recently asked all e-commerce firms to conduct an audit of dark patterns that may have crept into their work and share the results. Kapoor said it is working with the government to train companies to conduct these audits. ASCI will also develop an e-learning programme on dark patterns.

ASCI plans to focus on advertising literacy for children and educating companies as it completes 40 years of existence next month. The council is seeing greater willingness from advertisers and companies to comply with guidelines across traditional print, television and digital mediums, according to Kapoor.

On Thursday, Sudhanshu Vats, managing director of Pidilite Industries Ltd, was named the new chairman of ASCI. S. Subramanyeswar of MullenLowe Global was appointed vice-chairman, and Paritosh Joshi, principal at Provocateur Advisory, was named honorary treasurer.

Voluntary compliance

Entertainment industry experts say that ASCI can only put out well-meaning advisories but doesn’t really have the authority to enforce compliance.

However, Kapoor said ASCI has seen improvement in voluntary compliance. “With digital too, where advertisers are not ASCI members, formats are morphing fast and the sheer volume of creative content being put out is large, in the last two to three years, we’ve seen compliance increasing. We ended last year with an 83-84% rate,” Kapoor said. Compliance rates in TV and print, on the other hand, are almost 97-98%, she added, referring to the percentage of advertisers or advertisements that voluntarily follow ASCI’s code.

Meanwhile, Kapoor flagged offshore betting sites as a key challenge. While ASCI has been working closely with the government to monitor these, not only are they based abroad, but new ones crop up whenever one website is shut down, she said.

“There is a huge spurt in offshore betting after the (gaming) ban. We have a lesser ability to monitor things which are coming from out of the country. That is and will continue to be a challenge from a regulatory point of view,” Kapoor said. “We have to constantly monitor changes in the environment, the new regulations coming in, how to improve our own technology and work together with the government or other regulators to surface and report these cases.”