Jess Weatherbed
is a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.
Gaming, social media, and e-commerce platforms are facing a fresh wave of sweeping European Union rules that aim to make “your online experience fairer.” The newly proposed Digital Fairness Act (DFA) published by the EU Commission on Wednesday is designed to tackle practices that exploit consumers into spending more of their time and money online, including misleading prices or availability, addictive design features like gaming loot boxes, undisclosed influencer marketing, and more.
“The Act will protect consumers of all ages shopping and browsing for goods or services online,” the EU Commission said in a news bulletin. “It will also mean fairer competition for businesses, which are expecting to save EU consumers up to €13.7 billion ($15.1 billion) a year.”
Here’s an overview of what the DFA proposal includes:
- A ban on manipulative marketing practices and so-called “dark patterns” that push consumers into making decisions they might not otherwise make, such as fake claims about a product almost being sold out.
