Designing regulations to combat online manipulation: a UK perspective
Stephen McDonald, Rocio Concha · Journal of Antitrust Enforcement · 2024
The use of manipulative practices to induce consumers to make choices that are not in their best interest is ubiquitous in online markets where choice architecture is routinely designed to unfairly benefit businesses. These tactics exploit psychological vulnerabilities or cognitive biases, compelling consumers to make decisions without a full understanding of the implications. In many cases, such behaviour appears to be integral to business models. For example, large numbers of people have mistakenly signed up for services they do not want,1 default settings have been set to encourage people to give up more personal data than they want to,2 while the use of drip pricing3 and pressure selling tactics4 is widespread and lead to consumers overpaying or even purchasing products they do not want. The manipulation of consumers by businesses is not new, but digitalization has amplified its use by introducing new routes for psychological targeting and exploiting cognitive biases. Companies now collect vast amounts of data on user behaviour, preferences, and interactions, which enable precise targeting. Using continuously evolving algorithms, they can micro-target content and advertisements to exploit specific vulnerabilities, such as impulsive tendencies or fear of missing out often without consumers realising they are being influenced.5