EU's Proposed Digital Fairness Act Targets Dark Patterns and Addictive App Design

The most interesting thing about the European Commission's new consumer package isn't the list of banned tricks. It's that the protections are aimed at every user, not just children. For years, the EU has restricted addictive design for minors. This proposal would extend that logic to adults using ordinary apps, which means the practices at issue are the ones built into products many people use daily, including language-learning and fitness apps.

What the Digital Fairness Act actually proposes

The Commission's Digital Fairness Act is a proposal, not yet law, and it reads as a bundle of targeted fixes rather than a single sweeping rule. The core items are:

Dark patterns would be banned. The Commission defines these as interface practices that push people toward decisions they wouldn't otherwise make. The example given is a false claim that a product is running low, the kind of urgency cue that's easy to build and hard for a shopper to verify in the moment.

Ticket retailers would have to make tiered pricing transparent, so buyers can see how price levels are structured before they commit. Influencers would have to disclose when they're paid to promote something. Personalized advertising and pricing aimed at minors would be restricted, as would targeting that exploits sensitive personal data.

Two items matter a lot to product teams. Digital subscriptions would have to be easier to cancel, which targets the sign-up-easy, exit-hard flows that have become common in subscription software. And consumers would gain a right to talk to a human customer service agent, not just a chatbot or a help-center tree.

Addictive design is the real test

The provision that will draw the most attention is the one letting all consumers switch off addictive design features on digital services. The examples named are autoplay of videos and streaks, the daily-count mechanics that prompt users to keep a run alive. Streaks have become a signature retention tool in consumer apps, which is why the mention of Duolingo and Strava has landed so quickly.

Commissioner Michael McGrath described the package as "the most significant reform of EU consumer protection rules in more than 20 years." He argued that current rules predate ecommerce, the attention economy and the use of personal data for marketing. "The digital fairness act will make sure the digital economy works for consumers and not against them," he said at a press conference.

President Ursula von der Leyen made the same case in the framing she used at September's State of the Union address. Her point was that minors aren't the only group at risk, and that addictive design harms adults too. That's a broader political claim than the technical text supports on its own, but it explains why the proposal treats design choices as a consumer issue rather than a child-safety issue alone.

Overlap with existing EU rules

The Digital Fairness Act doesn't sit alone. Some of these risks are already covered by the Digital Services Act. The Commission recently said TikTok had breached those rules through the "rabbit hole effect" of its "For You" feed, which personalizes recommendations. It had earlier found that TikTok's addictive design, including infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications and the recommender itself, broke the rules. In July, it made a similar finding against Meta over features on Instagram and Facebook. If those findings are confirmed, the companies could face fines of up to 6 percent of worldwide annual turnover.

That's the detail to watch. The DSA is already being used to police addictive design at platform scale, so the new consumer rules are less about inventing a new theory of harm than about reaching the rest of the market. A subscription app or a fitness tracker can't rely on being outside the DSA's social media scope if the design pattern is the same.

Henna Virkkunen, the Commission's executive vice president, said the goal is to fill gaps between the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and the AI Act without duplicating them. The package is meant to simplify consumer protection across the bloc's 27 member states, which would give companies one set of expectations rather than a patchwork of national interpretations.

Enforcement and reach

The enforcement design is where the proposal gets more structural. The Commission wants to speed up cross-border cooperation and give itself direct powers to investigate large-scale harms. Firms could be fined up to 6 percent of worldwide annual turnover. Non-EU companies would need to appoint a local legal representative to work with regulators, which is a practical requirement that will affect how many overseas consumer apps set up their EU operations.

The turnover cap is the same ceiling used under the DSA, so the penalty structure is consistent across the package. For a large platform, 6 percent of global revenue is a serious number. For a mid-sized subscription app, the more likely pressure point is the cancellation rule and the design changes needed to pass it.

What to watch

Three open questions will decide how much this matters in practice. First, how "addictive design" gets defined in the final text. A narrow definition would cover autoplay and streaks but leave softer engagement loops alone. A broad one would pull in a large share of consumer software. Second, how the dark-pattern ban is enforced against interface changes that are technically compliant but still manipulative. Third, how the human customer service right works operationally, since it could expand staffing demands for companies that currently rely on automated support.

For developers and product leads, the practical read is simple. Streaks, autoplay, one-click upsells and hard-to-find cancellation flows are now design decisions with regulatory exposure in the EU, and that exposure is growing. Teams that already give users a clean off-switch for engagement mechanics will have an easier path than those who would need to rebuild flows under a deadline.