Duolingo, Strava, and Ticketmaster Are All Caught Up in EU’s New Digital Fairness Rules

The European Commission has introduced its Digital Fairness Act, a significant reform of consumer protection rules in the EU, addressing harmful online practices. The proposed rules aim to ban dark patterns, limit dynamic pricing, require influencers to disclose paid promotions, restrict personalized advertising and pricing for minors, simplify digital subscriptions, and grant consumers a right to human customer service.

The Digital Fairness Act also seeks to enable users to disable addictive design features on digital services, such as on apps like Strava and Duolingo. Some of these patterns have already been restricted for children under the Kids Act, which targets addictive designs in such services. EU rights groups have called for similar protections for all consumers.

President Ursula von der Leyen expressed concern that addictive design can harm everyone and called for a wider framework to tackle this issue. Some risks are already regulated by the EU Digital Services Act, as seen with ByteDance's TikTok, which was found to breach rules due to its "addictive design" features like infinite scroll, autoplay, and push notifications.

Meta was also found to be in breach of the act due to similar features on Instagram and Facebook, potentially facing fines up to 6 percent of their worldwide annual turnover. The new regulation aims to fill gaps between the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, and the AI Act, while simplifying consumer protection rules across the EU's 27 member states and providing a strong safety net in the digital world.